Dust of the Time

Islamic god

2009-12-01T06:56:00.002-06:00

Most people believe that Christians and Muslims all believe in the same God, e.g., Allah is the God of Abraham which means he is also the God of Christians. However, the Qur'an and the Bible show that the Allah of Muslims differs radically from the God of Christians.

The Christian God and Allah:

Do not partake in the same discourse
Do not put forth the same values
Do not have the same concepts of government and non-religious organizations
Do not propose for humanity the same destiny

In other words, the "same" God is quite different in what He is and how He acts--especially in what He requires of us. One good illustration is that the Christian God, through His son Jesus Christ, is merciful and refuses to punish the adulterous woman by stoning, while the absolute Allah of Muhammad's vision and writings ordains the putting to death of an unfaithful woman.

Allah's religion demands that the Qur'an be the constitution of all governments (e.g., promoting jihad, forbidding the presence of Christian churches, enforcing Islamic law--Sharia). Contrast this with Jesus teaching: "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and give to God what is God's." Jesus taught that conversion was to be accomplished through persuasive teaching of the Good News of God's mercy and a voluntary Baptism.

Islamic apologists silence all intellectual endeavors that offend them. Many Muslim death threats have been made to writers and politicians--some carried out because the victims couldn't hide fast enough! For a long list of examples throughout the world, google "Muslim death threat." Also google "Islamic slavery" and "Muslim kidnapping" of brides and young children from non-Islamic populations.

A Muslim who studies and writes about the literary and historical sources of the "divinely transcribed" Qur'an will necessarily find himself in physical danger. Salmon Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, is the best example. While he has avoided death from the fatwas, here's what Wikipedia says has happened to his translators and publishers:

In 1991, Rushdie's Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, was stabbed and killed in Tokyo, and his Italian translator was beaten and stabbed in Milan. In 1993, Rushdie's Norwegian publisher William Nygaard was shot and severely injured in an attack outside his house in Oslo. Thirty-seven guests died when their hotel in Sivas, Turkey was burnt down by locals protesting against Aziz Nesin, Rushdie's Turkish translator.

The most important distinction between the two G(g)ods concerns the Trinity and the Incarnation of God as man. The Muslim god (Allah) denies the existence of a Word made flesh and the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ was recorded by four writers of that day as performing many miracles, including bringing people back from the dead. Jesus says "I Am Who Am"--thus using the Old Testament name and calling Himself God. Muhammed denies Jesus's words and says that Jesus is only a prophet.

Muhammed's and Islamic history is one of conquering by armies against ill-prepared populations. Allah is very different from the Christian God because this Islamic god teaches:

The expansion of Islam by aggression (most of the world's military hot spots have something to do with Islam--especially in Africa)
Religious rule with a scimitar-wielding fist, including cutting off of hands for stealing (Islamic governments give limited or no rights to non-believers)
The reward of faithful adherents with a heaven full of virgins (In contrast, Jesus said “The children of this age marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage....they are like angels.")

Benedict XVI -- What a Pope!

2009-10-20T09:43:00.004-05:00

This elderly Pope Benedict XVI has decided to make his last days on earth some of the most productive times of any Fathers of the Church. What a great blessing he is to the Church of our times. He has turned the outcoming tide of liberal pollution back into stale and stagnant waters. For a good illustration, read John L. Allen, Jr.'s article of October 9, 2009, Calling this week in Rome 'eventful' is an understatement.

What happened today is even more toasty warm with the decisive conclusion of Pope Benedict XVI to assist faith full Christians in the Anglican communion. The way has been paved for Anglicans to rejoin the Catholic Church and become full communicants, with an Apostolic Constitution that creates a "Personal Ordinariate" for them. Now, THAT'S a major event of a whole papal lifetime! Yet this event is only one of several major events of Benedict's short pontificate.

The current decision affecting Anglican entry into the structure of the Church reminds me of my brother-in law learning about that the birth parents and their families were coming to their son's wedding. He said joyfully, "The family's just become a little bigger!" What a beautiful thought of an enlarged family, and it also applies to Anglicans who are spiritually distraught and ill with the ordination of women and homosexuals in their old communities.

Will they accept all the teachings of the Church (e.g., divorce, contraception)? Probably not--that's the way it is with incomplete Christians who have heard only part of the truth. Yet I believe their hearts are good and they want to do God's will, and solid teaching is all that many will need to fully embrace the faith. They have been through a spiritual hell and the Pope wants to extricate them from that situation.

The Pope has not established a Personal Ordinariate for traditional Catholics who prefer the old Latin rite. However, local Bishops are beginning to permit more parishes to be formed to fully serve the Latin Mass folk. St. Anne's Parish in San Diego (with a seating capacity of over 300) is an excellent example of the fervor and commitment of Latin Mass communities.

St. Anne's was reestablished as a personal parish for the Traditional Latin Mass apostolate under the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter on October 7, 2008. One year later, they have four Sunday Masses and twice daily Mass during the week. It has helped that major repairs and re-construction were undertaken by the FSSP priests to restore St. Anne’s Church as a suitable House of God.

What about Personal Ordinariates for the SSPX Latin Mass communities? Fr. Z says "This [the Anglican agreement] could be important down the line also for SSPXers."

Castor Beans in the Chicken Yard

2009-08-24T13:34:00.006-05:00

A home not far from ours has some large leafed vegetation that is well over six feet tall. The huge plants are familiar because they used to provide good shade around Mother's old chicken yard. I stopped to talk with the very nice lady of the house who said the plants came from the 'old country,' but she didn't know the plant name.

The lady's plants are the castor bean. Even though rather dumb, chickens will eat or scratch up other plants but won't touch the castor bean plant. Planting castor beans on the west and south edges of the chicken yard in the springtime meant our chickens had a cool spot in which to rest during the hot summertime months.

Mother always reminded us kids not to play with or eat the castor beans [that contain the poison ricin], just like she warned us not to eat rhubarb leaves that contain poison [oxalates]. We farm children usually listened carefully to warnings about many things, such as not to get too close to the water well, or how horses and cows can kick (horses mostly backwards; cows mostly sideways), and how straw hats were needed when working in the sun.

Training in listening to and heeding warnings is good practice to maintain a long and healthy life. Yet many times, the warning is like for fire--good when used appropriately, and dangerous at other times. That's the case with the good castor bean plant, such as is pointed out by Anne Marie's Chemistry Blog.

Fornication

2009-08-13T09:39:00.004-05:00

I've just learned that young 'Joe' at work was asled by a young co-worker, 'Joan,' if she could rent a room in his apartment. Of course, he seemed quite interested in being the roommate of this young, intelligent, and beautiful college graduate.

Why is it unwise for unmarried persons of the opposite sex to live together? This question would have been laughed at with ridicule fifty years ago when I was about the same age as the two young persons described above! My college dormitory classmates knew the reasons why they shouldn't sleep in the same apartment with a man--it wasn't necessary to inform them why it was a bad idea. But in the past 30 years, I've known several young women who moved in with young men, and all of them ended up sleeping with their new boyfriends. Only one seemed not to have rued her fornication.

I knew of only one college classmate who become pregnant "out of wedlock", the term used for illegitimate parenthood. Naturally she married the young father of her child. [BTW, most of the girls in our hall claimed to be virgins and almost all ended up in stable marriages).

I had intended to present some of the reasons why "Joan" should not rent a room in "Joe's" apartment (i.e., why fornication is bad). But John C. Wright (my favorite blogger) has provided more information (some sentences are mischievously written) than I could ever imagine.

"The question confronting me was whether one’s eventual spouse, even before you ever meet him, even before you know if he exists, has an interest in your sexual behavior and misbehavior, and in the condition of your habits of virtue, which law and custom ought to protect?"

See Wright's recent series comparing the Libertine outlook with the Christian logic on marriage, fornication, third partners, GLBT, etc. Wright's four-part blog on APOLOGIA PRO OPERE SUIS, may become chapters from a new book that will make him (in my opinion) a worthy successor of the great Christian apologist, C.S. Lewis (who also was an atheist):

Anyone knowing my history knows that I came to the Christian religion [Wright entered the Catholic Church in 2007] after I became convinced of the logic of chastity (or intolerance, as it is called in the anti-conceptual jargon of PC), not before. I did not become pro-marriage (or homophobic, as it is called) because I am a Christian; I became a Christian because I am pro-marriage.

I made the claim that I used to be a member of the Sexual Revolution, like them, and had believed for most of my life that whatever two consenting adults did in the privacy of their bedroom (or on their kitchen floor, depending) provided it harmed no other, was no concern of their neighbors, and not a proper object for either legal sanction or social disapproval. All harmless sexual acts were licit.

Over a period of years, and very much against my natural inclination, I was driven by logical arguments out of this position and into a more conservative and traditional view of sexual morality. Neither my motives were religious, nor was the argument. I was not merely an atheist at the time, I was a vituperative, proselytizing, bitterly zealous atheist. To call my motives Christian is beyond untrue, beyond comical, and deep into the territory of being absurd.

Now begin at the beginning of Wright's series, "Preliminary Comments" in Part I.

How a System Collapses

2009-08-13T08:43:00.005-05:00

My nephew emailed me an insightful comment on the failures of many institutions in our times-- economic, cultural, educational, legal, moral/ethical, etc. How very different and scary is this new world from the one in which I grew up, and I'm not referring to technological change.

When I see another subsystem of civilization breaking down, I know Peter is right.

Everything will happen in concert. The successful compromise of each sub-system provides a cascading "critical mass" that degrades the structural integrity of every remaining sub-system... compromising the macro-system with maximum destruction and the smallest "debris" possible. Being an American is not going to be easy.

A broken-down house is a good example of subsystems failing until the entire house is unlivable. The roof leaks and is not repaired; painting is not done; faucets begin to leak; windows are broken; the grass and trees are not taken care of; etc.

Civilization is the house that needs to be maintained by every generation so that we do not descend into barbarism.

Dear John....

2009-07-23T06:55:00.003-05:00

Your comments struck me hard because it is clear that you saw great atrocities to civilian populations during your three tours of duty in Vietnam. The intellectual problem is why an all-merciful God would allow such terrible pain and suffering. If God exists, why does he permit unmasked, unmistakable evil?

John, I see how you love Mike and make sacrifices for him to be able to get outside and play too. Because you are clearly a loving individual, I’m going to try to answer some of your objections to God and Christianity, although please remember that I am not a trained theologian.

The problem of pain is especially evident when soldiers observe (and even cause) the injury and death of non-combatants, including young children.

Wartime atrocities are a reminder that all men have serious defects in their moral lives. All need release and forgiveness from evils caused by sins.
Virtues and vices are revealed by pain, but differently in particular individuals. One witness to extreme cruelty drinks to forget what he has seen, another resolves to revenge the enemy with other atrocities, another prays for God to remove him from this terrible war before he becomes insane, another condemns God (rather than men) for allowing these depravities to happen, yet another acts to heal the pain and suffering by helping to “pick up the pieces” of ruined lives, etc.

Pain and suffering is allowed by God because He created men in the “image and likeness of God”—He gifted men with free will. Men can choose to be cruel, prideful, and selfish—or compassionate, selfless, and courageous.

God whispers in our pleasures, but He SHOUTS when we know pain. Pain is God’s megaphone to shatter our illusions of self sufficiency and innocence. Thus, tribulation is a necessary element in God’s redemption of fallen mankind.

This earth is the stage for the greatest drama ever written, where great and small souls are tested and Jesus Christ is the ultimate hero. Pain is part of these earthly trials, when we are temporarily on the battlefield. Pain keeps us from resting in this world.

Military recruits are subjected to painful situations during training, showing that pain is not necessarily an evil. The corresponding Christian doctrine is that we are “made perfect through suffering.” [Hebrews 2:10] Even the Greek philosophers stated that the “life of wisdom is the practice of death,” implying that wisdom comes only with necessary suffering.

How then do we solve the apparent contradiction of God’s mercy versus His justice. The finality of death solves this problem—“Mercy in this life; justice in the next.” The pains associated with death have a particular merit, both for the suffering individual and for ourselves because then we can choose to imitate our Savior in His death.

Jesus Christ Himself suffered a very painful death, but with a glorious purpose. Moreover, He taught us to love our enemies so that cruelty would never take place. Yet amazingly, He continues to love us even when WE are cruel and even His enemies.

Compare death to birth, with a baby in the womb whom God wishes to be born. The baby responds—“I’m not ready, I like it here inside where my mother keeps me warm and well-fed.” Regardless, the baby and his mother undergo the painful process of birth. The child opens his eyes to see a new world, just as we will see in heaven if we die in God’s friendship.

Pain and suffering are excellent reminders of Satan and Hell which existence has the full support of Scripture and our Lord’s own words. Thus, pain plants the flag of truth of our own mortality and last end within the rebel fortress of our souls.

With prayers for you (and special thanks to C.S. Lewis, 1898-1963)

P.S. Several months ago I prepared a PowerPoint presentation on the many proofs of God’s existence and showed it to eight grandchildren. The arguments show that cosmology, ontology, and the universe itself are, well, if not incontrovertible proof of God's handiwork, at least much more probable if there is a God than if there is not:

1. Aristotle’s cosmological proof of God
2. St. Anselm’s ontological argument
3. Design of universe
4. Beauty [St. Augustine]
5. Five reasons of St. Thomas Aquinas (motion-First Mover, efficient-first cause, possibility and necessity, contingency-dependency, gradation of being, design)
6. Complexity of DNA [impossible to imagine as chance occurrence, even over billions of years]
7. Information theory
8. Existence of objective morality among all humans (e.g., to kill a friend is evil)
9. Unique values of over 20 fundamental constants of physics and chemistry that are exactly what are absolutely required to allow our universe to exist
10. Laws of quantum physics which show that the universe was designed for an intelligent observer (strong anthropic principle)
—“In the early 1990s, a creeping realization swept through the theoretical physics community that the probability for the universe to even exist was vanishingly small. Indeed, the only "theory" around that seemed able to explain the universe's existence was Intelligent Design. This was not something physicists and cosmologists liked to talk about.” —Analog Magazine of Fact and Fiction, July/August 2008

China and Catholicism

2009-07-21T14:52:00.005-05:00

A most recent and comprehensive article on the growing influence of Catholicism in China, China's Catholic Moment,was published in July 2009 by First Things magazine. I concluded some time ago that China is a developing Roman empire that will eventually rule the world and survive for at least several hundred years.

My previous posts on China have discussed the hopeful and yet often frustrating news that comes from China:

China and "Trajan's Rescript"
China Catholics
China's Increasing Christians
China Embracing Confucian Values?
Saint Martina of China
China--Hope and Frustration
China--Optimism Superceded by Pessimism
The "Guide" of Religions in China
Pope Benedict XVI and Chinese Premier Hu Jintao

Clearly the Vatican believes China's growing influence in the world is going to affect Christianity on a world-wide basis for centuries to come. The First Things article by Francesco Sisci presents the following important observations:

At the end of World War II, with a nationalist government supportive of Christian missions, barely two percent of Chinese were Christians. The World Christian Database now counts 111 million Chinese Christians, while an internal survey conducted in 2007 by China’s government puts the number substantially higher: 130 million, nearly 10 percent of the total population.

...this exponential growth of Christianity in China would not have been possible without the forbearance and tacit encouragement of the regime. In recent years, the Chinese government has shifted from persecution of Christians to subtle—and sometimes even open—encouragement of Christianity.

...it is not an exaggeration to say we are near a Constantinian moment for the Chinese Empire, as the government looks to Christianity—particularly Catholicism—for an instrument of social cohesion.

Since the discrediting of Maoism twenty years earlier, China had been living with no cohesive set of values.... The successive assault by modern Western ideas and communist ideology erased the old imperial ideology, and the collapse of the communist model left China with a spiritual vacuum.

In a now famous essay, one of the youngest important party officials, Pan Yue, argued that religion might well be the opiate of the masses but that the Communist party needs just such an opiate to keep power as it changes from a revolutionary to a ruling party. The party, he argued, needs to learn how to use religion to enhance social stability and to avert rebellions and revolutions.

Thus, religion can play an important role in realizing the “harmonious society” that is the new political goal of the party.

The leadership views Christianity in a fundamentally different way from how it sees the religions rooted in traditional China. Christianity is inherently open to the modern world and a scientific outlook. Just as China imported science and Western methods of industrial organization, so it could import what Beijing understood to be the spiritual counterpart of Western science. In the view of the party, the naturalization of Christianity in China is not essentially different from the importation of socialist ideology two generations earlier. Christianity, like socialism, can be translated into Chinese characters.

If you find China and its policies toward Christianity critical to the world's future, please read the entire article by Sisci, including the 20+ comments. For a more balanced view of China and Catholicism, Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong reviews The Church in China, Two Years after the Pope's Letter.

It's Oven (and Racks) Cleaning Day!

2009-07-18T12:44:00.005-05:00

My husband knows I will figure out an efficient way to do something, or more likely, not do it very often. Even with a self-cleaning oven, I haven't cleaned mine for over three years, and so it needed it badly. Today is a beautiful sunny day with the temperature in the upper 70's--exactly the kind of day needed to open the windows before turning on the oven hot cleaning cycle that produces smoke and noxious gases.

Oven cleaning is fairly easy with self-cleaning ovens. You start by first removing all pans and other things from the oven--top, inside, and in the storage container at the lower part of the oven. Then wipe the oven interior to remove serious food spills.

It is the oven racks that cause problems. The racks first have to be removed from the oven before turning on the CLEAN cycle that brings the oven up to a high temperature for over three hours.

I've found the easiest and quickest way to clean stainless steel racks is to place them in a black garbage bag in hot sunshine. Spray the racks with OVEN CLEANER before closing the bag entrance. Leave the black bag in the sun for at least half an hour; then open the bag to spill the racks on the ground (without touching the corrosive spray).

Use a water garden hose to spray the racks clean. I used this procedure twice today and the racks now are beautifully clean and shiny with hardly no effort.

American Sheeple--A Russian Snicker

2009-05-30T16:13:00.008-05:00

The former mouthpiece of Soviet communism, the newspaper Pravda, describes American capitalism gone with a whimper. This remarkable article is consistent with a recent test on American government that was required of one of our children. Using older books, he studied diligently to learn details of how and why the long-successful U.S. system of freedom and republican government was formed over 200 years ago.

The test was passed but greatly distressed our son-in-law because only two of many questions dealt with the principles of American government as established by our founders. Almost all the questions dealt with how our government has evolved into the current socialist system.

No wonder Pravda's article gloats over America's descent into Marxism.

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists....

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas than the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonald's burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another.

Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison....

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too.

Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride....

The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

Education Lobby in Kansas

2009-05-21T10:03:00.002-05:00

Rep. Mike Kiegerl of Kansas identifies a problem that has bothered me for almost 50 years--the huge political power that State education lobbies have gathered and impose on state budgets. Education lobbyists necessarily rob other state budgets that provide critical and necessary services. This high-powered lobby yearly demands more and more money while children receive poorer and poorer education in public schools--resulting in more and more parents homeschooling their children.

This year, even the education lobbyists didn't get all they wanted, but they took a far less severe cut than other agencies. For perspective, Kansas schools as a whole spent $12,188 per student during the 2007-08 year. A cut of $116 per student amounts to less than a 1 percent drop, while other agencies averaged cuts over 5 percent.

Here's Kiegerl's comments on how the education lobby influenced the Kansas budget.

It is no exaggeration to say that this [KS] budget is the result of the activities of the strongest lobby in Topeka. There are 42 lobbyists in the “education” lobby. They resist any attempt to make the changes needed for a high quality globally competitive education system.
The only answer these folk have to anything related to education is more money. In the past, when we were taking in more revenues than expected, they got what they asked for. I voted for the largest single increase of over $1 billion four years ago. Now that we don’t have the excess money, the reaction is unreasonable. Their efforts are “cut everybody else but not us.” Never mind the requirements for public safety, the disabled, the poor foster children, the elderly, etc, throw them under the bus!

They succeeded to gather the necessary votes to get their budget. They were no help in saving the taxpayers any money. ... Sad to say they have only postponed the inevitable. When the Federal funds run out in 2011, the shortfall will be huge and the required cut backs enormous.

Consequently, other Kansas state entities had to significantly sacrifice their funding, including (1) loss of $25 million slider payments to cities and the county; (2) loss of $25 million from the state highway fund because these funds had to be transferred to the general fund; (3) a reduction of $8.5 million for public safety; and (4) insufficient funds for the educationally and developmentally disabled and children on the waiting list for services they are entitled to receive. Kansas also will need to institute a $70 million tax increase.

The Crucifixion of Bishop Robert Finn

2009-05-02T22:14:00.006-05:00

I heard Bishop Robert Finn give his memorable address to the recent Kansas City Gospel of Life Conference and was much edified by this stalwart leader of the Catholic Church. He spoke candidly of militant Catholics who must fight a necessary spiritual war against Satan.

The battle we face for the salvation of our souls is the most important one we face – bar none. Where I spend all eternity; where you spend eternity – in bliss or in damnation – is important beyond any individual choice I make. But the individual human choices I make – even one grave choice in which we remain unrepentant – can determine the direction of my salvation.

To deliberately destroy a human person, and without any justification of self-defense, is to preempt without an equal and sufficient cause, the right to life bestowed by God alone. Life is a gift which we have from God, not from man. This right cannot be taken away by means of a human law. It ought to be protected and assured by human law. The constant magnitude of this crime against humanity is staggering. We must never get used to it.
Occasionally we still hear an elected official speak of his or her personal opposition to abortion, while they support the legal right to an abortion. We should be very clear: Such a person places him or herself completely OUTSIDE the moral framework, the moral imperative of Evangelium Vitae and other Church teaching on these issues. They are NEITHER defending human life against the forces of death, NOR or they taking steps to build a culture of life. They have abandoned their place in the citizenship of the Church. Quite simply they have become warriors for death rather than life.

Such a person who makes a public stand – and acts directly – in defense of the right to kill endangers their eternal salvation. If you and I support such a person who has so flatly told us of their intentions to protect a fraudulent Right to Death, a Right to an Abortion, we make ourselves participants in their attack on life. We risk our salvation, and we better change.

So it is not surprising that Bishop Finn's address has incensed liberal Catholics who feel they must defend the so-called "right" to kill an unborn child. First read Bishop Finn's great talk to pro-lifers published on the new Catholic Key Blog [should be bookmarked first on your list of Kansas City Catholic websites].

Then observe the crucifixion of Bishop Finn in multiple comments on the website of the infamous National Catholic Reporter, which is published in Bishop Finn's diocese. The anger of dissident, unfaithful Catholics and their friends in response to Bishop Finn's remarks clearly shows the influence of Satan.

Please Come to Our House, and.....

2009-04-11T17:53:00.003-05:00

...make sure everyone remembers that we have a farm and what goes along with that.......poop. We have chicken poop, duck poop, cow poop, horse poop, dog poop and cat poop (maybe even some Canadian geese poop) in our yard.

You and your children will step in poop if you are in the yard. You may want to bring boots. We also have a hamster, a snake, a gecko, a dog, 6 baby chickens, x children and 2 adults that live in our house. Hopefully there will not be any poop to step in when in the house. :) We also have 3 hives of bees that will sting if gotten too close to. Please watch your kids.

This message comes from one of our children who decided everyone needed to be warned before coming to Easter Dinner!

TOTUS talks from the Teleprompter!

2009-04-08T08:46:00.005-05:00

Do you remember that Toto, Dorothy's dog in the Wizard of Oz, can speak? Toto is able to talk, just like other animals in the land of Oz, and simply chooses not to.

Well, TOTUS (Teleprompter of the United States) is now talking and has come up with the speech that Barack Obama would have given in 1860 if he were to promote slavery reduction in the same way he is trying to promote abortion reduction today. Here is what he came up with:

"Let me be perfectly clear...uh...I am absolutely opposed...uh...to slavery. We as Americans must...uh...come together, pro-slavery and abolitionist alike...to find common ground...uh...to reduce slavery...I plan to reduce the size of farms...uh...so that one family can farm their land...uh...without the need of additional workers.

I also plan to tax cotton production, to...uh...discourage Big Cotton. They can grow cotton, but...uh...they'll go bankrupt doing it."

"Now, I'm not deaf to those who face an unfair disadvantage...uh...on Wall Street and on Main Street, because they...uh...don't own slaves. For that reason, until we can reduce the need for slavery...uh...I'm now signing an executive order that makes slavery legal in...uh...all 40 of our states [editor's note: yes, I know there were only 33 states at the time, but if Barry is to be consistent with regard to the 57 states he seems to recognize now, then we need to slide the scale a bit.]

I am also going to mandate...uh...that Congress pass a budget that will include federal funding...uh...for anyone who needs a slave, but can't currently afford one. We need to level the playing field."

And that is how...uh...we're going to reduce slavery...uh...during my term of office.

Thanks to the great Kansas pro-life activist, Bill Sutton, of Proud Catholic Voters Association of Kansas. Please check out Sutton's extremely well-written website, and mark it as a favorite prolife bookmark!

Distribution of Communion to the Sick

2009-04-03T08:46:00.003-05:00

Recently on two occasions, I've been invited to receive Holy Communion from lay distributors--once while in the hospital (I'm fine now) and then while visiting in the home of an elderly woman. Both experiences caused me much heartache. First, the preparation for reception of Our Lord's body and blood was very short and perfunctory. Second, only a minute of thanksgiving passed before the lay distributor began talking about something else. The second distributor also was dressed very casually. Both were basically good women who seemed unaware of the awesome nature of what they were doing.

If lay distributors of Holy Communion provide service in priest-deficient Novus Ordo parishes, they must clearly and reverently acknowledge they are touching the Body and Blood of the second person of the Trinity--God Almighty. Currently I have little hope that this will occur.

The basic problem is that laymen are not clerically trained and ordained for this function. It's almost as if a Superintendent, short of skilled architects and engineers, asked for volunteers to service a great institution, and several people of good will offered their services. What grade of performance would result?

Does anyone remember when Pope John Paul II warned Brazilian bishops on the "serious abuses" stemming from the erroneous trend to "clericalize the laity"? One of his listed abuses was distribution of Communion by the laity. But since the Vatican now permits the clericalization of the laity, why was it surprised by the results?

The Mass is Serious Business is a very fine article in the April 2009 issue of Homiletic and Pastoral Review, the oldest magazine for Catholic priests in the U.S. Here are a few quotes from author Rev. Bryce A. Sibley of the Diocese of Lafayette, LA who discusses his sadness at seeing large numbers of Catholics who do not take Sunday Mass [and Holy Communion} seriously:

...a significant portion of the blame [is] on the priests and pastors and their irreverent and apathetic celebration of Mass. By his words and deeds, such a priest states that the Mass is trivial. Consequently, the faithful, seeing this poor example, adopt the same lackadaisical attitude....

This is the heart of the issue--the Mass is above and beyond all else a sacrifice, a renewal of the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ....It is serious business.

If the Mass is to be taken seriously, then Holy Communion distributed by lay men and women also needs to be taken seriously. Pope Benedict (in God is Near Us) is quoted by Fr. Sibley on the gravitas of the Eucharist:

The Eucharist is far more than just a meal; it has cost a death to provide it, and the majesty of death is present in it. Whenever we hold it, we should be filled with reverence and awe in the face of this mystery, with awe in the face of this mysterious death that becomes a present reality in our midst....

I was particularly interested in several other statements by Fr. Sibley in his article for HPR:

One can have no doubt that the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite [old Latin Mass] is very serious [my emphasis]. There exists little room for entertainment or innovation within its celebration. Its structured unfolding instills a sense of respect and awe in the priest and the congregation. Its sacral dimension is self-evident....

The chief problem is the casualness of dress seen at many parish Masses. People often look like they are heading to the beach or the health club instead of Holy Mass. In many parishes, the presence of sacred silence before and after Mass has been lost. People talk and mingle freely as if they were meeting in any public place. And of course, there is often a great lack of respect shown in the reception of Holy Communion.... Priests will regularly need to take appropriate measures to cure the lay faithful of these bad habits. It must be done in charity, but something must be done and the faithful must be held to a certain standard.

Until the Church revises its rules on lay distribution of the Eucharist, pastors must not leave lay distributors unmindful of their great responsibilities and must provide detailed and demanding training. However because lay distribution often is so neglectfully performed, I look forward to the day when sufficient priests take Holy Communion to all the sick on a regular basis, as was the case when I was young. Let us pray for many more good vocations to the religious life.

The Devil in the Next Office

2009-03-30T08:35:00.002-05:00

A friendly blogger writes to me:

I am sending you this email because I need prayer support and I know that you will do so. I am in a situation where a woman I know and work with may be possessed. I am working with a priest to help this poor woman but since I am working with this person and have worked with her, I need prayer support too. Please pray for this entire situation.

I remembered my friend's urgent request this morning at Mass and hope that other readers will add her intention to their prayers too. The situation reminds me of one that I encountered many years ago.

I also believed my co-worker might have been possessed by the devil, and another Catholic lady didn't disagree with me. The reasons were that evil always seemed good to her, and good was evil. Here are just a few of the things this 40-year old divorced professional woman did or told me she did:

Met an unhappy Catholic married man in a bar, and went home with him overnight. When he said he needed to go to Mass the next (Sunday) morning, she didn't want to let him go so she decided to go with him.
Then she decided to join the divorced/singles group at a Catholic parish to meet more men. [No, she wasn't Catholic but she liked men.]
Was very antagonistic to and hateful of her own mother. When her mother had a stroke she took the total $20,000+ savings and spent it all within six weeks. Otherwise, she would have been forced to use it to pay for her mother's nursing home expenses.
Provided no phone for her mother in the nursing home to call her friendds, until I complained that this was terribly wrong.
Believed her teenage son was unfair because he preferred living with his father, even though she plied her son with expensive gifts.
Bought a very expensive car even though she was fearful of bankruptcy [yes, eventually that happened even though as a professional she made a very good salary]. She said the monthly payments for the snazzy new car would be somewhat less than for her slightly older car, even though it would have been paid off much, much sooner.
Caused lots of problems at work, always insinuating that she would file a discrimination lawsuit if she were fired [yes, she was discharged as soon as an overall RIF was necessary].

What advice can be offered for a similar situation? Try to help, and see whether your good advice, prayers, and acts have any effect. If and when it becomes clear that the person always chooses evil over good, then leave the person. Select and work with another who will sincerely listen to God's words of truth and goodness.

If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town. (Matthew 10:12-13)

Archbishop Chaput, Notre Dame, and Obama

2009-03-23T08:58:00.006-05:00

The Catholic Key Blog notes that distemperous "Catholics United" supports Notre Dame's decision to honor anti-life President Obama by inviting him to speak at this year's commencement and grant him an honorary law degree. Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver indirectly commented on the problem while discussing other important issues.

“We need to stop over-counting our numbers, our influence, our institutions and our resources, because they’re not real....We need to stop lying to each other, to ourselves and to God....how should we feel today, preaching the Gospel to an apostate world?”

Many, if not most, Catholics now have more wrong than right understandings about 1) God, 2) His Church, 3) ourselves, and 4) the difference between friends and enemies. Archbishop Chaput says to start with recognizing the reality of our situation as the only way forward.

Read a more complete summary of the good Archbishop's address here. And don't forget to sign the Cardinal Newman Society petition opposing an honorary law degree for President Obama. The petition now has almost 160,000 names.

China's "Rule of Law" and Huang Guangyu

2009-03-15T23:51:00.006-05:00

Shortly after my post on "Chinese Catholic Billionaire", I sent emails to the two reporters who had done the most work to try to find the missing Huang Guangyu (Wong Kwong-yu) who disappeared in late November 2008. Neither reporter responded to my emails, so I concluded they weren't eager to ask for or to share information because it might put their Chinese news sources (and jobs) in jeopardy.

Until November 2008, Huang had the distinction of being the richest man in China, the founder and chairman of Gome Group, which is the largest consumer electronics retailer in China. Even more interesting he proclaimed he couldn't be a member of the Communist Party because he is a Catholic.

In lockstep with China's past, Huang was then arrested, and has yet to be formally charged or to make a public appearance in the almost four months since his disappearance into the hands of China's security police, charged in the Chinese media with economic crimes.

The LA Times profiled Huang and noted that "On the backs of Wang’s business cards and those of all Gome employees are Huang’s three cardinal rules:

Do not accept gifts from customers.
Do not take kickbacks.
Do not use your position for personal gain.
Printed at the very bottom is a hotline number for people to report employee misdeeds. Huang said the rules reflected his religious upbringing."

One Chinese news site now has more information on Huang and shows there is internal hassling in China over how to deal with him, especially in view of the new emphasis on China's "rule of law." The "rule of law" is a centerpiece of President Hu Jintao's administration--and he does 'rule the roost' in China. Another Chinese news article bemoans the fact that Huang would have spent the Chinese New Year celebrating at home with his family if the "rule of law" had been followed!

The Chinese "rule of law" advertised by President Hu Jintao and other senior communist party leaders seemed initially to have an air of authenticity. Now it appears to be all propaganda. The real situation is described in an Asia Times news article of July 8, 2008:

Hu, also party general secretary, has given new orders that zhengfa (political and legal) departments - which handle law enforcement and judicial matters - must observe the so-called "three top priorities", meaning the latter must give "utmost priority to the party's enterprise, the people's interests, and the constitution and the law". That the party's goals and concerns override everything else was made clear in a national meeting of judicial and security officials called late last month...

The TimesOnline says it best: "Last November, Huang, his wife, and their chief financial officer disappeared into the grey zone that awaits those who lose their high-level protection – a world without lawyers, court hearings or constitutional rights." Huang Guangyu, for all anyone knows, may have already died in the dungeon of a Beijing prison. The Chinese "rule of law" is only a fiction.

A Thank You for the Yellow Crocus

2009-03-10T15:05:00.004-05:00

It's such a small flower and always the first to appear in my yard. I'm not sure how it got there, but Thank You, God for this first sign of Spring!

Vatican Conference on Evolution

2009-03-02T10:43:00.004-06:00

The Vatican is sponsoring a scientific conference on Evolution on March 3-7 to mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of the Species. The liberal Cardinal Paul Poupard and his former office, the Pontifical Council for Culture, as well as the University of Notre Dame and six pontifical universities are co-sponsors. I and others are not optimistic about this conference because organizers say intelligent design "represents poor theology and science."

The Church [needs] to look at Evolution again, "from a broader perspective", explained Professor Gennaro Auletta, the head of the Science and Philosophy faculty at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and the main conference organiser.

I found that Georges Chantraine will give one of the closing conference talks on the "Theological Vision of Evolution by Teilhard de Chardin.'" Chardin claimed to synthesize evolution with theology and imagined a dazzling array of creative projections of man's evolutionary ascendancy to 'supreme consciousness', a God-like state. I read two of Chardin's books with awe when I was young and impressionable (and stupid).

Then I read "The Trojan Horse in the City of God" by Dietrich von Hildebrand [called (informally) by Pope Pius XII "the 20th Century Doctor of the Church."], who showed that Chardin was a dishonest paleontologist and rogue priest whose disbelief in original sin (and other Church doctrines) meant Christ's sacrifice on the cross had no salvation meaning.

"It was only after reading several of his works, however, that I fully realised the catastrophic implications of his philosophical ideas, and saw the absolute incompatibility of his theology fiction with Christian revelation and with the doctrine of the Church."

Others also believed Chardin's teachings were a perversion of the Christian faith, including Jacques Maritain and Étienne Gilson and many others. Here are some links that show why Teilhard de Chardin remains a dangerous enemy:

Catholic church monitum (warning) in 1962, on the writings of Teilhard de Chardin
Moral Philosophy and Current Events "Heretic Extraordinaire" by Dr. J.P. Hubert
AD2000, Comments on Chardin and his views by other Catholic theologians
Review of The Phenomenon of Man by biologist Peter Medawar, from Mind, N.S., 70 (1961):99-106.
1989 review of Wolfgang Smith's Teilhardism and the New Religion, an analysis and refutation of the teachings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Teilhard, Darwin, and the Cosmic Christ –autumn 1999 newsletter, Southern Papist Perspective
Sean Hyland, Teilhard de Chardin: Rogue Theologian (establishing that the condemnations still stand)

Professor Gennaro Auletta, who is head of the Science and Philosophy faculty at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and the main conference organiser told Edward Pentin of Newsweek (Newsweek Blog): “We hope this will really be an example of how to hold an open discussion without overtones. We simply wish to dialogue between people whose mission is to understand a little more.”

So will creationists ( aren't we supposed to believe God created us?) who believe in intelligent design be invited to the Vatican Conference? Here is what the UK Register says:

The Vatican gave the Creationist lobby a left right sign of the cross today, announcing it would stage a conference on Darwinism next month and declaring that it was one of the Fathers of the Church that thought up the idea in the first place.

At one point the conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University wasn't going to give Creationism or Intelligent Design a hearing at all. But apparently the organisers have relented, and will consider Intelligent Design as a "cultural phenomenon" rather than as a valid scientific theory, giving US-based IDers the chance to be smirked at by a room full of Monseigneurs, Cardinals and Bishops.

Previewing the conference yesterday, Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Church's Pontifical Council for Culture, conceded the Church had been hostile to Darwin on occasion. But, he said, the Church had never formally condemned Darwin, and he noted that in the last 50 years a number of Popes had accepted evolution as a valid scientific approach to human development.

In view of the Vatican 4-day presentation highlighting the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" (and lots more Darwinian publicity elsewhere), be sure and take a look at this video with three scientists who contend there are major problems with Darwin's theory.

Merrily We Gently Row....

2009-03-01T10:44:00.005-06:00

"Row, row, row your boat..." was always a lot of fun to sing in grade school, and was the song used by the nuns to teach rounds. First one group would begin the first line, then a line later the second group would join in by singing the first line, and the third group would begin singing when the first group had reached "Merrily." [I like the word 'merrily' because it so akin to the lovely word 'gay' which has been ruined in these past thirty years.]

Row, row, row your boat,

Gently down the stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,

Life is but a dream.

I've canoed downstream on a number of Ozarks rivers, and family canoeing is excellent recreation. We've sung and enjoyed the song many times because it has a good tune and is easy to sin. It's definitely the song to sing while paddling down a beautiful stream in the Irish Wilderness of Missouri. This was where that Catholic priest, Father John Hogan of St Louis, dreamt would be the place where Irish immigrants could escape the oppression of urban life in St. Louis.

However, the song, "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" into its current form teaches children the wrong thing because of the last nihilistic line, "LIFE is but a dream." Moreover, if you gently row downstream in your LIFE, the natural current will leads you to wherever it is going, rather than where you should be directed. The third line emphasizes that you will be quite "merry" at going the easy way. But it is the last line that clearly states that LIFE isn't reality, implying that it doesn't make any difference what you do in your life.

Here is my suggestion for a change to the last line. [There's also a funny multi-stanza version published on Wikipedia without the offending line.] No copyright is in force, because the song was published in The Franklin Square Song Collection in 1881.

Row, row, row your boat,

Gently down the stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,

To wish is but a dream.

The original tune is credited to the Pennsylvania Masonic educator, Dr. Eliphalet Oram Lyte, who was lauded in his lifetime as:

...president of the Pennsylvania Teachers' Association. He is a life member of the National Educational Association, of which he has served as director for a number of years. He was president of the N. E. A. in 1899, and he has also been vice-president of the council of education of that body. He is likewise a member of the American Academy of Political Science. Fraternally Dr. Lyte is a thirty-third degree Mason, receiving his last degree in 1885....

Directions from Sister Saba

2009-02-22T11:26:00.010-06:00

She was about 12 years old in the 'old country' when her father was drafted to fight in World War I. She and her mother never knew when or where his death occurred, or where his body lay, just that he was one of many who died anonymously in that terrible war. In her 70's when I began to know her, she looked confidently forward to meeting both her parents someday in heaven.

Her vocation to the religious life led her to a Franciscan convent first in the 'old country,' then to a new convent in the U.S. sometime in the 1920's. Her religious order was devoted to instructing young children in Catholic education.

This very small (petite) nun wore a long black habit, a headpiece that covered all her hair, and functional black leather shoes. Glasses framed her slender face that clearly was once beautiful. Always busy, but never too busy, she seemed to be totally directed to pleasing God.

My children and I remember Sr. Saba vividly and fondly as a teacher in the early 1970's. When she was told she was too old to teach, she begged to stay as the sacristan and as the librarian for the parish school. Thus, at the age of about 75 she took a class in library science at a secular college.

Sr. Saba studied very hard for a test, yet was told she had missed a key question--"What kind of books should you recommend to your students?" She was very distressed that her answer had been judged wrong and asked me whether I thought her answer was incorrect. The answer she had given was to recommend books that would teach Christian values and encourage moral actions. In contrast, the secular instructor judged the 'correct' answer to be those books that explored new ideas.

I laughed and told Sr. Saba that her answer was right. I think it might have been her first real experience with secular humanism in schools and its materialistic kinks and prejudices.

In the 1930's some of Sr. Saba's relatives had moved to St. Louis, MO from the 'old country' and had quit going to Mass. Sr. Saba said they did not resume the practice of their faith until after two Legion of Mary members knocked on their door. Sr. Saba was eternally grateful and so in her late 70's she also volunteered to be the spiritual director of the Legion of Mary.

The pastor was very comfortable with Sr. Saba's always humble, yet firm and insightful spiritual direction. Here's some of what I remember about and learned from Sr. Saba.

When you pray the Hail Mary in the Rosary, don't you dare mumble the words, 'pray for us now and at the hour of our death.' Your earthly life may end sooner than you expect.

Braid and weave palms distributed at Palm Sunday Mass. Make crosses, grape bunches, cords, and other beautiful religious objects and give blessed handmade gifts to others. [See photo of Sr. Saba's handiwork from over 25 years ago.]

When you don't know which direction to take (and neither one seems preferable), toss a miraculous medal in the air and select the way to go based on which side lands up!

Don't give up on anyone, especially people who are bitter at God and everyone else. Once a disabled young man was very nasty to her, yet she was unaffected by his bad remarks and remained only concerned about him.

Dear Sr. Saba, may God reward you with His choicest blessings in heaven. [The youthful Sr. Saba had celebrated only 20 birthdays when she died in 1985. Can you guess why?]

Uneasy Observation from Davos

2009-02-16T09:38:00.003-06:00

The Financial Times sent a number of its editors and columnists to report on the pessimistic views of the 2,600 attendees at the 2009 World Economic Forum at Davos in the Swiss Alps. A special 16-page section of the newspaper reported on the Forum activities. Here's the item that made me the most uneasy.

Last year's nebulous topic of "the power of collaborative innovation" seemed a world away as a darker theme took hold. The concern about social unrest voiced by Christine Lagarde, French finance minister, was shared by several delegates.

"I think people are overly focused on the economic implications and not adequately focused on the social implications," warned Rich Gelfond, chief executive of the big screen cinema operator Imas. "People seem somewhat myopic. You wonder whether next year at Davos people are going to say, 'Why didn't we see the social unrest coming and the increase in global conflict?'"

Send the Pope a Sign of Your Support

2009-02-16T09:27:00.003-06:00

European traditional Catholics have started a multi-language website to show support and daily prayers for Pope Benedict XVI because of his brave gesture to remove the excommunications from the SSPX. For this, the Pope has suffered many external and internal assaults for his decision to try to restore unity to the church.

Doesn't it seem to you that the devil does not want Christians unified against his wicked works? I've signed the Internet petition, as have many others that you know. Will you do the same? If so, go here.

Special Church Collections and Envelopes

2009-02-14T12:28:00.004-06:00

It took Mother over 80 years to determine that she couldn't keep putting $1 (or more) bills in every solicitation letter she received from Catholic 0rganizations. She had contributed regularly to close to a dozen different organizations over many years. and as you might expect, her small but very consistent generosities were now recognized by many, many others.

Finally, she complained to me that she couldn't keep responding to two or three 'mooching' letters that arrived almost daily. I finally persuaded her to select those charities that she felt were the best and to give all her money (outside of what she gives to support her parish) to the selected few. Now she was able to throw the other envelopes in the trash without feeling like she was committing a sin.

The number of potential donation recipients in the Catholic church seems to have increased, even as the Catholic church attendance and practice has decreased. Diocesan collections (for Catholic Charities and other endeavors) in the Kansas City area include:

1. Archbishop's Call to Share (Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas)
2. Special Collection to Benefit Seminary (Diocese of Kansas City/St. Joseph)
3. Retired Religious Collection (Diocese of Kansas City/St. Joseph)

See the comprehensive list at St. Charles parish website for examples of special second collections at a local parish level.

In addition to necessary collections for selected good Catholic organizations, the parish, and the diocese, additional church collections mandated in 2009 by the USCCB include:

1. Church in Latin America
2. Church in Central and Eastern Europe
3. Black and Indian Missions
4. The Catholic Relief Services Collection
5. Holy Land
6. Catholic Home Missions Appeal
7. Catholic Communication Campaign
8. Peter’s Pence
9. Catholic University of America
10. World Mission Sunday
11. Catholic Campaign for Human Development
12. Retirement Fund for Religious

My fellow Kansas City Catholic blogger, Curmudgeon, has posted two articles on the almost two dozen 'special' envelopes that traditional Catholics receive each year requesting donations to the above list.

But here's a quandry. We really can't just not give anything outside our parish...ever. We do have an obligation to support the wider Church...not just our own community. Many of us do just that...by supporting faithful religious orders, for instance. But is that enough? Canon 1262 provides that "The faithful are to give support to the Church by responding to appeals and according to the norms issued by the conference of bishops."

Now let's acknowledge that checkbooks can be wielded as effective weapons. Wealthy leftist individuals and wealthy leftist foundations often use the checkbook as their weapon of choice. While we can't perhaps write such big checks and wield such big weapons as these guys (they've got .45s; we've got .22s), we can make ourselves heard using our checkbooks.

Curmudgeon identifies a good procedure and alternate donation scenarios that respond to USCCB-mandated Church collections where your money may not be directed to the best places and activities. For more information, see Curmudgeon's two posts, here and here. Highly recommended!

Darwin Celebration -- NOT YET!

2009-02-14T10:09:00.002-06:00

In view of the 2-hr PBS presentation highlighting the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" (and lots more Darwinian publicity elsewhere), be sure and take a look at this video with three scientists who contend there are major problems with Darwin's theory.

Entanglement with Christ through Transubstantiation

2009-02-10T10:14:00.008-06:00

Persons who receive the Eucharist consecrated by a Catholic priest eat and drink the substance of the body and blood of Jesus Christ that was shed on the cross of 2000 years ago. John Young in The Wanderer newspaper (Feb 12, 2009) observes that this mystery and defined Catholic doctrine is being referred to as "only a theological opinion" in a "widespread reluctance to accept the clear teaching of the Church on the nature of the Real Presence."

Young continues, "Transubstantiation has become an embarrassment" to certain philosophers who "can't logically admit substance because they restrict knowledge to the observable, and substances are not observable." He argues "the substance is the underlying reality beneath the appearances we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell....the substance is the essence, the basic nature, of the thing."

Some years ago, the wife of a friend expressed doubts about the transubstantiation of bread and wine into Christ's body and blood in the Eucharist. She seemed not to understand the accidents of bread and wine continue to exist after the priest's consecration, but that the underlying substance has been changed. Her doubts about transubstantiation seem unreasonable because of what we know about the nature of matter from the study of quantum physics. Homiletic and Pastoral Review (oldest magazine for priests in the U.S.) published an article several years ago on why knowledge of quantum mechanics, including quarks, made transubstantiation easier for the mind to grasp. [I think the author was Abraham Vorghese.]

When you interact with Jesus during Holy Communion, quantum physics teaches an 'entanglement' occurs, while theology teaches that you share in the life of God. The introduction to Louisa Gilder's new book, The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics was Reborn, gives an unusual insight into what happens when two entities interact. Apply this next scientific paragraph written by Gilder to Holy Communion when we interact with God, the Son, made man.

ANY TIME TWO ENTITIES INTERACT, they entangle. It doesn't matter if they are photons (bits of light), atoms (bits of matter), or bigger things made of atoms like dust motels, microscopes, cats, or people [my emphasis]. The entanglement persists no matter how far these entities separate, as long as they don't subsequently interact with anything else--an almost impossible tall order for a cat or a person, which is why we don't notice the effect.

But the motions of subatomic particles are dominated by entanglement. It starts when they interact; in doing so, they lose their separate existence. No matter how far they move apart, if one is tweaked, measured, observed, the other seems to instantly respond, even if the whole world lies between them. And no one knows how.

Louisa Gilder describes entanglement as "the seemingly telepathic communication between separated particles--one of the fundamental concepts of quantum physics. Einstein in 1935 [in "the most cited [paper] of all Einstein's roster of glittering, earthshaking work"] called entanglement "spooky action at a distance."

Quantum physics and entanglement seem much better than Newtonian physics at understanding substances, even transubstantiation and reception of Holy Communion (though more insightful physics can never describe elements such as the love exchanged between the two parties in this God-man relationship). Yet from quantum mechanics, we now know that appearances observed in our everyday life are simply shadows of the hidden realities of substances. We also know from Schrödinger, that an entangled state can be used to steer a distant particle into one of a set of states. [That makes me think of God's spiritual direction of souls to a state of sanctity--"Be ye perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect."]

Entanglement with God (who self-limits himself to time and space and who pours out his life to communicants) seems to relate to mutual envelopment that has always been taught to occur during reception of the Eucharist. I see a correspondence between "communication between separated particles" and my own experience at Mass. Union with Christ during Holy Communion persists until broken (only partially?) by succeeding interactions with the world.

"God Exists" on London Buses

2009-02-10T09:37:00.005-06:00

If you remember, I recently wrote a post on London buses with signs saying God doesn't exist. Fortunately, the bus company has been taking lots of orders for counter-ads . The Times Religion Correspondent, Ruth Gledhill, comments on her blog:

Who apart from Transport for London is benefiting from this influx of cash into advertising for or against the existence of God? The churches might not be able to compete individually with Richard Dawkins' £150,00 atheist bus campaign running across several cities in the UK but between them they are putting up a pretty good show. I wouldn't cite any of it as proof or otherwise for the existence of God, even given the laws of probability. But if there is a God, He or She must be having quite a laugh.

The latest to hit the streets with pro-God buses are The Christian Party, the Trinitarian Bible Society and the Russian Orthodox Church. The Christian Party is paying for buses to carry the slogan: 'There definitely is a God. So join the Christian Party and enjoy your life.' The Trinitarian Bible Society has chosen a line from Psalm 53: 'The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.'

Pro-life Red Letter: Feb 28--Mar 1

2009-02-09T08:55:00.006-06:00

Get a red envelope. You can buy them at an office supply store. Better yet, order 500 red envelopes from a paper supply company such as XPedX.com and distribute them to your family and friends, and at your church. [XPedX in Kansas City charges only $36.79 for 500 red envelopes.] If you have a white envelope, color the front with a red crayon, and leave only the address area as white!

On the front, address it to:

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington , D.C.

On the back, write the following message.

"This red envelope represents the blood of one child who died in abortion.
It is empty because that life was unable to offer anything to the world.
No to FOCA!"

Put it in the mail, and send it. Try to mail the empty red envelopes on the weekend of Feb 28-March 1st. Of course, you can send a red envelope anytime you want, but for the White House to get millions at once would be a powerful message against FOCA. Fifty million red envelopes would represent the over 50 million children who have died from abortion in the U.S. since 1973.

This good idea was received in my email box today. For more information see SendARedEnvelope.org.

The Devil Plays his Cards Well

2009-02-04T04:49:00.003-06:00

Perhaps this has happened to other Catholic bloggers. You get these great, imaginative, and wonderful ideas for future blog posts during Mass. For some time, I've mistakenly thought they were inspirations from God. Now I am convinced they come from the devil. Here's why.

The devil is aware that distractions during Mass will be rejected and converted into discussions with Jesus present in the Blessed Sacrament. So the devil makes a trade-off. he wickedly provides really good ideas for posts, even spiritually valuable ones, to trade for your time with Christ. Guess who gets the better deal?

The devil knows quite well that most of his good ideas for posts will never be implemented because of my forgetfulness and lack of time. But he wins because I am distracted from what I should be doing--adoring God and communicating with His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

The devil plays his cards well. Just got to remember the purpose of his game.

Three Epic Milestones....

2009-02-02T20:41:00.004-06:00

I'm stealing these comments on Church events in January 2009, as posted by Fidei Defensor at American Catholic.

After the election of the most pro-choice pres. in US history things seemed dark. Then in January, the month he is sworn in and the month of the 50th aniv. of the Vatican Council three things happen (always in threes)…

1-Potential for total healing between the Vatican and SSPX
2-Potential for a personal prelature for Anglicans is in the works (this could be huge even beyond the 400,000 in the TAC, indeed I think this could catch on like wild-fire perhaps even in Africa.)
3-New Russian Orthodox Patriarch is the most favorable to Catholics possible in the present Russian context and is in the mold of the Patriarch of Constantinople in terms of viewing the Church East and West as “two-lungs,” and I think it is at last a possibility that the Pope can visit Russia.

....if I [Fidei Defensor] was still a blogger I’d post on this, these three things, taken by themselves are meaningless footnotes to the msm but I think in the context Church history these are all epic milestones.
God bless and protect his Holiness. The Pope who so many liberals said would be so divisive is turning out to be the great unifier and the unity has come not due to pandering and pleasantries but rather a robust embrace of Truth.

New March for Life Movie

2009-01-28T20:59:00.004-06:00

Jack Cashill announces on his website that he is making a new movie!

Today, in Washington D.C., on the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Liberty University law professor Phill Kline will be joining scores of thousands of other protestors in the annual March For Life.

I am here as well. We are shooting the first ever high-end documentary of the march. Called “Thine Eyes,” it will be narrated by the ever-lovely actress Jennifer O’Neill, who is also here. (Please see ThineEyes.org for details).
Few people in Washington, however, will have paid the price Kline did to get here. Just two weeks ago, Kline was the District Attorney of Kansas City’s most affluent suburban county.

Two years ago, Kline was Attorney General of the state of Kansas. Four years before that, when he was elected AG, the then 42 year-old Kline showed real promise of becoming a national political leader....

Read the rest of Cashill's column here. Phill Kline is a true 'dry' martyr for the pro-life cause. I hope he is generously featured in Cashill's new movie.

Daughter and Father--The Gilders

2009-01-28T18:16:00.006-06:00

I've been trying to learn more about quantum physics and have found a number of sites with lectures and articles. By far the most interesting video is an hour-long presentation by a beautiful young woman, Louisa Gilder. She is the author of the new book, "The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics was Reborn."

A brilliantly original and richly illuminating exploration of entanglement, the seemingly telepathic communication between two separated particles—one of the fundamental concepts of quantum physics.

In 1935, in what would become the most cited of all of his papers, Albert Einstein showed that quantum mechanics predicted such a correlation, which he dubbed “spooky action at a distance.” In that same year, Erwin Schrödinger christened this spooky correlation “entanglement.” Yet its existence wasn’t firmly established until 1964, in a groundbreaking paper by the Irish physicist John Bell. What happened during those years and what has happened since to refine the understanding of this phenomenon is the fascinating story told here....

Drawing on the papers, letters, and memoirs of the twentieth century’s greatest physicists, Louisa Gilder both humanizes and dramatizes the story by employing their own words in imagined face-to-face dialogues. Here are Bohr and Einstein clashing, and Heisenberg and Pauli deciding which mysteries to pursue. We see Schrödinger and Louis de Broglie pave the way for Bell, whose work is here given a long-overdue revisiting. And with his characteristic matter-of-fact eloquence, Richard Feynman challenges his contemporaries to make something of this entanglement....

The book was published November 2008 and is receiving very good comments from well-known reviewers, as shown at the Amazon website. Quantum entanglement of particles and the history of science are of great interest to me and I am looking forward to reading Louisa Gilder's new book.

Louisa Gilder is the daughter of George Gilder, the founder of the Discovery Institute and author of many conservative books. Among many other things, he is the author of Sexual Suicide (1973, revised and reissued as Men and Marriage in 1986), upon which Time chose Gilder as the "Male Chauvinist Pig of the Year."

Here's an example of Discovery Institute work on bioethics:

Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith is Discovery's most active contributor to bioethics. Mr. Smith, a prolific author, activist, and former Ralph Nader co-author, has become one of the nation's leading advocates for the value and sanctity of human life. His most recent book, Consumer's Guide to the Brave New World presents a clear-eyed vision of two potential futures: In the first, biotechnology will be a powerful tool to treat disease and improve the quality of our lives. But in another, darker scenario, we will be steered onto the path that Aldous Huxley and other prophetic writers first warned against fifty year ago, before science fiction became science fact. Two of his other books, Forced Exit and Culture of Death, examined assisted suicide and the biomedical industry respectively. Mr. Smith is currently working on a book critiquing the radical animal rights movement.

The goals of the Discovery Institute have been attacked because they would "reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."

If you don't recognize the organization, Discovery Institute, see it in action in Ben Stein's movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed that I've praised in at least three previous posts.

Catholic Priest Gives Prayer in Kansas Legislature

2009-01-24T09:02:00.002-06:00

A friend who lives in Lawrence, Kansas told me the good news that Fr. Brian Schieber used the opportunity to give the January 22, 2009 invocation to the Kansas legislature to decry abortion. The story is reported in the Lawrence Journal World.

A guest chaplain upset some Kansas House members Thursday with a prayer remembering millions of children that he said were "legally exterminated" by abortion and decrying a national "culture of death."
The Rev. Brian Schieber, pastor at Most Pure Heart of Mary Catholic Church, gave his prayer on the 36th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion across the nation.

"We remember the over 53 million beautiful, innocent unborn children who have been legally exterminated in our land," he said in his prayer. "By Your grace, guide us to transform this culture of death into a culture of life and a civilization of love."

Back in the late 60's I attended a Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation conference in St. Louis and met the sister-in-law of Eleanor Schlafly, the executive director of the Foundation (now celebrating its 50th year).

Phyllis Schlafly of Eagle Forum was running for a national office within the Republican Party and some of her friends, including my spiritual Godmother Lucy, met to work on her nomination and I got to tag along. Rather ignorant of how the world works, I asked Phyllis why it was so important to get elected to this position.

Phyllis' answer was preceded (rightfully!) by a look of almost complete disbelief that someone could ask such a dumb question, but I'll always remember her very informative answer. "An elected office usually has little real power to do things, but it is an excellent platform from which to speak to others and convince them of your viewpoints."

Way to go, Fr. Brian!

US, We Have A Problem....

2009-01-21T11:42:00.003-06:00

"This ominous statement from the new White House website [now promoting abortion 'rights' and homosexuality] left me with a sinking feeling that our discussions about our Christian faith in a "pluralistic" society - and in the public square - may also be at risk." (Thanks to Carolee Adams and the Brown Pelican Society for this important news)

http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/additional/
Faith

Senator Obama also laid down principles for how to discuss faith in a pluralistic society, including the need for religious people to translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values during public debate.

Winter Robins

2009-01-21T09:06:00.005-06:00

I've never seen so many robins in the wintertime. Several hundred were in my back yard at one time in late December. The last few mornings have brought five to ten robins to eat snow and seeds next to the sheltered black raspberry bushes where a small amount of snow remains. This morning the robins were joined by a sizable flock of blackbirds and a few redbirds.

Our place is blessed with many songbirds. Once we had a guest from western Kansas visit us in late May. The early morning weather was warm and her bedroom windows were open. My friend came out to breakfast saying that it was a pure delight to hear the vibrant songs of so many birds! She said that never happened where she lived.

Two bad memories of birds distress me in my old age. The highly talented mocking birds frequently sang their melodious songs from a nearby electric pole when our children were babies. During one naptime, one sang so long and loudly that I was afraid he would wake the baby, so I chased him away. I have been very sad that no other mocking bird has returned in the past 30+ years.

The second bad memory is of the birds who plagued our cherry tree. We had lots of robins, bluejays, sparrows, blackbirds, etc. who ate the ripe red cherries and that I used to chase away. But that day one rare Baltimore Oriole was with the other common birds--and I didn't see him. I ran with a BB gun into the back yard--running, shouting loudly, and firing at the same time. Unfortunately, the beautiful yellow and black Oriole was the only bird that was hit, and fell out of the cherry tree to the ground before I reached it. I have been sick about my error ever since.

Serve More, Sin Less

2009-01-21T08:58:00.000-06:00

A very good motto....

Gaddafi, Islam, and Christianity

2009-01-20T07:50:00.012-06:00

The long-time President of Libya (since 1969), Muammar al-Gaddafi, is a bellwether on the Islamic-Christian wars of the 21st Century because he has immense influence over Muslims living in the rest of the world. A dangerous and fervent Muslim who was trained by the British, he is extremely serious about extending the rule of Muhammed over the entire world. Just as it was important to read Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in the 1930's to see where this German dictator was going, it is critical to hear Gaddafi when he speaks of international Islam's attempts to conquer lands where Christianity survives.

Over 25 years ago The Wanderer newspaper reported an invitation from al-Gaddafi to Pope Paul VI to debate the rightness of the Catholic religion. From the time and the manner in which the invitation was issued, I thought it might have come from a young leader who seriously wanted to examine which faith was true (or alternatively seize an opportunity to try to demonstrate the superiority of Islam).

Msgr. Michael L. Fitzgerald describes the public meeting in Libya from the viewpoint of a liberal priest:

...a Christian-Muslim seminar was held in Tripoli, Libya. This took place in February, 1976. Though it came about by agreement between the Secretariat for Non Christians and the Arab Socialist Union of Libya, the initiative really came from the Muslim side. Since the Libyans were the hosts, the main burden of organization fell to them. This in fact led to some surprises. Through the generosity of the Libyan leader, Colonel Mu’ammar Gaddafi, about 500 people, Christians and Muslims, from all over the world, were invited to Tripoli for the occasion. So what had been intended as a private meeting between theologians turned into a public manifestation, held in the main theatre of Tripoli, with the participation one evening of Colonel Gaddafi himself. It must be said, these conditions made the dialogue difficult. There is a great difference between exchanges in a closed circle and papers read to the public.

The meeting was made-to-order for conversion to Christianity, but the great opportunity to show real belief in the Divinity of Jesus Christ was lost. Gaddafi then claimed it was clear that Islam had easily won the debate. I've thought for a long time that if truly saintly and firmly believing priests had demonstrated authentic Christianity, the world might be different today. Instead, the meeting illustrated the liberal and unorthodox charade of a 'doubting and 'searching' church it had become in the post-Vatican II days of the 1970's.

The result of this failure to impress Gaddafi with authentic Christianity is seen on a number of Gaddafi videos posted to YouTube. Gaddafi speaking in Timbuktu claims "Muhammed is the prophet of all people. He superceded all previous religions...All people must be Muslims....Muhammed is the prophet of the people in Scandanavia, in Europe, America, Asia, and Africa....[America] should agree to become Islamic in the course of time, or else declare war on the Muslims." Gaddafi then boasted that Islamic immigration and births in European countries mean that within a few decades "Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe without swords, without guns, without military conquests."

Gaddafi also claims that Obama's Islamic heritage and training will mean better times for Arabs in the Middle East. Gaddafi then states that "The thing we fear most is that the black man suffers an inferiority complex. This is dangerous. If our brother Obama feels that because he is black he doesn't have the right to rule America, this would be a disaster, because such a feeling would make him behave whiter than white..."

London Bus: "Probably No God"

2009-01-12T09:38:00.014-06:00

The sides of London buses currently have this sign, "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." The distinguished religious affairs commentator Clifford Longley has argued to the UK Advertising Standards Authority that the sign is deceitful based on evidence from physics that there very probably is a God.

Until late last spring, I had never heard of the Anthropic Principle and the Cosmological argument for God. The Anthropic Principle relates to intelligent design and contends that the universe was brought into existence intentionally for the sake of producing intelligent observers.

Physicist Carl Frederick’s article, “The Challenge of the Anthropic Universe,” has a good summary to explain how improbable the existence of our universe is, causing scientists to entertain thoughts of an Intelligent Designer. Here's the opening paragraph of Frederick's Science Fact article in the July/August 2008 double issue of Analog SF and Fact:

In the early 1990s, a creeping realization swept through the theoretical physics community that the probability for the universe to even exist was vanishingly small. Indeed, the only "theory" around that seemed able to explain the universe's existence was Intelligent Design. This was not something physicists and cosmologists liked to talk about.

Our exceptionally rare "fine-tuned universe" is uniquely designed to support the existence of intelligent observers. The approximately 20 fundamental constants of physics and chemistry are exactly what are absolutely required to allow our universe and intelligent life to exist. Examples include the gravitational constant; the masses of the proton, neutron, and electron; the charge on the electron; and the strong nuclear force.

Frederick also notes that theoretical physicist, John Wheeler (who coined the term "black hole"), claimed that modern quantum theory implies that the strong anthropic universe seems designed for intelligent observers within it. Wheeler maintained that observations by beings living billions of years after the Big Bang actually caused the Big Bang. [I am reminded that the Catholic Church once claimed that God created mankind on earth as the center of the universe.]

Frederick is a well-established theoretical physicist and science-fiction author who jokes about his (non-)religion: "Physics is not so much a field of employ as a way of life and perhaps even a religion. As for religion itself however, I am an observant but non-proselytizing vegetarian."

Frederick discusses the most tightly tuned Cosmological Constant, "a small pure number... a provider of a cosmic scale universal repulsion (or attraction)....the manifestation of the universe's zero-point energy." Frederick points out the measured values of the Cosmological Constant and other physical constants means that the probability of our universe to exist is less than 1 chance in 10^229 (as estimated by well-known physicist Lee Smolin).

Even though Frederick's article searches for and finds "possible solutions" to the "problem" of Intelligent Design, he seems not to be happy with any of them and ends his article with a quote from Einstein, "'Subtle is the Lord, but malicious he is not.'....I wonder."

Welcoming Conservative Anglicans

2009-01-08T15:56:00.005-06:00

I simply do not understand why Bishops in the Roman Catholic Church are not more aggressive in responding to the very difficult plight of conservative Anglicans and Episcopalians who are trying to hold onto traditional Christian values while vomiting the modernist slime that masquerades as Christ's teaching. Yes, Anglicans can enter the Catholic Church one by one, but why not encourage and welcome a mass crossing of the Tiber?

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR ANGLICAN CATHOLICS IN ENGLAND? is the January 6, 2009 commentary published by VirtueOnline.org, the Global Voice of Orthodox Anglicanism.

Many of its members [Forward in Faith, a group of conservative Anglicans] have been sustained by the fantasy of a rescue operation from across the Tiber, oblivious to the failure of such dreams in 1992 when women priests became a legal reality. The Roman Catholic hierarchy in England mostly rebuffed those who had hopes of a fresh beginning with the See of Rome, including the Cardinal at the time, Basil Hume OSB, who had hopes of restoring some of the damage done during the English Reformation.

However, nothing has changed since. The English Catholic hierarchy has given many hints of its reluctance to take in Anglicans, for a variety of reasons. For public consumption, they say that opposition to women's ordination is not a sufficient reason to convert. Privately, they are fearful of a large phalanx of conservative clergy, more loyal to the Holy See than many of their own clergy and colleagues, upsetting what has become a remarkably liberal RC ecosystem in England, in which many clergy and bishops privately have no objection to women priests, or for that matter, gay priests, or various kinds of interfaith interface.

Even new Pope Benedict XVI, who has in the past shown himself strongly sympathetic to the cause of orthodox Anglicanism, has studiously avoided making any commitment for fear of straining tenuous relationship ties with Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Rome would prefer Canterbury to work out its own problems internally.

Even the aspirations of some, such as the Bishop of Ebbsfleet, Andrew Burnham, who have explicitly requested a Roman solution to the Anglican problem, have gone nowhere.

Furthermore, there is no sign that the Pastoral Provision being made for United States Anglicans will be extended to England or anywhere else. Despite numerous visits by various bishops and other leaders, including the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) archbishop to a number of Vatican secretariats, there is no hint of any alteration to the stone face shown to Anglicans by the Roman authorities in England and in Rome.

Options for Anglican Catholics in England are being closed off steadily as each stage of the Measure draws nearer to the statute book. There is no way out, around or through it. In February, the formal consideration of the worthless Code of Practice by the General Synod will cease, and approval by a large majority will be a foregone conclusion. As one editorial observed, "We need not hold our breath nor sit poised on the edge of our seats." How then will Forward in Faith respond when it meets the following day and looks into a mirror?

More importantly, how will the Roman Catholic Church look when its "stone face" is viewed in the mirror of God? Should the Church not welcome these separated brothers and sisters who cannot accept women and homosexual priests and bishops? Surely, surely, Pope Benedict XVI will have the courage to meet them and personally invite them in.

From what I see, many conservative Anglicans (and Episcopalians) will become far better and more faithful Catholics than current pew-sitters. Shouldn't these Anglicans be diligently pursued, giving them what has been provided at Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio, then work to resolve any remaining issues that remain divisive.

With My Evolving Grandchildren

2009-01-07T12:11:00.005-06:00

This is my week to deal with the Evolution of Mankind from lower ages to higher. Their parents are on vacation to celebrate almost 20 years of marriage, and I am babysitting for four young people in grade and high schools. Fortunately the oldest one drives and furnishes transportation for the others, so I have stayed home and kept house, including washing lots of clothes. A bad cold means I am generously using the $$ left by the parents to buy dinners rather than make them--although homemade burritos is on tonight's menu.

The grocery store provided an opportunity to pick up a magazine to read. UNTIL I discovered that ALL the articles in the January issue of Scientific American are devoted to "The Most Powerful Idea in Science." At least ten articles promote and defend the theory of the evolution of mankind from lower organisms.

I concluded that the SciAm issue was written in response to the movie, EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED, in which Ben Stein questions both people who believe and disbelieve in the theory of the evolution of man. Stein's subdued, yet penetrating questions and the resulting answers easily show why the theory should be doubted. Most importantly, the documentary demonstrates how scientists who disagree with the theory of evolution--no matter how well qualified, are freqently prohibited from continuing to teach and to publish.

So last night all five of us watched Ben Stein's movie, EXPELLED. The grandkids learned how important it is to question and then listen carefully to the answers from more than one side before believing what scientists say and write. We all laughed as a primary proponent of the evolution of mankind claimed that life could have been 'seeded' on earth by a greater intelligence from some other world--yet that greater intelligence could not be God. The kids were shocked at the demonstrated hatred (of God and imperfect human beings) by some of the proponents of evolution.

The grandkids need to thank their Uncle D who was so generous in buying multiple copies of the video for all his nieces and nephews. The video is an excellent start in training students in justifiable skepticism of scientists who have agendas (funding, political, social, and irreligious) that interfere with honest scientific research.

What I'm Hearing these Days....

2008-12-22T10:21:00.005-06:00

This great country is falling much harder than in the 1930's, and the signs come from neighbors, friends, relatives, and acquaintances--none of whom seem to believe in their hearts that government printing and spending more money will solve the problems this country is facing. Here is what I'm hearing these days.

The auctioneer seemed curt when I called to asked what the 27-acre farm with a small house, big new barn, and other outbuildings sold for. His answer: $158,000, a clear drop from what was expected.
The young family man told me this past Sunday evening he has lost his job. He was babysitting for his three little girls while his formerly stay-at-home wife now was working. If he can sell his home, he will look for a place to rent. A friend and I concluded his property will likely suffer foreclosure because he bought only three years ago, paid too much, and can't sell it for for anywhere near what he has invested in it.
Most vacant houses in the neighborhood simply do not have 'for sale' signs and none has a 'sold' sign. Little green signs affixed by the city are attached to some abandoned houses; others simply have dark or boarded up windows and no tire tracks evident during our snowy weather. An exception is one small house with a large yard that has a hand-written sign in the window asking $29,900--probably half of what it would have sold for a couple of years ago.
I've looked on the Internet to determine the number of foreclosed HUD properties in the two poorest counties of Greater Kansas City Area. Wyandotte County, Kansas lists only 25 HUD-foreclosed properties and Jackson County, Missouri lists only 105. [One MSNBC reporter this morning said the foreclosure process was backlogged so that the process to sell a property now takes a year to complete--and it's getting worse.]
The older family up the street continues to have lots of cars parked in front as some of their adult children remain at home.
One of our daughters asked another person about the recent move of a joint friend. Did they sell their former place? No, it was foreclosed on, and they are now renting a smaller house with some acreage.
Several people plan bigger gardens in 2009 and two have bought cows.
An acquaintance says he has bought a nicer house in a great deal, even though he knows he won't be able to sell his old residence for a while. He asked me if I knew someone honest and industrious who could rent it and maintain it at a much reduced rental price so the intrinsic value of his old house could be preserved.
A Christmas letter from a cousin tells about her son who is employed in the bond market on Wall Street. She writes, "S... is so far hanging in there through the turmoil of Wall Street. His boss and several colleagues have recently been laid off....He believes that life as we know it could disappear if the economy isn't fixed soon. Scary! I'm not ready to move to the farm to raise my own chickens and grow my own veggies!"

Add to the above President Bush's recent comments:

...it is conceivable we will see a depression greater than the Great Depression… So I analyzed that and decided I didn't want to be the President during a depression greater than the Great Depression, or the beginning of a depression greater than the Great Depression.”—President George W. Bush, speaking to the American Enterprise Institute, December 18th, 2008.

While the times may appear to be evil, I believe God is giving us more opportunities to please him than in formerly good times. Perhaps we'll see (like disfigured Namrata Nayak) that “They do not love Jesus....It was our enemies who made me courageous and committed.”

Moreover, bad times seem to assist weak souls to avoid hell: “As for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their lot shall be the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8).

Anglican Use Catholic Mass in Kansas City

2008-12-16T09:07:00.005-06:00

Kirk Kramer whom everybody knows (as I once proved when I asked a group of European pilgrims whether anyone knew Kirk] sent this message on the Anglican Use Mass in Kansas City. I was reminded of the Anglican Use Catholic parish, Our Lady of the Atonement, in north San Antonio, TX which impressed me very favorably a few years ago with their beautiful church. Their Anglican Use Solemn High Mass involves the use of incense, bells, a full procession, and Sacred Music from both the traditional Latin and English Catholic heritage.

A former Anglican pastor, now a married Catholic priest, also came into my thoughts after reading Kirk's email. Fr. Bob McElwee is well known for blessing motorcycles in southeast Kansas and for the words on his business card, "When I'm not riding, I'm guiding." Last March this pastor of Sacred Heart parish in Frontenac, KS invited a FSSP priest into his 'high liturgical' Kansas church for several days to explain and offer the old Latin Mass. Fr. McElwee is a rare priest who insures that his Adoration Chapel is open 24 hours a day to pray in the presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.

Here's Kirk's letter about the Anglican Use Mass in Kansas City.

Friends in Kansas City & environs:

A friend sent me a link to the website of the Kansas City, Missouri, diocesan newspaper a few days ago. On it I saw this notice:

http://catholickey.blogspot.com/2008/11/anglican-use-mass-this-weekend.html

After reading it I called the pastor at St Therese, Fr Davis, & had a good chinwag with him. He told me that he will celebrate Mass according to the Anglican Use every Sunday at 11:15.

Most Catholics know that Pope John Paul established the "Pastoral Provision" for married convert clergymen so that ex-Anglican & Episcopalian parsons who become Catholics can be dispensed from clerical celibacy & ordained priests. A less known part of the Pastoral Provision is the possibility of using a modified form of the Book of Common Prayer at Mass.

Next to the King James Bible, nothing has formed our rich & delicate language so deeply as the language of the Prayer Book. If that is what had been meant 40 years ago by "the vernacular" after Vatican II, many of the Church's current liturgical woes might have been avoided.

The music at Anglican Use parishes is from the 1940 hymn book & Anglican chant, and is consistently at a high standard.

A few years ago I nearly moved to Fort Worth to take a job in a library. The attraction of living there was a whole parish, St Mary the Virgin, devoted to the Anglican Use.

http://www.stmarythevirgin.org/

This note is just meant to make you aware of this development. I wish we had the chance to worship in this way on a regular basis. The nearest Anglican Use parish to Washington is in Scranton, which I have visited a few times.

http://www.stthomasmoresociety.org/

More information about the Anglican Use Society is available on their website:

http://anglicanuse.org/

Blessed Advent,

Kirk Kramer

My Aunt Tomato Lady

2008-12-12T09:18:00.010-06:00

My Aunt T was the Tomato Lady. Forty years ago she would plant a couple of thousand tomato seeds in a hotbed, transfer them to other hot beds after they sprouted a few leaves, and then replant them in her large garden in early May. Some years Aunt T had over 1,500 tomato plants that produced basket after basket of tomatoes for each day during the harvest season from late June until October's first frost.

Aunt T lived in a small two-bedroom house built in the 1920s and she was far from wealthy. Her fresh, great-tasting tomatoes provided cash during poor (and sometimes slightly better) economic times. I recently asked Aunt T's daughter about my own memories of visiting Aunt T and seeing her work long and hard at raising tomatoes--while still doing all the church laundry (remember the nice long altar-rail cloth?).

The first step was for Uncle C to build hotbeds in the ground in which delicate plants would be planted and grown in cold weather. Wood edges of the hot bed supported a wooden frame with glass windows, so the hotbed acted as a ground level greenhouse. At night during cold weather, Aunt T covered each window frame with gunny sacks and then with straw to prevent infiltration of cold air. During warm daytime weather, the frame would be lifted on the downwind side to allow gentle ventilation of the hotbed. On even warmer days, the entire window frame would be removed to expose the tomato plants to the hot rays of the sun.

For many years, I remember Aunt T used the original method of heating her hotbeds--fresh horse manure added as the bottom layer of the hotbeds. [Aunt T was very excited when in the 1950's she was able to buy electrical heating coils as a replacement for the bottom manure layer.]

The process began by collecting and storing fresh manure in a pile, then mixing the pile a couple of times and adding water to encourage fermentation during the ten days preceding use of the hotbeds. The well-fermenting manure was added to the bottom of the hotbed as a two to three foot layer before adding good soil as the top layer (with added Perlite) in which to plant the tomatoes. For a lot more information on building hotbeds see here, although I remember my Aunt T's hotbeds as more level to the ground for easier covering when cold weather was encountered.

Aunt T planted tiny tomato seeds in a single hotbed on a nice day in about the third week of February--dependent on what she read in the original Farmer's Almanac about the moon. The biggest problem with growing young tomato plants is that they become spindly and will "dampen off" and die because of fungi when the weather is cool and there is lots of moisture. Watering was done very sparingly while young tomato plants were growing. [I learned a long time ago that it was best to stunt young tomato plants by denying them water until they began to droop a little. Then the plants seemed to develop a more vigorous short stem to support further growth.]

Once the tiny plants had grown several leaves, they now were too closely spaced. Aunt T then transplanted the tiny tomato plants from the original hotbed to new hotbeds that had been prepared for more spacious plantings of young plants.

Aunt T was a big believer in "mira-gro." The final transplant to rows in her garden was done by first dipping the root in a solution of Miracle Gro and then planting it in the soil. A small amount of "mira-gro" was also added to the soil around the plant.

Even though the last frost date for Kansas City is about May 10, Aunt T would transplant tomatoes to her garden as soon as May 1, dependent on the immediate weather forecast. She would risk all her work to gain the financial advantage of being the first to bring homegrown tomatoes to the City Market.

Sometimes, she would err and the forecast was for frost after she had already planted the tomatoes. She always saved her old newspapers, and 6-layer newspaper tents had to be made to cover each vulnerable plant. [I remember helping Aunt T with this as a young girl, but I wasn't nearly as fast as my Aunt and Mother!]

Ripe tomatoes are cleaner, more round, and more evenly ripe if they are suspended in air. So Aunt T always trimmed off the small lower branches (NOT the bigger leaves) with her fingernail. By early June (after continuous cultivating and watering), the tomato plants had grown tall enough to stake and tie so that they would not fall over when loaded with heavy tomatoes.

If there was good weather, Aunt T would call her neighbor down the street by June 20-25 to take fresh tomatoes to the City Market. Her favorite tomato became the JetStar because it was early, had lots of flesh, was very productive, didn't crack, and was easy to sell because of its superior taste. [The current price of 1/4 oz (2,000 to 2,800 seeds) of JetStar tomato seeds is now $70.80.]

Aunt T and her oldest daughter who told me this story worked very, very hard to earn every penny from their hotbed-germinated and garden-grown tomatoes. I'll always be impressed with Aunt T's and M's work ethic. I wonder whether anyone with a similar work ethic will take M's offer to furnish a new Tomato Lady with two free window frames from Aunt T's old hotbeds (some windows need replacing). [If we have another great depression, ......?]

Postscript: When my Aunt T died (she would now be well over 100 years old), I would have thought her skin would have been badly affected by the sun exposure she received during her lifetime of gardening. Not so, her face was as clear and fresh as if her over 90 years of life had been spent in a convent. You see, Aunt T always used a wide brim straw hat! Good advice for the younger gardener.

Two Stations of the Cross and Zimbabwe

2008-12-03T12:55:00.006-06:00

Before Mass this morning, I made the fourteen Stations of the Cross around the Church. Two stations seemed particularly appropriate--the tenth where Jesus is stripped of his garments, and the eleventh where Jesus is nailed to the cross.

The two stations made me think that many of our country's citizens may be stripped of most material possessions in the next few years. Many may be painfully nailed to a cross of financial difficulties as jobs, homes, and savings are lost.

Zimbabwe provides nightmares of how bad things can get when a government keeps printing more money. Current stories found in THE ZIMBABWE SITUATION abound about the effects of Zimbabwe's extra-super-dooper-hyperinflation:

All of the country's main public hospitals have closed and those that operate have little or no medicine and suffer a shortage of staff, whose monthly salaries do not cover even one day's bus fare to get to work.
Zimbabwe riot police on Wednesday broke up a peaceful march by health workers protesting against the collapse of the health infrastructure amid mounting signs that the situation is slipping out of the government’s control.
Doctors in Zimbabwe said as many as 1,000 people have died in the cholera epidemic caused by the breakdown of the country's water purification system.
Army discipline is breaking down and on Monday soldiers looted shops in the capital Harare and beat foreign currency dealers.
Authorities have turned off water taps in Harare because they ran out of purifying chemicals, so people are now digging shallow wells in open ground.
Zimbabwe police beat union members as they demonstrated against tight restrictions on cash withdrawals.
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe said it would now circulate new Z$10-million, Z$50-million and Z$100-million notes. The previously highest denomination was Z$1-million.
Unemployment is more than 80 percent.
Millions survive on nothing but what they are gathering in the wild. McDonald Lewanika of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition reports [in Wedza, a town only 60 miles from the capital, Harare] "You see people fighting with each other and even with wild animals like wart hogs just to take some food back to their children."
President Robert Mugabe's decided in June to suspend humanitarian aid during his one-man presidential runoff. His suspension of foreign aid remains in force.
Former President Carter, former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Graca Machel, wife of former South African President Nelson Mandela, tried to visit Zimbabwe a week and a half ago to report on the humanitarian situation. But they were denied visas by Mugabe's regime.

Zimbabwe (formerly called Rhodesia) was once one of Africa's most successful nations, but now has the world's highest inflation rate, last estimated at 231 million per cent per year, but thought to be much higher.

Vatican Solar Energy Calculations

2008-11-30T16:11:00.007-06:00

Two German companies have donated and installed 2,400 solar panels (5,000 sq meters) on the roof of the Vatican Nervi Hall where the Pope holds his weekly Wednesday audiences with pilgrims. The new Vatican solar system cost $1.6M and will produce 300 megawatt hours (MWh) of energy a year.

But is solar power cost efficient? Is it truly green to manufacture photovoltaic cells? How much land would be needed and what would it cost to replace a typical power plant with a solar energy system?

To obtain the power rating of the Vatican solar installation, simply divide 300 MWh by the number of hours per year, e.g., (365 x 24) to obtain 0.034 MW--the power rating for the Vatican solar photovoltaic system.

To predict how many solar panels would be needed to get 1,000 MW [1 GW) of power, such as is produced by a small nuclear power plant like Wolf Creek in Kansas, solve the equation:
0.034 MW/2,400 panels = 1,000 MW/x panels.

Solving for x gives 70,588,235 panels needed to replace a single small power plant. Each installed solar panel at the Vatican costs $667, so the cost to replace a small power plant is 70,588,235 x $667 = $47,082,352,750.

The 70+ million solar panels needed to replace a single power plant will cover an area of 70,588,235 x 5,000 sq meters/2,400 panels = 147,058,823 sq meters. There are 4,047 sq meters in an acre, so dividing 147 million square meters by 4,047 sq meters gives 36,338 acres needed to replace a small power plant. At 640 acres per square mile, this represents 57 square miles of land needed to install over 70 million solar panels to replace ONE small power plant. [BTW, to replace a large power plant would require five times these values.]

"My solution to the energy crisis? Nuclear power. We already know how, it is less dirty than fossil fuel, power plants require only acres of land, not square miles and the US has all the uranium she needs inside her own borders. Forget trying to store the waste forever--settle for a century. We should also drill offshore for more domestic oil since nuclear plants can't be built overnight, and the American automobile fleet won't be all-electric for some years to come. And we can use wind and solar power where it makes sense.

"Oh, and since candidates for president can spend a hundred million dollars to get us to vote for them, maybe we can spend the same to undo the 30 years of anti-nuclear nonsense that brought us today's energy crisis in the first place." [Jeffery D. Kooistra in Alternative View, published in ANALOG: Science Fiction and Fact, January/February 2009.]

An Upsetting Sign

2008-11-30T16:07:00.002-06:00

Huang Guangyu, Chinese Catholic Billionaire

2008-11-29T08:52:00.015-06:00

"China's Sam Walton" disappeared on November 19, and the mystery deepened when even Xinhua, the state-owned news agency, could not get a comment from the police. It seems that Huang Guangyu's fate is being handled by the Ministry of Public Security which will consider charges that he manipulated share prices in companies with links to Gome, the company he founded. Shares of SD Jintai, a little-known pharmaceuticals group controlled by Huang's brother, Huang Junqin, soared more than 700 percent in 2007. The source also indicated that the reason for Huang's investigation is far more "complicated" than mere "stock price manipulation.

Mr. Huang Guanyu is a 39-year old billionaire who left school in his poor, mostly Catholic village at the age of 16. He now has a wife and two children who live in an apartment in an eastern suburb of Beijing. In late 2006, he and his brother were investigated by police for alleged financial irregularities involving the use of a loan to speculate in real estate, but he was released without charges.

I'm always interested in what is happening in communist China and was quite surprised to discover that Huang Guangyi is a Catholic. He commented to the Financial Times that he was "buoyed by stories from his Catholic parents about the Bible and about ancestors who had been traders throughout Asia." Huang is not a member of the Chinese Communst Party or any part of the Chinese political establishment and explained:

Even if I wanted to join the party, I do not think I would be qualified because I am a Catholic. My family has a long Catholic tradition which dates back generations."

Huang Guangyu was born in the small rice-growing village of Chaoshan in the Chaoyang District of Shantou, Guangdong on the southeast coast of China. Shantou (formerly Swatow) is a major port and the second-largest city in Guangdong Province. The city (about the size of Boston) is the location of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Shantou/Swatow. The last Shantou Bishop, Charles Vogel, (Mission Etrangeres de Paris, MEP), died on April 13, 1958 and no further Bishops have been appointed under official and unofficial Communist repression.

The first Catholic missionaries in China, Matteo Ricci and Michael Ruggerius, worked for two years (1589-1591) near Shantou, in Ch'aochou. Shantou villagers have a long history of Catholicism, and some have migrated to establish new Catholic communities in Singapore and Hong Kong. In 1950 when the Communists took over, the Shantou diocese was home to 30,000 Catholics, 59 priests, and 30 parishes. Sixty-eight years later, virtually no information on Catholic statistics for Shantou can be found.

From articles on Huang over the past several years, he appears to be firmly Catholic in an atheistic country and surely has both religious and business enemies. I personally believe that Huang is a good example of Catholicism in China and has not stolen from or cheated anyone in his business dealings. But multiple newspaper accounts of his arrest (check Google News) are concerned that he is being unfairly persecuted and that his legal defense may be marginal. We'll see in the trial whether President Hu Jintao's promise of a new "rule of law" in China is actually accomplished.

December 30, 2008: It's the end of the year and Huang and his wife have been restricted from contacting anyone to discuss or publicly respond to charges. TOTAL SILENCE! Even an official Chinese website admits "Gome [Huang's company] told Xinhua the company had been unable to contact Huang." Does Huang's publicly-professed Christianity have anything to do with his arrest, imprisonment, and inability to respond to charges?

Going back two years to the LA Times profile of Huang, I was struck by the following:

"On the backs of Wang’s business cards and those of all Gome employees are Huang’s three cardinal rules:
Do not accept gifts from customers.
Do not take kickbacks.
Do not use your position for personal gain.
Printed at the very bottom is a hotline number for people to report employee misdeeds. Huang said the rules reflected his religious upbringing."

Cardinal Stafford: The New Ice Age

2008-11-26T06:26:00.013-06:00

The insightful and bold Cardinal Stafford (formerly Archbishop of Denver now assigned to the Vatican where he heads the Apostolic Penitentiary) told U.S. Christians in intense and fiery language why we are in the fight of our spiritual and physical lives. Reporter John L. Allen, Jr. (who unfortunately works for the regrettable NCR) has two posts on the Cardinal's address (here and here). A portion of the Cardinal's address was posted to YouTube and attracted a great deal of (mostly negative) attention:

"Our exploration this weekend takes place in the context of Nov. 4, 2008. On that date, a cultural earthquake hit America. Senator Barak Obama was elected President of the United States. He appears to be a relaxed, smiling man. His rhetorical skills, as I mentioned, are very highly developed. He has a way of teasing crowds, and, from all reports, even individuals one-to-one.

Under all of that grace and charm, there is a tautness of will, a clenched jaw, a state of constant alertness to attack and resist any external influence that might threaten his independence. A ‘state of alertness,’ yes … that’s putting it mildly. Beneath each word he speaks, he carries on sapping operations against the enemy city.

His clenched jaw was seen at his talk before the Planned Parenthood supporters July 17, 2007. There he asserted, and I’m quoting somewhat out of context but not out of his meaning: ‘We are not only going to win this election, but also we are going to transform this nation. … The first thing I’d do as president is to sign the Freedom of Choice Act. … I put Roe at the center of my lesson plan on reproductive freedom when I taught constitutional law. … I don’t want my daughters punished by a pregnancy. … On this issue, I will not yield.’

Note the way the president-elect wished to describe the killing of his unborn grandchild. His daughters must not be ‘punished,’ ‘punished,’ by pregnancy. His rhetoric is post-modernist, and marks an agenda and vision that are aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic. Catholics weep over these words. We weep over the violence concealed behind the rhetoric of our young president-to-be. What should we do with our hot, angry tears of betrayal? First, our tears are agonistic. We must acknowledge that. For the next few years, Gethsemane will not be marginal. We will know that garden."

My own opinion is that the Vatican has very good intelligence on Obama's spiritual viewpoints and political goals and sees great danger for the Church. [See here for congratulations to "the first President with a completely nonreligious upbringing", as described by a well-known Humanist/Atheist.] Church leaders have decided to immediately confront Obama because they know who he is and what he would like to do about organized religion. I'm sure the Vatican intelligence service knows a lot more about Obama than we think. For example:

What kind of religious upbringing did Obama have from the ages of six to ten?
What were the spiritual viewpoints of his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. [Obama says "The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics."
What was the background of "Frank", who successfully mentored Obama on adoption of beliefs in high school?
What were the details of Obama's trip to Pakistan for three weeks in 1981 when US citizens were banned from entering Pakistan except for official business? [See over 11 forum pages discussing this single question here.]
What do friends, co-workers, and others who have heard Obama's private viewpoints say about his spiritual life and goals?
In private conversations, has Obama positively or negatively viewed the Catholic Church led by the successor to St. Peter and protected by the Holy Spirit? His autobiography clearly states what he thought of the Muslim and Catholic faiths while a child:
In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell my mother that I made faces during Koranic studies. My mother wasn't overly concerned. 'Be respectful,' she'd say. In the Catholic school, when it came time to pray, I would close my eyes, then peek around the room. Nothing happened. No angels descended. Just a parched old nun and 30 brown children, muttering words.

I'm guessing that the Vatican intelligence service has substantive answers to all the above questions (and many more), and may recognize Obama as a true enemy of Jesus Christ and his Church. Don't kid ourselves--we have true enemies who positively espouse human sacrifice of innocent lives that has always been associated with past ages of Satanic worship. Wikipedia has a good lesson on the history of child sacrifice.

That's the reason to include some additional comments from the final copy of Cardinal Stafford's address, as provided by John L Allen, Jr. [My emphases in bold].

President Thomas Jefferson’s celebrated 1802 letter to the committee of the Danbury Baptist Association assert[ed] “a wall of separation between Church and State” [and] introduced a latent and powerful virus which would eventually be used to diminish and then to wound mortally a theology of discourse in the public arena.

It has led to the increasingly secularized states of the American union and their active hostility towards the Catholic Church. Some of these governments are threatening Roman Catholic adoption agencies because of their refusal to select same-sex couples as potential adoptive parents. They are forcing Catholic hospitals to accept medical procedures which are contrary to the dignity of the human person. They are insisting on hiring practices which will destroy the Catholic identity of health and social services under Catholic Church auspices. They have not refrained from coercing the individual conscience. Here the federal and state governments are enshrining the primacy of secular laws over against religious principles. These decisions are the legal and moral progeny of Jefferson’s insistence on debarring personal faith from the public forum. And this is only a beginning.

In 1973 alone the U. S. Supreme Courts’ pro-abortion decision was imposed upon the nation. Its scrupulous meanness has had catastrophic effects upon the identity, unity, and integrity of the American republic. It has undermined respect for human life. We have been horrified and uncomprehending witnesses for over two generations to America’s decline from “a mansion to a dirty house in a gutted world”...

The 1973 Court’s alteration has even more radically transformed the way we think about others, especially the least among us. Its inexcusable evasions about the dignity of human life, and their prolongation to the present, have condemned those of us who oppose it to disillusionment and bitter isolation. Both Republican and Democratic partisans have abused rhetoric on this issue. The President-elect is a skillful rhetorician. Civic life has been invaded with an anti-humanism so toxic that it is proving mortal to the body politic. Nothing has been left untouched by the court’s lethal wand. Social engineering and the price-systems have infected all Americans with a pervasive, technological mind-set. Economics, administration, sexuality, language and, above all, human life are being manipulated by complex strategies of power.

After 40 years of widespread contraceptive practice, the consequences appear now as the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.... The demonic four are the following: marital infidelity; disrespect for woman, governmental despotism in the regulation of births, and the human body manipulated and destroyed as a technological artifact.... These four shades are insinuating their deathworks upon whole nations and cultures...

Governments are dissolving religious and philosophical values and remaking them into the distortions of a dominant, cybernetic model...

In the United States President - elect Barack Obama and the Vice-President-elect Joseph Biden, a Catholic, campaigned on a severe anti-life platform....

...Sometimes it seems as if modern humanity is rushing headlong toward this goal of producing itself technologically. If humanity achieves this, it will have exploded itself... into thin air, into a region where the absolutely meaningless is valued as the one and only ‘meaning’...

The Church’s response to the technological/scientific hegemony just described has not involved any condemnation of technology or of science as such. Rather is based on her recognition of the present spiritual climate for what it is: A New Ice Age....We must turn south and even return to our origins, the desert. How? By recovering the structure of truth in its relation to goodness and beauty.

Address given by J. Francis Cardinal Stafford before the International Conference to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute on Marriage and the Family at the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. Please see here and here for the original and completed versions of his address.

FSSP and ICKSP Latin Mass Priests

2008-11-25T10:41:00.011-06:00

The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) recently updated their numbers of priests, deacons, and seminarians. The statistics are quite impressive, considering that college graduates are required to be formed for seven more years before being ordained:

Total members: 347
Total Priests: 208
Total Deacons: 11
Non-deacon seminarians: 128
Deceased members: 4
Nationalities: 26
Average age of members: 37 years

Founded in 1988, FSSP members are now active on four continents, 17 countries, and 102 dioceses. The Fraternity has ordained an average of 13 new priests a year since 2000 to offer the old Latin Mass, the most reverent of Catholic liturgies. FSSP seminaries are located near Denton, Nebraska and at Wigratzbad, Germany.

In 1990, the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest (ICKSP) was formed to offer the old Latin Mass. The ICKSP has 35 houses in ten countries, 50 priests, and have trained more than 60 seminarians in 15 years. They have 13 apostolates in the U.S. staffed by ICKSP priests trained at their International Seminary near Florence, Italy.

Kansas City is fortunate to have both FSSP and ICKSP priests serving local Catholic communities. The websites of the two indult Latin Mass groups are found here and here. More information on the indult Latin Masses in Kansas City and St. Joseph is published here.

A third Latin Mass community in Kansas City is St. Vincent's Catholic Church which is staffed by priests of the irregular Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). St. Vincent's is described here and here. Rorate Coeli continues to publish the most recent news on the possible healing of the rift between the Vatican and the SSPX.

Advice from an Ex-Hobo

2008-11-20T13:28:00.005-06:00

The Catholic Crescat blog writes succinctly:

... Quite frankly I am sick of hearing, reading and discussing the economy. Our nation has been exposed for the greedy materialistic and hedonistic giant that it is... "single issue" voting a socialist dictator into the white house because the economy is all those voters seemed to care about. Don't let them fool you with that tripe mantra 'yes we can' and their claims to have voted for the future based on his empty promises... they voted for their own self interests reflected in the economy. Period.

Chances are if you are reading this right now, you are not destitute and blogging from inside your cardboard box by the dumpster behind the KFC.

Consider yourself blessed.

Crescat's post reminds me of my Dad who died 30 years ago and who hopefully has been forgiven of all his sins (that to me seemed minor). Fortunately a very good priest met my convert father in the emergency room at the hospital on the day he died and gave him the Last Sacraments of Confession, Holy Communion, and Extreme Unction (Sacrament of the Sick).

When I was young and living at home, my Dad occasionally had to remind my Mother who, with several kids, worried about things such as lack of jobs, high prices, financial setbacks, and other bad happenings in our material lives. When Dad was out of work for long stretches (as long as six to seven months), Mother could be a real worrier.

In contrast, Dad was an ex-hobo of the Great Depression and rode in (or on) train boxcars, begged for food and jobs, and carried a canvas tarp and wool blanket with which to sleep on the ground. Dad would always reassure our worried Mother with these words:

We have good health, a warm place to sleep at night, and enough to eat. What else do we need?

.....Good words of my Dad to remember for a lifetime.

BTW, here are definitions of hobos, tramps, and bums:
A hobo is a person that travels to work.
A tramp is a person that travels and won't work.
A bum is a person that will neither travel or work.

Coin Laundries

2008-11-20T12:10:00.004-06:00

How many of you visit a coin laundry? If Jesus loves the poor, then he loves coin laundries because that's where poor people wash and dry their clothes.

Do you ever leave good Catholic literature there? Poor people do not usually have the money to subscribe to magazines, but they will pick up and scan/read whatever magazines or newspapers are left lying around while they wait for the laundry machines to finish their work.

Remember that it is wrong to throw away valuable things. Don't discard good Catholic magazines and newspapers in the trash or in the recycling bin. Share your Catholic faith with others at coin laundries.

Rumors, Lies, and Fear

2008-11-19T09:58:00.004-06:00

A good Catholic friend has the penchant for debunking emails and Internet ‘information.’ He’s quite good at it so our family relies on his good searches and common sense. Here’s a few examples of mass emailed errors plus abbreviated responses of the past few months (and no, he doesn’t rely on the prejudiced Snopes, factcheck, or about.com):

Master Limited Partnerships are great investments—My friend analyzed TNH, FGP, APL, RVEP, SPH, and ETP to show significant problems for MLPs in the markets.
During 1987 Congressional hearings, Col. Oliver North told Senator Gore said his home alarm system was installed because Obama bin Laden had personally threatened to kill him—Not true: Col. North himself issued a statement in 2001 that disputed the outrageously false yet widely distributed email.
Steve Fossett wanted to disappear and ‘took a hike’—A lot of speculation and not much fact about a secret mistress or secret bank accounts….out of character for him. The guy seemed to love the limelight. [Note: Fossett’s plane crashed and he died in the accident, but the plane and body were not discovered for a year]
Dell Computer is doing poorly against competition from Chinese computer manufacturers —Dell currently is doing quite well against much smaller Lenovo, and ACER is not Chinese, it is Taiwanese.
Precious metals and oil have to go up, and the dollar has to go down—Don’t sell or buy because of fear and panic. But if you’re thinking about these investments, today is certainly the best time in the past year to be thinking about it. However, it might still be a bit early. Fools and their money are soon parted.
Convert everything to gold—Rather, stay diversified, unless you can afford to take big risks (i.e. gamble). Have some of your assets in cash, some in stocks, some in real estate, even a little in gold and silver. Then, sell a little stock when everyone else is buying it, and buy a little stock when everyone else is selling it. Same with real estate, if your holdings permit you to do it.

When the Cow Went Dry

2008-11-17T09:46:00.007-06:00

Whenever our cow periodically went dry back in the 40's, we no longer had milk for us kids. Necessarily, we began to drink store-bought milk in glass jugs until after the next calf was born. The store-bought milk was pasteurized, but not homogenized, so the cream floated to the top of the glass jars. The cream could either be stirred into the milk for drinking or poured off for use in coffee, cooking, or to make butter.

When homogenization was introduced (~1950), many people were upset. They suspected some of the more valuable cream was being removed by the dairy, because now it was impossible to tell how much cream was in the milk.

Only a couple of times did my parents need to buy essential milk on a Sunday. First of all, Mother always used weekdays to do all her shopping. Second, no stores were open on Sunday, except for gas stations, a few of which also sold milk and bread.

I've wondered this week about what God has thought of the past 70 years of our country's laws, morals, family life, etc. My conclusion is that God was most grievously offended beginning in the late 1940's and 1950's when "Keeping the Lord's Day" was abandoned. Until that time, 'Sunday closing laws' of the states restricted Sunday shopping except for necessary items.

Most Sunday closing laws (termed 'blue laws') were repealed or were ignored by the end of the 50's. Some argued that 'blue laws' were unconstitutional, and most Sunday closing laws were repealed or were ignored by the beginning of the 60's. The Supreme Court, in the case of McGOWAN v. MARYLAND, eventually decided in 1961 that

"The present purpose and effect of most of our Sunday Closing Laws is to provide a uniform day of rest for all citizens; and the fact that this day is Sunday, a day of particular significance for the dominant Christian sects, does not bar the State from achieving its secular goals."

As can be seen in the above statement, the Supreme Court had decided to ignore the religious foundations of our government and only rely on the "secular goals" of the State. Moreover, it was too late to reverse the established practice of people who found it convenient to shop on Sunday. In the late 1940s, there was only one A&P grocery story that opened for business on Sunday. Unfortunately, it attracted a lot of customers, and many other stores followed.

It didn't take long for a massive change in religious practice to occur so that the majority of U.S. citizens violated the Third Commandment. If they didn't violate it by working, they violated it by buying unnecessary goods and causing others to have to work on Sunday.

In 2000, Hobby Lobby decided to close all its stores on Sunday and remains almost the sole national chain that respects the Lord's Day. Even Aldi Foods, which formerly was closed on Sunday, recently opened its doors for business on the Lord's Day.

The Miners, the Makers, and the Moochers

2008-11-15T07:52:00.004-06:00

A long time ago in a wide valley surrounded by high mountains there lived three families. The Miners lived in the mountains and traded iron, copper, and oil with its neighbors. The Makers were an industrious family who lived near the river, took the Miners’ raw materials and converted them into manufactured goods.

The old Moocher family were farmers, manufacturers, and tradesmen who made raw materials into manufactured goods which they successfully sold to their own and other families. Because of the honesty and integrity of the old Moocher family, goods were usually paid for in the interchange currency of the time—green wooden nickels.

Wooden nickels were made by all three families, and were colored gold (Makers), red (Miners), and green (Moochers). The colored nickels had been exchanged for many years on an approximate one-for-one basis. But things changed.

The Makers had borrowed tools from the old Moocher Family, and learned to cheaply manufacture many goods. The Miners determined their best market was no longer the Moochers, and so began to trade extensively with the Makers. The Moochers also began to buy many more inexpensive goods from the Makers, rather than manufacture them, and became heavily in debt to the Makers. The Moochers were also very wasteful, throwing many things away and buying new merchandise.

Even though the Makers had accumulated a barn full of wooden nickels, they continued to trade with the Moochers because the Makers’ large family needed the work. Their concern increased when they learned that the Moochers and their cousins had cut down three more trees to make many more green wooden nickels. The Miners saw what was happening and also decided to cut down trees and make many more red wooden nickels.

As seen from the perspective of the Miners: I was cheated by the arrogant and greedy Moochers, so I asked higher prices for my raw goods. But then they didn't buy as much, so I approached the Makers to sell them more metals and oil. The Makers said they didn’t sell as much as before to the Moochers, so they couldn't buy as much from us as they used to. We sold much less than before, made more wooden nickels, and ended up in worse debt than before. The Makers now tell our family what they want us to do.

As seen from the perspective of the Makers: Our stockpile of green wooden nickels was worth only half as much as before. We were cheated by the Moochers, but we now have good factories and have begun to make more nice things for our own family. We've raised our prices when we sell our goods to the Moocher and Miner families. The Miners know they need us more than they need the Moochers, so we can count on them in case of future trouble with the Moochers.

As seen from the perspective of the Moochers: We tried to restore trade to normal conditions. Our tree-cutter and nickel-maker worked many long hours because we believed depression was worse than inflation. We now know that stagflation is much worse. We despair of a quick resolution to our severe problems and are at each others throats--blaming each other. Our family's new leader promises us he will change things, but some of us believe we are jumping from the frying pan into the fire. May God help us.

Climate Change in Kansas

2008-11-14T08:13:00.008-06:00

A two-column lead headline in the Kansas City Star newspaper proclaims "Climate change brings Kansans dire prediction." The Climate and Energy Project started by Salina KS-based The Land Institute issued a press release on Climate Change in Kansas, with predictions that western Kansas will be reduced to a desert and the entire state will get warmer and drier with dramatic consequences.

When catastrophic events are predicted, I look for the origin, background information on associated political issues, and finally scientific evidence. My motto is "the more you look, the more it smells." [For example, NASA's Institute for Space Studies (GISS) announced that last month was the hottest October on record. WRONG! Global warming skeptics analyzed the data and found that the surreal scientific blunder was caused when scores of October temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were carried over from September and August! ]

The Land Institute was founded and is headed by Wes Jackson, whose friendships include Jane Fonda (see photo) and Wendell Berry "with whom [Wiki says]Jackson has shared a longtime friendship and correspondence." Wes Jackson has other interesting friends too, such as James Howard Kunstler and David Korten, who have spoken to yearly Prairie Festivals sponsored in Salina, KS by The Land Institute.

The Land Institute and its head, Wes Jackson, deserve a comprehensive post in themselves. The Smithsonian Magazine lauds Jackson:

Farming, in Jackson's view, is humanity's original sin. This fall from grace occurred around 10,000 years ago, when people first started gathering and planting the seeds of annual grasses, such as wild wheat and barley. "That was probably the first moment when we began to erode the ecological capital of the soil," he says. "It's when humans first started withdrawing the earth's nonrenewable resources." As he sees it, fossil-fuel dependency, environmental pollution, overpopulation and global warming are all extensions of the path humans took when they first started tilling the soil.

Direct quotes from Wes Jackson are published in a leftist journal interview here:

It's clear that war and racism, poverty, sexism, the growing gap between the rich and the poor, are all connected. And when we hit a brick wall, it turns out that brick wall is capitalism. We're going to have to face that. But people want to believe it is possible to design around capitalism, through regulation and progressive legislation. But that won't work, and we need some consciousness-raising on that.

We need to be saying, "Listen folks, capitalism is inherently destructive." How do we get from where we are to where we need to be, keeping in mind that we can't just try to tame that son of a bitch. We have got to get rid of capitalism.

We've been to Washington, and we've hit the brick walls. So, we're avoiding the brick walls. Instead, we are supporting 19 graduate students from around the country. They will go back to their universities, and we hope the institute's intellectual "virus" will infect these major universities and eventually overcome their institutional "immune systems."

I've been putting forward the hypothesis that since the Stone Age there has not been a single technological product or process, including the domestication of crops and livestock, that hasn't come at the cost of drawing down the capital stock of the planet. I call that the "utterly dismal hypothesis." I'm advancing it not because it's necessarily right, but to suggest that life forms have got it as good as it gets.

A 10-page summary issued by the Land Institute appears to be the basis for the Star's front page article of November 13, 2008 on "Climate change brings Kansans dire prediction." Here are some obvious problems with the summary:

No references are given [See a few references in orange below that should have appeared.]
The Land Institute summary is not peer-reviewed (scientific articles that want to be taken seriously are always referred to critics for comments. Unless the critical remarks are successfully addressed by the authors, reputable journals will not publish a paper.
The summary is only that, and does not identify a full article written by Feddema et al. under funding by The Land Institute
The summary emphasizes a political agenda on what society should do in response to climate change

REFERENCES REGARDING GLOBAL WARMING AND PRECIPITATION:
Richard Allan and Brian Soden, as newly reported by ScienceMag.org, compared precipitation amounts with temperature and found a direct correlation using satellite observations and model simulations. The two scientists observed "a distinct link between rainfall extremes and temperature, with heavy rain events increasing during warm periods and decreasing during cold periods."

The U.S. EPA has just issued its National Water Program Strategy: Response to Climate Change that states that most extreme weather events will increase flood risk and high-flow water velocity, which will increase erosion. Warmer temperatures lead to higher levels of atmospheric water content.

A 2007 paper published in the Geophysical Research Letters provides real-world evidence of the self-regulating nature of he earth's atmosphere. Researchers analyzed six years of data from four instruments aboard three NASA and NOAA satellites to show that warming the tropical atmosphere allows more infrared heat to escape to outer space. "To give an idea of how strong this enhanced cooling mechanism is, if it was operating on global warming, it would reduce [climate model-based] estimates of future warming by 75 percent," said key author Roy Spencer.

After Dr. Spencer published his well-documented scientific paper in a highly regarded scientific journal, he was blacklisted. Read more about "scientific blacklisting" with regard to global warming

I initially wanted to look at the mathematical models (computer representations) used by the Land Institute to predict these doomsday scenarios for Kansas, but the authors didn't produce any new model or data. Rather, they used GCM data prepared by three scientists from NCAR. GCMs (Global Climate Model, formerly General Circulation Model) are the basis for predictions of climate change.

If one wants to understand the complexity and uncertainty of GCMs, please google "'uncertainty analysis' GCM" or "'sensitivity analysis' GCM." What will be found are good scientific discussions of the great difficulties in accurately predicting climate change, especially regional precipitation.

GCMs are highly influenced by the data put into the model, including numbers that must accurately represent:

greenhouse gas emission quantities
the carbon cycle--equations
ocean mixing of greenhouse gases and sink quantities
aerosol forcing--equations
solar luminosity and surface albedo
cloud cover
etc.

The above factors (and many more critical data) used by GCMs are often intercorrelated (some with variable time delays), and are also correlated with temperature, region, etc. This complexity leads to a CASCADE OF UNCERTAINTY for GCM model outputs, especially when considering the uncertainties of the many different mathematical algorithms used by GCMs.

A brief abstract of a recent scientific paper discusses the use of world-wide GCMs to predict regional precipitation by "downscaling" to a regional or local situation. After reading the authors' research (and they do know their science), please tell me whether you have a lot of confidence in their work--I don't. Notice how the good authors themselves carefully qualify their assumptions and results.

General circulation models (GCMs), the climate models often used in assessing the impact of climate change, operate on a coarse scale and thus the simulation results obtained from GCMs are not particularly useful in a comparatively smaller river basin scale hydrology. The article presents a methodology of statistical downscaling based on sparse Bayesian learning and Relevance Vector Machine (RVM) to model streamflow at river basin scale for monsoon period (June, July, August, September) using GCM simulated climatic variables. NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data have been used for training the model to establish a statistical relationship between streamflow and climatic variables. The relationship thus obtained is used to project the future streamflow from GCM simulations. The statistical methodology involves principal component analysis, fuzzy clustering and RVM. Different kernel functions are used for comparison purpose. The model is applied to Mahanadi river basin in India. The results obtained using RVM are compared with those of state-of-the-art Support Vector Machine (SVM) to present the advantages of RVMs over SVMs. A decreasing trend is observed for monsoon streamflow of Mahanadi due to high surface warming in future, with the CCSR/NIES GCM and B2 scenario.

A similar scientific paper published here similarly deals with regional forecasts of precipitation as modified by modeled climate change. The methodologies are different, and they end their slide presentation with the gargantuan caveat that the scientific "results are highly sensitive to the output of one GCM."[Plus other parameters, I might add.]

More than over 31,000 scientists (including almost 10,000 Ph.D.s) dispute climate warming due to anthropological causes. I've discussed the issue and evidence in two previous posts, here and here.

Catholic Bishops and Obama

2008-11-12T09:40:00.003-06:00

American Catholic Bishops have decided that Obama's election is an opportunity to demonstrate that they are really serious about the right to life. The Chicago Tribune describes the results of the Bishops' meeting in Baltimore early this week:

In a direct challenge to President-elect Barack Obama, America's Roman Catholic bishops vowed on Tuesday to accept no compromise for the sake of national unity until there is legal protection for the unborn.

About 300 bishops, gathered in Baltimore for their national meeting, adopted a formal blessing for a child in the womb and advised Chicago's Cardinal Francis George, president of the conference, as he began drafting a statement from the bishops to the incoming Obama administration. That document will call on the administration and Catholics who supported Obama to work to outlaw abortion.

"This is not a matter of political compromise or a matter of finding some way of common ground," said Bishop Daniel Conlon of Steubenville, Ohio. "It's a matter of absolutes."

The Bishops of the past 40 years have appeared to me to be mostly cowards, imbeciles, or outright traitors. Only a very few showed significant signs of heroism, intelligence, and great faith--all the the marks of a good shepherd.

I am delighted to follow our new shepherds who have the strength to proclaim and fight for the Truth. Lead the Way! Take out your Light and expose it on the lampstand! (Matt 5: 13-16)

Ten Responses to Catholic Obamites

2008-11-08T14:23:00.005-06:00

My previous post described a letter written by a Catholic friend who defended her vote for Obama. The Church with its priests and members must diligently respond to the arguments written in her email. Here are ten suggestions for pastors who encounter such errors.

Teach about the devil--don't ever ignore him because he is very real and can be very close.
Clearly identify and refute the theological errors, including syncretism and indifferentism, that lead Catholics to deny their faith, either partially or in whole
Recognize that "partial Catholics" are no longer Catholic and so must be reconverted; moreover, many have become "China eggs" that will never hatch. It's always easier for non-Christians to become new, staunch, and fervent Catholics because they have never rejected the grace of Jesus Christ and his teachings
Insist, by example if necessary, that Catholics act militantly in response to Christ's commission to live and promote the truths of the Catholic Church.
Explain that both contraception and abortion are part of the devil's plan to destroy humanity--physically, morally, economically, etc., and eternally.
Note that human sacrifice of innocent lives has always been associated with past ages of Satanic worship. Give a 'Wiki' lesson on the history of child sacrifice to false gods
Forcefully teach that God will not be mocked by arguments that appeal to economics, the environment, etc. to justify voting for human sacrifice
Identify and promote Saints who fought in the past against similar heresies and evil practices
Recruit key individuals to respond to religious, political, and moral evils with their prayers, good works, and direct Catholic action.
Challenge Catholics to become MORE CHRISTIAN than Democrat, Republican, or any other identification.

Obama and the Catholic Vote

2008-11-08T11:52:00.006-06:00

Since November 4, I've wondered how Barack Obama could have gotten so many votes from Catholics. It is clear that the President-elect is totally committed to a woman's right to abortion--even if it means that the baby is born alive. He also believes his own two daughters, if they became pregnant, should not be "punished" with unwanted pregnancies. [ For details, see Obama's address before Planned Parenthood--Obama video or transcript of his 30 minute speech.

As was pointed out by Catholic culturist, Phil Lawler, "in the past few weeks, different American bishops have issued radically different statements on the moral responsibilities of Catholic voters." Lawler's article notes that between 53 and 54% of American Catholic voters cast their ballots for Barack Obama, while 54% of Protestants voted for McCain who has consistently voted pro-life in the U.S. Senate. Lawler adds:

In 7 [of the 50] states, Catholics make up more than 30% of the population. Obama captured all 7 of those states on Election Day. In 8 states, Catholics account for less than 5% of the population. Seven of those states swung for McCain, and the 8th, North Carolina, is still listed as "too close to call"....

Phil Lawler then asks, "re those states [that voted for Obama] hotbeds of liberalism despite the heavy Catholic presence, or because of it?"

Here are some other observations of Lawler:

Dozens of American bishops issued strong public statements reminding their people of their moral obligation to vote in defense of human life. Those statements varied in candor and in quality, but their overall impact was remarkable. The 2008 campaign produced a seismic change in the attitude of the American hierarchy; the bishops as a group were far more outspoken, far more explicit, than in any previous election.

Lawler continues:

Among Catholic voters who attend Mass weekly, McCain won majority support: 54- 45%. Among those who do not attend weekly Mass, the margin for Obama was an overwhelming 61- 37%. Thus Obama drew his support from inactive Catholics. And unfortunately, most American Catholics are inactive.
This year, at last, the American bishops were clear and forthright in their teaching. Yet on Election Day it became evident that millions of American Catholics weren't listening.
The political scene in Massachusetts is dominated not by Catholics but by ex-Catholics, thoroughly hostile to the teachings of the Church. Are Catholics in other states following the same trend? ...Regrettably, I see the same forces that corrupted Catholicism in my native state now active all across the nation.

I believe Lawler is correct, except that a 45% vote for Obama among regular Mass-goers is intolerable.

Yet where Catholic truths are firmly taught and accepted, the people did not vote for Obama. If an angel were to have stood on the head of pens in Kansas City voting booths, they would testify that virtually all traditional Catholics who attend the old Latin Mass voted against Obama.

One lady that I know well attends the local Novus Ordo (English language) parish and voted for Obama. She argued (please remember that normally she does not misspell so many words) in the following email:

Please do not send me any political stuff, I am sick of this whole campaign. Some of you don't, but after receiving a lot of things on line, this is my opinion, which I feel I have a right to state, after reading all the e-mails.

I know Obama is pro abortion, but there are bigger things to take care of like our young guys at War who are losing their lives and what their families have gone through. Aren't their lives ilmportant too.

I know the Priests, ect. are indirectly telling us to vote for McCain, which I resent very much. The economy is a mess, what about the people who are losing their jobs and homes, isn't their lives important too. What about our enviorment, are we going to let our familes inherit this earth full of polution, their lives are important too.

On taxes, no matter who gets in we will all pay taxes. Healthcare is a big priority, aren't the people without any insurance important too.

On the abortion issue I am against it. However I ask myself why there are so many with all the different birth control stuff out there. We have all signed petitions at our churchs against abortion over the years, but what actually has been accomplished. Maybe parents aren't doing their jobs, they can't always rely on the schools or churches to do it.

I look at both candidates and I see one family man who is married once and one that has been married three times. I see a wife that is a smart intelligent woman who is an attorney and then I see a bleached blonde who races cars in her spare time.

The candidates for vice president, one is a mature man who lost his wife and has more experience than anyone and I believe he is remarried, although I am not sure of the later. Then I see the other candidate and think of the gal that was in the movie "Fargo", who I would be very afraid to have as a president.

My friends, there is a lot of things at stake here and more to consider than the one issue of abortion, although I am against abortion, we are voting for the person who is for the poor and working class who will probably end up paying the burden of the taxes again.

The 70-ish lady who wrote the above has probably sent me at least 15 emails on Jesus. She also goes to Saturday evening Mass regularly at the local Catholic Church. She has only two children, one teenage grandchild, and clearly believes (as shown above), that contraception should be the solution to abortion. She seems to believe that church petitions should have stopped abortion.

The woman argues that the war, economy, health care, pollution, etc. are of combined greater importance than abortion. She also believes that the evils espoused by one candidate are acceptable because of the moral weaknesses of the opposing candidate.

How should Catholic sermons/homilies/newspapers/blogs respond to this lady's arguments? My next post will address responses of the Church and its Catholics.

Old St. Patrick's is Almost Finished!

2008-11-05T10:51:00.004-06:00

In the midst of election news, I have delayed reporting on Old St. Patrick's Oratory! This renovated Catholic Church in downtown Kansas City Missouri is a wonderful combination of new and old--exactly what the CATHOLIC CHURCH IS AND ALWAYS WILL BE!

The church building took almost three years of renovation work before it was suitable again for the worship of God through the old Latin liturgy. Bishop Finn offered the dedication Mass on October 26, 2008 and reconsecrated the church because it had been unused for many years. All Masses and liturgical ceremonies have now been moved from Our Lady of Sorrows church, where the old Latin Mass has been offered since 1990, to the beautiful new/old Oratory.

For more information, see here. Better yet, obtain the complete insert in the current Catholic Key by getting a paper copy. Great stuff!

Proposition 8 Wins in California

2008-11-05T09:32:00.005-06:00

The second most important election result in the nation occurred in California where Proposition 8 won on November 4, 2008 to deal a huge blow to the gay rights movement. The painful loss (to homosexuals) marked the first time that voters rejected same-sex marriage in a state where it was already legal (because of imperial court decisions).

Over $75 million dollars was spent on this vital vote to stop California from redefining marriage and recognizing same-sex couplings. Opponents of the measure included the rich pro-homosexual community that out-fundraised conservative proponents of Proposition 8 by more than 5-to-1.

The fight to pass Proposition 8 was led by ProtectMarriage.com with a 4-member Executive Board that included: campaign chairman Ron Prentice; Edward Dolejsi, executive director of the California Catholic Conference; Mark Jansson, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; and Andrew Pugno, a lawyer for ProtectMarriage.com.

The Mormons were given credit by NPR as contributing nearly half the money to support Proposition 8 and more data on their personal contributions are given here. The good Catholic Knights of Columbus are on record as donating $1M. Catholic Bishops in California endorsed the measure through the California Catholic Conference by strongly encouraging members of the faith "to provide both the financial support and the volunteer efforts needed for the passage of Proposition 8."

An interesting story of this victory for traditional marriage is told from the perspective of a disappointed opponent of Proposition 8:

This is not a misprint: As California's Proposition 8 to ban safe-sex marriage headed for defeat, the Associated Press commissioned a poll rooted in age groups. Senior citizens were slightly in favor of permitting gay marriage among consenting adults, but the age 30-and-younger group was strongly opposed.

No, we don't have it backwards. This is a case where older people are the most sympathetic and tolerant toward personal freedoms and individual rights, than are people in the up-and-coming generation. Isn't the reverse supposed to be typically true?

Furthermore, this ballot initiative is an amendment to the California State Constitution. Based on the attitudes of California's 30-and-younger population, it seems that Proposition 8 will remain embedded for generations to come.

What ever happened to free thinking among younger folks? How does this California anti-gay outlook manifest itself in comparison to the passion for "change" that was embodied in Barack Obama's campaign, which historically drew millions of young adults into political and social action for the first time?

These poll results are puzzling, but the Baltimore Sun --- which conducted the survey for the Associated Press --- is among the most respected and professional news operations in the nation.

The gay rights movement and same-sex marriage were also dealt a severe blow in Florida and Arizona where majority votes now protect the traditional definition of marriage.

The Antichrist

2008-11-04T09:08:00.006-06:00

An older Catholic book, The Antichrist, was written by Jesuit Fr. Vincent P. Miceli and published over 25 years ago (1981) . The "Preaching of the Antichrist" by Luca Signorelli (1499-1504) was used on the front cover.

Even though a scholarly volume, the book went through at least five reprintings, including the copy that I have which was issued in 1987. The flyleaf comments seem contemporary with respect to the discussion on Obama's religious background and beliefs.

Fr. Vincent P. Miceli attempts to relate the prophecy of the Antichrist to the major disaster of our times--the nightmare, admitted by all now, of the world-wide collapse of Christianity. Has St. Paul's prophecy concerning the coming of the "general apostasy," as prelude to the lawles one's arrival, been fulfilled in our generation? Has the fall of the three major messianic utopias--the American dream, the Socialist welfare fantasy, the Marxist revolutionary paradise--produced the sufficiently Godless, disillusioned, diseased womb of society from which 'the lord of this world' will be born?

Traveling with Obama Lawyer

2008-10-28T16:43:00.006-05:00

Recently I met and traveled with a lawyer who was a leader of the local Obama campaign. The next several hours were a tough time for me--traveling with an opponent of most of what I believe in. [BTW, only fools believe real enemies do not exist.]

The morning started with R. boasting that he had gotten out of the stock market near its high point. (I wondered how he knew???) Then this former federal prosecutor announced he was recruiting attorneys to an Obama team to insure vote fraud would not be committed in the election. I mused, "When have Republicans been guilty of organized and significant vote fraud?" My own experience over the past 50 years is that serious vote fraud has always and notoriously been associated with members of the Democratic Party--not the Republican Party.

If vote fraud occurs in the 2008 general election, past history indicates it will likely be associated with Democrats. Why do I say this? Because vote fraud can only be inhibited by requiring proof of one's identity in the presence of alert and fair election workers. Yet the Democratic Party platform of 2008 states, "We oppose laws that require identification in order to vote or register to vote." Phyllis Schlafly adds:

The Democrats have hysterically fought against voter ID laws in Congress, in state legislatures, and in the courts, taking what they thought was their best case, the Indiana law, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. They lost there because they ran into liberal Justice John Paul Stevens who, hailing from Chicago, was acquainted with many "flagrant examples" of election fraud going back to Mayor Richard Daley's shenanigans that swung Illinois to John F. Kennedy in 1960.

Vote fraud in the presidential election of 1960 was the first significant one I learned about. So much voter fraud in Chicago and Texas were witnessed by reporters that the Chicago Tribune stated "the election of November 8 was characterized by such gross and palpable fraud as to justify the conclusion that [Nixon] was deprived of victory." (As quoted by the Washington Post.)

The second time I became acquainted with election fraud on a major scale occurred when I read about Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson's election to the U.S. Senate from Texas in 1948. Two-time Pulitzer prize winner Robert Caro documented in Means of Ascent that Johnson's Democrats rigged the election in Jim Wells County and other counties in South Texas, as well as stuffing false ballots in Bexar County. Because LBJ won his 1948 election by fraud, he later became Vice-President and then President of the U.S. in 1963 after Kennedy was assassinated.

The third major instance of vote fraud occurred in California when Rep. Bob Dornan lost his 1996 election to Democrat Loretta Sanchez in an upset, by the narrow margin of 984 votes. An investigation by the House of Representatives found that at least 547 non-citizens had voted in the election. Suspicions were great that far more non-citizens actually voted in the election, which resulted in the great loss of a solid Catholic pro-life representative to the U.S. Congress.

I seriously doubt that Obama lawyer R. is concerned about preventing vote fraud by Republicans. One of my friends asked, "Is R. really organizing a Kansas City "Truth Squad"?" to target those who challenge Barack Obama? What happens to free speech and fair elections when government prosecutors and sheriffs are members of these so-called partisan "Truth Squads"?

Make sure you cast your ballot on November 4. I beg you not to squander your valuable vote on a third party candidate at this time. Please pray that the enemies of Christ and His Church be divided and conquered:

Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and all the instruments of His Holy Passion that Thou may put division in the camp of Thine enemies, for as Thy beloved Son has said, "a kingdom divided against itself shall fail".

Apple Time

2008-10-26T21:44:00.009-05:00

The trees are loaded with tasty small crab apples, and I picked a few to suck out the tart, sweet juice. "Why didn't you ask to pick them last year, too?" was the response of the manager when I requested permission to pick a bucket of the fruit for canning crab apple jelly.

A recipe for crab apple jelly was easily found. The easiest part was picking the tiny apples that looked like bunches of beautiful red and yellow cherries hanging from the bent branches. In no time at all, I had picked a full bucket. Once the apples were cleaned and cut up, they were added to a large pot for boiling with water to remove the juice and pectin.

Fortunately, I didn't have to use cheese cloth to extract the juice from the cooked apple pulp and water. Rather, I used Mother's old aluminum strainer with very small holes that she used to use to remove seeds from the tomato juice she was canning.

No pressing was done of the cooked crab apple mixure to insure a clear, non-cloudy jelly. Two days later I added sugar and began to boil away for over 1/2 hour to make over 4 pints of jelly. A little red food coloring made the jelly in the jars even prettier.

P.S. I've now made pectin from the crab apples. Rather than making crab apple jelly as above, I made strawberry preserves today using the juice/pectin from crab apples. There is a much better way to slice up the crab apples for cooking to get the juice and pectin.

Put the crab apples in a sealed gallon poly bag and take a hammer and smash each crabapple in the see-through bag. This method is much more efficient than using a knife. Smashing took me only 15 min while using a knife took me 1 hr 20 min. I didn't take off the apple stems or the hairy end of the apple before cooking the apples with added water. It didn't seem to make much difference than before when I sliced a thin piece off each end of each small crab apple. Here's a picture of the strawberry preserves cooking with the crab apple pectin. Ten and a half pints resulted.

Zo Right!

2008-10-26T21:18:00.004-05:00

Zo is a black Christian Republican pro-lifer AND comedian whose video machine guns fire bullets of common sense and morality at liberal targets, including abortion, Obama, and other critical moral issues.

See Zo's other videos on his website, Black and Right.

Pillow-less through the Election

2008-10-20T09:56:00.003-05:00

Do you like to sleep with your pillow? I certainly do. But I've decided to be pillow-less through election day on Tuesday, November 4. The kids at St. John's Middle School in Beloit, KS have initiated a Crucial Pillow Fight:

Sleep without your pillow till the election! Redemptive suffering (Col. 1:24) is worth every toss and every turn during the night. Email us at pillowfight4life@yahoo.com to notify us of your commitment to the cause! We currently have over 450 pillow-less warriors...we need the pillow off your bed!

My mother was able to keep a straight back through her nineties by always sleeping on her back without a pillow. Even though I've tried to imitate her, I've always regressed. This time I will pursue the sacrifice with a much more rigorous attitude because of the exceedingly grave consequences of the coming election.

I've discovered that St. John's Catholic school system is unique among Catholic schools in the country. Most large cities have shut down their Catholic schools, but Beloit with only 4,000 population supports Catholic education from kindergarten through high school. Here's the website of their parish.

Another aside: Did you know that nuns in cloistered convents sleep only on their backs without pillows? At least that's what one Carmelite community told me.

Next in the US?

2008-10-20T09:21:00.005-05:00

The blog, Surviving in Argentina, is written by a man who lives with his family in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a country that used to be the 8th richest in the world, but is now economically unstable. Wikipedia describes the Argentine economic crisis:

...many Argentines became enraged and took to the streets of important cities, especially Buenos Aires. They engaged in a form of popular protest that became known as cacerolazo (banging pots and pans). These protests occurred especially during the period of 2001 to 2002. At first the cacerolazos were simply noisy demonstrations, but soon they included property destruction, often directed at banks, foreign privatized companies, and especially big American and European companies. Many businesses installed metal barriers because windows and glass facades were being broken, and even fires being ignited at their doors. Billboards of such companies as Coca Cola and others were brought down by the masses of demonstrators.

Here's an example of what the situation is like in Argentina today, from the personal experience of the Argentinian blogger:

When I was 20 years old I lived in a 1st world country, 8 years later it’s a mixture of cheapo 3rd world tourist sites, a bit of tasteful 1900 architecture, surrounded by sights fitting either Ecuador, Colombia or some kind of war zone, and it all went to hell in a hand basket in less than a year. The change was amazing for anyone that cared to notice. Libraries, churches, town theaters, it all closed and later reopened having been replaced by bar-***** house joints, “All for 2$” shops, Bingos, casinos, self proclaimed churches, many with links to Umbanda Brazilian rituals. A perfect example of the decay in our society trough the last years.

We were wondering what is happening with your prisons in Argentina?

They are terribly overpopulated. sometiems [sic] 5X over their maximum capacity. Problems and revolts in prisons are common.

What happens when the power goes out or when the government can't afford to pay the officers to go to work?

Well, they don’t just let them go, that would be wrong, right? :) What they do, is pretend they are looking over them but granting them more liberal minded rights.
They don’t say “We can’t afford more prisoners so we let them go.” What they do is send them home with a bracelet that’s supposed to monitor the prisoner in his home.
Problem is these things don’t work, nor do cops care to control the system or the prisoner. So we end up having “prisoners” that are supposed to be under control, but they are just free to do whatever they want.

You must try by all means not to stay outside with the door opened for long periods of time. It has become clear by now that that’s when robbers attack the most. What I do. I have a front metal gate apart from the wooden garage door, both operated by remote control. I open the gate and garage door and right away start getting in , closing the gate behind me as soon as I have space. Most of the time I am armed, and I’m extra cautious at times like these just in case.

Instead of thinking of thinking about “The little house on the Prairie” scenario, a middle ages Feudal Lord-Vassal relation ship is much more accurate to depicture [sic] what small producers are going through in our own in my [sic] country, after the 2001 crisis.

So, if you are a producer with a few acres of land (less than 300/400), and you don’t have a critical mass of production , just being an extremely hard worker isn’t enough, and what is happening today to these people may happen in America in the future.

Find some market, some niche, be an entrepreneur because if you do what pretty much everyone else already knows how to do, you’ll end up working so that the middle man makes the profit, while you barely survive.

Brief Obama Biography

2008-10-20T08:24:00.002-05:00

The most interesting and brief timeline of Barack Obama's life has just been published by Colony 14.net. If you don't have time to read anything else, this relatively short summary is comprehensive and well-documented.

Subprime House Foreclosure

2008-10-17T07:58:00.008-05:00

This post is in response to the following comment I received this morning:

When people borrowed too much to pay too high of prices on property, where did all this money go? Well, the money went to ‘us’. Americans. Those who were good enough or lucky enough to sell the property when it was overvalued, when it was high, when selling was the smart thing to do. So, how can ‘we’ (America) be broke, when we still have the money? When it just changed hands from the stupid, to the smart?

Here's a true story. A widow used to live near our neighborhood. The young woman had a good job working from her home and thought the $150K home with big trees and several acres would be ideal for her three young children. She told the neighbors that she really loved the place and that the real estate agent had worked very hard to make sure she could afford to buy it. I concluded she had been able to purchase the house with a relatively small down payment and low, but variable, interest rate.

Her more frequent garage sales seemed to indicate a problem, and we did hear that her 'at home' job had ended and that she had to find another position. About this time, the interest rates on adjustable mortgages increased. Before we knew it, the widow and her children left to return to her family in California.

A "For Sale" sign was placed in her yard and remained there for eight months. During this time, the yard was not being mowed so the place was beginning to look rather bad. After almost a year, city employees mowed the yard.

The house now is in foreclosure. When one neighbor told me he had chased off three kids attempting to break into the back door, I decided to walk over to the place and see it up close. One of the large windows at the back of the house was broken. The real estate agent who formerly tried to sell the property explained that the loan bank had told him it was no longer responsible and the property had been turned over to the FHA. The agent had also been responsible for the first sale and says the original owner won't even drive by the house because he is so heart-broken over the way his formerly beautiful property now looks.

One of the nicest houses in the neighborhood now invites damage from vandals, vagrants, squatters, arsonists, and animals. Will the property likely lose a major part of its intrinsic value before it is sold? I'm no expert in real estate, but this former $150K house would probably sell today for no more than $110K.

The bank was never really interested in selling the house because it would have to show a loss on the books. The FHA is likely overburdened with foreclosures like this one and it takes a lot of time just to move the foreclosed house on the FHA/HUD list for bid. So the house just deteriorates and loses value.

One FHA foreclosure in the Greater Kansas City area shows the "as-is value" of a house is $183,000, but the asking price is $128,100--30 percent below the "as-is value." Another much cheaper house in a poorer section of Kansas City is reduced to $20,400--40 percent below the "as-is value," and this house is advertised to have an in-ground pool. All these foreclosed properties once had much higher intrinsic value because people lived in the houses and took care of them.

My correspondent asks "So, how can ‘we’ (America) be broke, when we still have the money? When it just changed hands from the stupid, to the smart?" The answer is that a good portion of property value has been permanently lost. A foreclosed house in my neighborhood is worth much less not just because of inflation/deflation/recession/depression, but because it has not been taken care of. This house (and many other foreclosed assets in our country) will be worth much less in the future if they are burned down by arson, or further damaged by vandals, vagrants, and animals. No matter how you cut it, losing intrinsic value means "going broke."

Research and Read It for Yourself

2008-10-15T14:32:00.002-05:00

I've struggled how to approach some friends who have said that as Democrats they will vote for Obama. One way I'm doing that is to send them this email.

Because you have told me you will vote for Barack Obama and I know you are an intelligent reader, please do some private internet searching (googling) before November 4. Search terms should include the word "Obama" plus the following words (you can choose what you want to believe):

Abortion partial birth
Gay rights
Acorn voter fraud
"Huntley Brown"
"Janet Porter" Muslim
"Jeremiah Wright"
"Bill Ayers" "Bernadine Dohrn"
"Frank Marshall Davis" "Sex Rebel"
mother mercer atheist
dreams socialist meetings
Occindental college record

Talking About Touching - Kansas City

2008-10-06T21:53:00.006-05:00

Local Catholics should read Kansas Catholic on Talking About Touching, the so-called "safety program" created and employed in response to the scandalous sexual abuse of (mostly) young boys by Catholic priests in the U.S. Unfortunately, the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph under Bishop Finn has allowed this Planned Parenthood- and SIECUS-approved program to be introduced into some of his Catholic schools.

What really bugs me is the injustice of the system when the guilty Catholic hierarchy shoves responsibility for solving the sex abuse problem onto lay people and their children. First, it was treating all the parents like criminals to be investigated and fingerprinted if they want to work as volunteers or teachers of youth. Now, little girls and boys are assaulted by a personally invasive educational effort that places sex in the context of a dung pile. [One more injustice on top of parishioners' donations paid as damages to victims!]

Parents of children in Catholic schools should read this observation on the blog of Kansas Catholic:

Few children were abused by priests. But if all Catholic school children can be made to take part in a safety program that robs them of innocence in a different way, then the Father of Lies has someone else doing his work for him, work that reaches more than his last effort. And he even has the apparent sanction of the Church as the project moves forward.

My mother told us kids never to let anyone touch us (except the doctor when a parent was there). Modest clothing was necessary for a good reason--to protect us from bad people. Period! Why isn't that enough?

Your Church and the Financial Crisis

2008-10-02T11:09:00.003-05:00

An anonymous reader wrote very good comments to my post Credit, Debit, Cash and BARTER. Please read about his/her solutions to the financial crisis that can come through the Catholic Church.

"I've always wondered if Catholic parishioners could do far more for each other than most of them typically do. As the times continue to get worse, I'm willing to bet that the Catholic Church in America will only get stronger.

For example: Pot-luck dinners could become a nightly or perhaps a thrice-weekly affair, which would certainly cut down on most folk's grocery bills. Work on parishioner's homes could be done in return for gas and oil bills; and parishioners could get together to homeschool each other's children.

A rotating staff -- some, perhaps, with CNA or RN backgrounds -- could be put to use to watch over the elderly in the parish, and could also be used to watch each other's kids while the parents are still at work. Also, a parish or a group of parishes could request group rates from the local hospitals for medical care, and group rates from the local pharmacies and medical equipment businesses.

Also, if a family has a particular need for something or some service, they could post a 'ticket' on a bulletin board, and when someone has some thing or some trade they need in return that the first family can provide or perform, their 'tickets' could be exchanged and taken off the bulletin board.

And if all that sounds too good to be true, or if it doesn't sound like that would ever happen in your parish, you might want to take a look at how the Mormons, or the Baptists organize themselves. All of these things are already being done in other faith communities.

Catholics, I believe, need to start acting like family more often. It should be a source of a very strong identification to belong to a certain parish. Once that happens, all of these things are possible.

I have witnessed far too many ugly things happen amongst Catholic parishioners than I care to mention here; and I'm afraid that it is true that most of us have a long way to go before ever realizing such things in most of our parishes. But it can be done; and as the crisis in the economy worsens, our parishioners should really start looking out for one another, to the point that we begin to act like a very strong, united community."

Credit, Debit, Cash and BARTER

2008-09-29T08:31:00.003-05:00

I've never taken an economics class, but seventy years on God's good earth gives me a little knowledge of how things work. So let's rank them from worst to best, from apparent moral and economic standpoints:

Credit means borrowing, with a promise to pay later. The result is that someone is a debtor and another is the debt holder. This system facilitates greed that motivates consumption. Clearly, most borrowers spend more than they should. The sin of usury may be involved (although reasonable interest is allowed because of money inflation and taxes on savings).
Debit means paying with a card that automatically subtracts money already deposited to a bank account. A key reason for debit cards appears to be ease of payment and fear of theft of cash. Debit cards involve more risk than credit cards and also mean the buyer pays more for goods and services. Both credit and debit cards can lead to a totalitarian society where the state keeps track of who purchases what.
Cash means paying with money/currency. This medium allows the easy and anonymous exchange of many different kinds of goods through an intermediate value established and valued by the government. Virtually every country in the world robs its citizens of their cash by printing more and more money and causing inflation.
Barter means directly exchanging/trading goods and services, without the use of credit, debit, or cash. Barter establishes the true value of material, because both sides agree on what and how much to exchange. Barter usually replaces money as the method of exchange in times of monetary crisis.

Comparisons can be made with our current economic problems and bad economic situations in the past that were followed by a barter economy. The first barter exchange system was the Swiss WIR Bank. It was founded in 1934 as a result of currency shortages after the stock market crash of 1929.

In the difficult 1990s, Russians reacted by using barter (veksels and zachety were the main money surrogates). As a percentage of industrial sales, bartering steadily increased from 5% in 1992 to nearly 55% in 1998. For more information on the relatively recent Russian barter experience, see here.

I also recommend that the reader examine "Barter" in the Wikipedia Encyclopedia. You'll learn that:

Organized barter has grown to conduct third party bartering throughout the world to the point now where virtually every country has a formalized barter and trade network of some kind. A barter exchange provides the record-keeping, brokering expertise and monthly statements to each member. "Barter dollars" are the exchange medium.
Complex business models based on the concept of barter are today possible since the advent of Web 2.0 technologies.

Bailing Out of the Stampede

2008-09-28T22:13:00.006-05:00

Dear Friends,

Whenever a Great Bipartisan Consensus is announced, and a compliant media assures everyone that the wondrous actions of our wise leaders are being taken for our own good, you can know with absolute certainty that disaster is about to strike.

The bailout package that is about to be rammed down Congress’ throat is not just economically foolish. It is downright sinister. It makes a mockery of our Constitution, which our leaders should never again bother pretending is still in effect.

It promises the American people a never-ending nightmare of ever-greater debt liabilities they will have to shoulder. Two weeks ago, financial analyst Jim Rogers said the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made America more communist than China! “This is welfare for the rich,” he said. “This is socialism for the rich. It’s bailing out the financiers, the banks, the Wall Streeters.”

That describes the current bailout package to a T. And we’re being told it’s unavoidable.

The claim that the market caused all this is so staggeringly foolish that only politicians and the media could pretend to believe it. But that has become the conventional wisdom, with the desired result that those responsible for the credit bubble and its predictable consequences - predictable, that is, to those who understand sound, Austrian economics - are being let off the hook. The Federal Reserve System is actually positioning itself as the savior, rather than the culprit, in this mess!

• The Treasury Secretary is authorized to purchase up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets at any one time. That means $700 billion is only the very beginning of what will hit us.

• Financial institutions are “designated as financial agents of the Government.” This is the New Deal to end all New Deals.

• Then there’s this: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.” Translation: the Secretary can buy up whatever junk debt he wants to, burden the American people with it, and be subject to no one in the process.

There goes your country.

Even some so-called free-market economists are calling all this “sadly necessary.” Sad, yes. Necessary? Don’t make me laugh.

Our one-party system is complicit in yet another crime against the American people. The two major party candidates for president themselves initially indicated their strong support for bailouts of this kind - another example of the big choice we’re supposedly presented with this November: yes or yes. Now, with a backlash brewing, they’re not quite sure what their views are. A sad display, really.

Although the present bailout package is almost certainly not the end of the political atrocities we’ll witness in connection with the crisis, time is short. Congress may vote as soon as tomorrow. With a Rasmussen poll finding support for the bailout at an anemic seven percent, some members of Congress are afraid to vote for it. Call them! Let them hear from you! Tell them you will never vote for anyone who supports this atrocity.

The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom? Do we care about responsibility and accountability? Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for? Do we care that average Americans are about to be looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government? Do we care?

When the chips are down, will we stand up and fight, even if it means standing up against every stripe of fashionable opinion in politics and the media?

Times like these have a way of telling us what kind of a people we are, and what kind of country we shall be.

In liberty, Ron Paul

TARP = TRAP

2008-09-26T00:58:00.003-05:00

The economic situation may be akin to a 500-year flood that our country has yet to experience. Frankly, our economic problems could make the Great Depression of the 1930s look like a "summer walk in the park."

Loss of purchasing power can be expected to seriously impact anyone who has savings that can be tapped by the government through inflation. I count $1,086 B total for the following federal stimulus and bail-out programs in 2008:

Early 2008 economic stimulus program - $160 B
New economic stimulus program proposed by Democrats who control the Senate and House of Representatives - $56 B
Bail-out of Bear Stearns in the form of money supply inflation - $30 B
Bail-out of AIG in the form of money supply inflation - $85 B
Bail-out of Wall Street - Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP, otherwise known as (T-R-A-P) $700 B
Emergency funding by the Fed to central banks of Australia, Sweden, Denmark and Norway to lend to their local banks - $30 B added to an existing $247 B lifeline (announced on p 2 of "Financial Times" Sept 25, 2008)
Package of low-cost loans to US carmakers $25 B (expected within 2 days)

If you read nothing else today, please read the New York Times article on TARP by Andrew Ross Sorkin, "A Bailout Above the Law."

Sarah Palin: Why No Longer Catholic?

2008-09-18T08:04:00.011-05:00

I've been intrigued as to the reasons why Sarah Heath Palin's parents left the Catholic faith to join an Assemblies of God church in Wasilla, Alaska in 1976. The Los Angeles Times reports that her new church required baptism by immersion, so at age 12, Palin was "re-baptized" in Little Beaver Lake west of Wasilla (lat 61.5864, lon -149.8628).

The years 1972-1976 were undoubtedly the period of greatest religious turmoil in the Catholic Church in recent history. I can't think of a post-Vatican II time period other than the early- to mid-70's that generated more problems and losses for the Catholic church in the U.S.

In an interview with TIME magazine, Sarah Palin commented on dinner discussions with her parents, Chuck and Sally Heath, who had moved to Skagway Alaska in 1964:

...my dad was an elementary school teacher [science], so often our dinner-table conversations were about current events and about those things that an elementary school teacher teaches students — much about government and much about our nation...

It is almost certain that these dinner-table conversations in the 1970s occasionally would have discussed religion, and likely critiqued the goings-on in the Catholic Church of that time. Sarah's family believes in many traditional Christian beliefs, and Sarah Palin, in many ways, acts and lives as though she were still an active Catholic.

So what was the problem? Why did Chuck and Sally Heath decide to leave the Catholic Church? According to a biography written by Kaylene Johnson, Sarah and her three siblings were each baptized into the Roman Catholic Church as infants. Consequently, during the period when all four children were born (approximately 1962 - 1966), the Heath family remained active Catholics.

What changed between 1966 (when Molly Heath their youngest child was born and baptized in the Catholic Church) and 1976 when Sarah Heath was "re-baptized" in Beaver Lake by the Assemblies of God minister?

According to the Johnson biography, the Heath family moved to Anchorage in 1969 (when Sarah was five years old) and lived for a short time with friends. They then moved to Eagle River (10 mi NE of Anchorage) before finally establishing a home in Wasilla further to the north. The move to Wasilla would have occurred before 1976 when Sarah and her family are known to have become members of the Wasilla Assemblies of God church.

So what was going on in the Catholic churches in Skagway (1964-1969), Anchorage (1969), Eagle River (1969 - ?), and Wasilla (before 1976)--during the period immediately before and during the time when the Heath family fell away from the Catholic church?

SKAGWAY: From 1964 to 1969, the Heath family lived in Skagway, Alaska, where Chuck Heath was a teacher and coach. The Skagway News shares information about Sarah Heath Palin's family while they lived in Skagway. An interesting quote shows that in 1969, when Sarah was 5, she was attending "catechism class," presumably at the very small St. Therese of the Child Jesus parish in Skagway.

“I was the same age when we left here [Skagway] as my daughter Piper is now,” she said. “I enjoyed watching her, seeing how things were through her eyes.” Palin said she used to walk “by myself – I don’t know if parents do that now –around town to the neighbors,” home from catechism [my emphasis], and remembered the wind blowing, drying the clothes in the back yard. Also going to her dad’s basketball games – he coached the [Skagway] high school team.

Sarah Palin would have been a five year old catechism student in 1969. Thus, the Heath family remained practicing Catholics while they lived in Skagway. It is clear that only after the Heath's left Skagway in 1969 did they stop practicing their Catholic faith. Although other things in the Skagway Catholic community may have loosened the Heath's grip on their Catholic faith.

A relatively recent photo from the Skagway News in 2001 identifies Assembly of God Pastor Steve Smith preaching to those assembled for the Easter sunrise service at Pullen Park. The caption notes the Presbyterian Church and St. Terese Catholic Church joined with the Assembly of God to celebrate Easter, 2001. My comment: Perhaps this interdenominational scene may have played out much earlier in Skagway under the observation of the Heath family.

In 2002 the Diocese of Juneau (in which Skagway is located) had only 5,500 Catholics of a total 74,000 population, with 13 priests to serve the people. The first bishop appointed to serve the Juneau diocese, Robert Dermot O'Flanagan, was born in 1901 in Ireland and served as Bishop of Juneau from 1951 until his resignation on June 19, 1968. The history of the Juneau diocese notes that between 1968 and 1971, the Juneau diocese was remotely administered by the new Archbishop of Anchorage, Joseph T. Ryan. [Francis Thomas Hurley was not appointed to head the Juneau diocese until July 1971, two years after the Heath family had left Skagway.]

So would Bishop O'Flanagan have attracted or repelled the Heath family from 1964 to June 1968 when he resigned as Bishop? A historical vignette shows Bishop O'Flanagan as a down-to-earth individual who much resembled the hardworking Heath's:

During his early years he could be seen shoveling snow off the walks in the winter and in the summer cleaning up trash in the yard. He wore a pair of coveralls when he was doing his work stoking a wood burning furnace in the cellar of the church and raking up the yard. The ladies of the parish were worried about him not getting enough to eat or eating the right food.

The Heath family stayed in Skagway for approximately a year after Bishop O'Flanagan's retirement in June 1968. No scandals are documented as happening in the Catholic church of Skagway while the Heath family resided there, but 1967-1969 was the time when massive changes began to be instituted in virtually all the Catholic churches in the world. The only other observation is that the small Skagway church may have had no resident pastor during this time, because in 1991 the parish was said to be served by visiting priests.

ANCHORAGE/EAGLE RIVER/WASILLA: The Heath family lived in Anchorage for only a short time at their friend's house, so it appears likely they left the Catholic Church while living in Eagle River and Wasilla (although earlier damage to their faith may have occurred while they lived in Skagway). Did the Heath family encounter something scandalous or destructive of faith in the Anchorage diocese when they moved there in 1969, especially after they moved to Eagle River and then to the Wasilla?

I wonder if part of the answer might be Fr. (Msgr) Frank Murphy who worked in parishes around Anchorage from 1960 to 1985. In 2004 a high school principal in Eagle River publicly accused the priest of a sexually abusive incident committed in 1982. Pat Podvin had exposed the priest in a dramatic television interview, and then committed suicide in 2005. Four other men also have said Murphy abused them as youngsters, including Podvin's older brother Kent. Here is an excerpt of the sad article from the Anchorage Daily News :

On Feb. 6, 2003, Podvin appeared in a televised interview with Channel 2's Maria Downey and declared he had been sexually abused as an 18-year-old by Monsignor Frank Murphy, a priest who worked in parishes around Anchorage from 1960 to 1985. Podvin said he was going public because the Anchorage Archdiocese had failed to acknowledge that any local priest had sexually abused youngsters here, and he was also critical of retired Archbishop Francis Hurley, to whom he complained about Murphy in 1982 but who never personally responded afterward until after he went public.

The appalling story of Fr. Murphy's sexual assaults of young boys in the Anchorage Archdiocese over many years is told in gross detail in another article from the Anchorage Daily News. One wonders if Sarah Heath's older brother, who would have been ten years old in 1972, encountered this abusive priest.

For myself, I likely would not have stayed active in any Anchorage Catholic church if I had had to live under Archbishop Francis T. Hurley who began his rule in Juneau in 1971 and then was appointed to Anchorage in 1976. The Woodstock Theological Center identifies Francis T. Hurley of the Anchorage Archdiocese as one of the 15 Archbishops recommended to the Pope for appointment by the infamous Jean Jadot, the Vatican's apostolic delegate to the U.S in the 1970s:

Under Jadot, 15 archbishops were appointed: William D. Borders to Baltimore, Patrick F. Flores to San Antonio, Peter L. Gerety to Newark, James A. Hickey to Washington, Raymond G. Hunthausen to Seattle, Francis T. Hurley to Anchorage, Oscar H. Lipscomb to Mobile, Edward A. McCarthy to Miami, John L. May to St. Louis, Edward T. O'Meara to Indianapolis, John R. Quinn to San Francisco, John R. Roach to St. Paul, Charles A. Salatka to Oklahoma City, Robert Sanchez to Santa Fe, and Rembert G. Weakland to Milwaukee.

Traditional Catholics recognize many of the above archbishops as clear enemies of the Catholic Church. The actions of these archbishops resulted in massive defections from the Catholic church in the 1970s and 1980s--both of priests and people. Fortunately, these archbishops have been replaced and the Catholic church is beginning to grow again in spirituality and numbers.

So what did the Heath's do with regard to their religious practices in the mid to late 1970's? The Johnson biography states: "With or without her husband, Sally bundled up the kids and took them to church every Sunday for morning and evening services and most Wednesdays too." Of course, that reference was to the Assemblies of God church--not a Catholic church.

Obviously, only the Heath family can answer the question of why they abandoned the Catholic church in the 1970s. I hope they identify their reasons as they understood them at the time they joined the Assemblies of God church in Wasilla.

**Photograph of little Sarah Heath is reprinted with express permission from the biography by Kaylene Johnson published by Epicenter Press of Alaska-- SARAH: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment Upside Down. This photograph is copyright 2008 by Chris and Sally Heath who reserve all rights; please don't republish photograph elsewhere on the internet without obtaining their express permission in advance.

Gardening for Deer

2008-09-17T17:41:00.007-05:00

This year, the garden has a bumper crop -- of DEER! I don't see them in the day, but they turn on the backyard light at night. The deer I saw at 3:15 am was ambling along the fence where I planted new thornless blackberries this spring.

The evidence of deer is reflected in these photos of destruction in my garden, vineyard, and orchard.

1. Thornless blackberry plants which have had to regrow their leaves several times this summer after being eaten by deer.

2. Concord grape vines with many missing leaves that were munched by deer during the past three weeks.

3. Apple tree with bottom apples and leaves that are gone. Yes, some of those lower-hanging apples were eaten by grandchildren, but not all. Even the antleered one [NOT a grandchild!] is willing to come out from hiding to eat the apples!

Proposed Revisions to the Novus Ordo Mass

2008-09-14T10:50:00.003-05:00

The Ordo Missae White Book (OMWB) published by ICEL (marked "Study Text Only") was posted on the American Catholic Bishops website over a month ago. I've briefly looked at these proposed modifications to the English translation of the Sacred Liturgy of the Mass.

Here's an abbreviated list of my complaints about the Novus Ordo Mass (NOM) and how/if the OMWB proposes to fix the problems. [A prior post discussed the serious deficiencies of the NOM and gives a key reference.]

The NOM English"formula of general confession" is a very poor and virtually unrecognizable translation of the Latin original which it was supposed to follow. OMWB proposes a somewhat better wording, including correctly adding "through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault..."
The NOM Consecration of Jesus' blood uses the words "for all" while all extant versions of the New Testament (over 20) translate Christ's words as "for many." OMWB corrects this extremely serious problem by replacing "for all" with "for many."
The NOM-introduced "Mystery of Faith" proclaimed by the priest immediately after the Consecration distracts focus from the True Presence of Jesus on the altar. OMWB proposes no change and leaves the people's acclamations to refer to Jesus' future coming at the end of the world and ignoring the fact that He is now present.
The NOM-introduced "Sign of Peace" distracts from the True Presence of Jesus on the altar, especially because it is placed between the Consecration and Communion. OMWB makes the "Sign of Peace" optional, but does not propose moving it to the beginning of Mass.
The NOM-eliminated Last Gospel (John 1:1 thru 1:14) no longer instructs Catholics with key truths about Jesus' Divinity. OMWB does not propose restoring the Last Gospel to the Mass.

The ICEL-recommended changes approved by Rome ,and now being considered by the American bishops, are first attempts to rectify the disastrous changes to the Mass that occurred after Vatican II, and I applaud this start. But because other serious issues remain in the Novus Ordo Mass, I will continue to attend the old Latin Mass.

How do You Return to the Church?

2008-09-05T21:36:00.003-05:00

Many Catholics have fallen away from believing in and practicing their faith during the past 40 years. More and more are finding their way back home, but some wonder how difficult it is to return and what procedures must be followed.

Several years ago I listened to Jack Cashill give a public speech in which he talked about returning to the Catholic Church after an absence of many years. He described meeting a good priest at a reception and learning what it would take to return to the faith of his fathers.

Does anyone know the simple answer the priest gave him? Hint: it takes only about fifteen minutes, and afterwards, the reinstated Catholic knows he is far more favored and blessed by God than the long-time faithful Catholic in the next pew.

Answer: The only thing that is necessary to return to grace and truth in the Catholic faith is to go to confession, which means to be sorrowful for your sins, admit your sins to a priest, and do the penance that the priest gives you. Is it difficult to remember sins committed over 10, 30, and even 50 years ago? Not too bad if all you have to do is answer the priest's questions. Jack said the priest who admitted him back in the Church and heard his confession simply asked him how many times he had committed particular sins.

Priests know how difficult it is for a person to confess their sins after an extended time because memory fails and there may be embarrassment. That is why the priest asked Jack Cashill how many times he had committed a particular sin. The audience laughed with humble self-awareness when he admitted "about 1,300 times, Father!"

I'd like to personally welcome home all our lost brothers and sisters. I know you've been through hell during your time away from the City of God [St. Augustine].

Do You See the Difference?

2008-09-03T10:54:00.004-05:00

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for this observation.

Learning the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite Mass

2008-09-03T10:22:00.003-05:00

The Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) has been training many priests during the past year to offer the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite Mass. I've been wondering about the results, and found a good example. A favorite blogger and science-fiction author and new Catholic (Easter 2008), John C. Wright, identified a particularly good sermon and I was curious about the homilist:

One Fr. John De Celles [STL], speaking in Old St. Mary's Church this weekend, delivered a homily to rebuke Nancy Pelosi, who publically offered a gross distortion of the Catholic teaching on aborticide. It is, if you will, the modern version of St. John the Baptist rebuking Herod, another figure who saw nothing wrong in slaying innocent children.

Wright noted that the entire sermon given on Labor Day weekend has been posted on the web. I read it and am very impressed. So who is Fr. John De Celles whose sermons are so good that one will be picked up and reprinted by the well-respected National Review magazine?

The current Bulletin of St. Mary's Church reports that Fr. De Celles now offers the old Latin Mass in Alexandria, VA:

You may recall that last summer Father attended a week-long seminar to learn how to say this Mass. He attended another seminar this summer to both review the rubrics of the Traditional Mass and to focus on the High Mass. In addition he put a lot of time and energy into preparing for [offering the Extraordinary Form on] August 15th.

Those efforts paid off in many ways. We expected some people would attend the evening Mass on the 15th simply because it fit their schedule. We did realize a few might have had no idea this would be the Traditional Mass despite weeks of announcing that it would be. And we thought a number would attend because it was a sung High Mass.

We estimate that there were 600 people here that night. The overwhelming response was a positive one, actually an extremely positive one, which was wonderful to hear. It provided, as we hoped, an opportunity for parishioners to experience the beauty of the “Old Mass.”

The FSSP priests are seeing a lot of good results from their training other priests to offer the old Latin Mass. In addition, I've noted over the years that the best prepared homilies seem to come from priests who are favorable to the old Mass.

Todd Palin--American Manhood at its Best

2008-09-01T08:45:00.006-05:00

What's the story behind the Alaska governor with an approval rating of 89 to 93 percent? A good part of it has to be her husband, Todd Palin, who is discussed in ALASKA magazine of February 2008. Here are a few quotes from the cover story, "Palin's Way," by Melissa DeVaughn on "America's Hottest Governor."

It's her favorite room [kitchen] in the large but unpretentious home her husband, Todd, designed and built five years ago.... Todd's floatplane is docked just a hundred yards away [on Lake Lucille] at the edge of the neatly mown lawn....Having such a high-powered wife does not faze Todd, who refers to himself jokingly as the "First Dude."

While Sarah does the work of governor, Todd remains the quintessential Alaska man. He stays busy with his week-on, week-off job with British Petroleum on the North Slope. He's also one of the state's best snowmachiners, and has won the grueling 2,000-mile Tesoro Iron Dog race four times. In the summer, Todd fishes a commercial site in Bristol Bay and spends time flying his airplane, a hobby he has enjoyed for 20 years.

Having his wife become governor changed the Palin household, he said, but not in a monumental way. "Her schedule dictates my schedule, but with her being mayor for so many years, we were already used to it," he said. "The kids are very adaptable. There are thousands of Alaska families that adapt, whether you're a contract guy who's gone for the summer season, a sloper or in the military, we have a lot of families who don't have the 9-to-5 schedule."

On this day, Todd Palin is preparing to change into work clothes and help oversee construction of a community playground in Juneau. As First Dude, he is a champion of vocational education for Alaska students. "I'm a product of on-the-job training that was offered to me in 1989. And growing up in the high schools that I attended, we had great shops, mechanic shops and carpenter shops. In recent years, that has not been a high priority, but that is coming back. So I've told the commissioner of labor, 'Wherever you can use me in that role, I am there for you'."

"My slope job has provided for my family," he said. "when an opportunity is given to an individual, it is what that person does with it that matters. As I travel the state, that's a big concern, getting kids motivated. I am meeting kids that can't read a tape measure or just don't want to work, so it's the same message wherever we go. Step out. Once you step out and are given an opportunity, you can change a life"

Todd's family is spread from Bristol Bay to Homer.... when [daughter] Bristol revealed she spent $20 on leg waxing--'That was supposed to be gas money,' Todd Palin said disapprovingly [and Sarah Palin concurred!]

So what I learned about Todd Palin is that he is at least as good an individual as Sarah Palin--likely even better as he is a very strong and loving husband and father! The governor of Alaska seems to know that too, as she introduced Todd to the country as "the man she admires the most in this world."

Here are some other things I've found out about Todd Mitchell Palin in searching the web:

One-eighth Native Alaskan (born 1965 in Dillingham, Alaska)
Grandmother grew up in a traditional Yup'ik Eskimo house in Bristol Bay
Graduated Wasilla High School, followed by college work
Commercial salmon fisherman on the Nushagak River in Bristol Bay
Coach of kids' hockey and basketball teams
Member of the United Steelworkers Union
Rugged individual who works at blue-collar job on the North Slope
Avoids conflict of interest, including resigning as oil production supervisor when his wife was elected governor [later resumed non-conflicting labor in oil field)
Four-time winner of the Iron Dog, the 2,000-mile snowmachine race (longest in the world) from Big Lake to Nome along the Iditarod Trail and then on to Fairbanks
Prefers to vote as an independent
Is reliable and trusted ["I have to trust my life in his hands, and I do, because he can still think when he's dehydrated and tired," says his partner in the Iron Dog]
Has a lot of willpower and doesn't quit [During 2008 Iron Dog snowmachine race, was thrown 70 feet and broke his arm, yet finished to end up in fourth place]
Committed to loving new life [When he found wife's recent pregnancy would result in a baby with Down Syndrome, commented “We shouldn’t be asking, ‘Why us?’ We should be saying, ‘Well, why not us?’”]
Helps others even when seriously inconvenienced [In last year's Iron Dog, Palin and his teammate helped a racer with broken ribs reach the next checkpoint before heading on to victory]
Won't spend money he doesn't have [Eloped with Sarah because her family had a bad fishing year and a $35 marriage was all that could be afforded]
Rock and pillar of his family ["He can go on just an hour or two of sleep a night. He says, 'I can sleep when I die,' " said Sarah Palin. "There is no way I could have done this job [as governor] without his tremendous contributions to the home life. He's able to keep it organized, like a well-oiled machine."]
Takes his family's safety and welfare seriously: "In 2005, before Palin ran for office, the Palin family accused Wooten [Sarah Palin's brother-in-law] of drinking a beer while in his patrol car, illegal hunting and firing a Taser at his 11-year-old stepson. The Palins also claimed Wooten threatened to kill Sarah Palin's father.... More recently, Todd Palin said, he took his concerns over the governor's safety directly to Monegan. But he said he never told anyone to fire Wooten." Another site adds, "At one point, Todd Palin brought information prepared by himself and a private investigator to Monegan." To see why Todd was alarmed, see the background information supplied in the Ethics Disclosure Form filed in this 'Troopergate' case.

Personally I applaud Todd Palin for being the best example of American manhood that I can imagine.

Gov. Sarah Palin - Experience Needed?

2008-08-30T13:42:00.007-05:00

Gov. Sarah Palin is clearly well-liked by the people of Alaska because she has an 80+ percent favorable rating. But does she have adminstrative and foreign policy experience? Clearly, Gov. Palin is a very competent administrator, with more leadership experience than Barack Obama and Joe Biden put together. Here's an abbreviated list of past and current leadership duties of Gov. Sarah Palin:

Managing the extensive resources of State and City personnel and offices
Appointing qualified people to carry out the laws and direct the policies of Alaskan city and state government
Conducting public relations campaigns to manage and market Alaskan resources
Evaluating and signing (or vetoing) bills passed by Alaska legislators
Serving as the commander-in-chief of the Alaska National Guard
Preparing and delivering reports on Alaska to the Legislature and to other interested parties
Estimating the amounts of money required to be raised by taxation, preparing and recommending City and State budgets, and holding firm to her goal of financial balancing of income and expenses
Assuring the Alaskan people of honesty and ethics in State government

A comparative list of experience and achievements between Palin and Obama is given here. Moreover, I don't worry about whether Vice-president Sarah Palin has a lot of experience in foreign policy, because all administrators of complex institutions rely on knowledgeable advisors and consultants. U.S. foreign policy decisions always are preceeded by well-studied proposed policy documents, followed by meetings with key advisors whose differing perspectives create the necessary background for a final decision by the President. [One of my distant cousins is one of those policy advisors, in that some of his documents dealing with the Middle East have made it to the desk of the President.]

Gov. Sarah Palin already is quite knowledgeable about China and other PAC-RIM countries that buy the majority of Alaskan products. She also is highly concerned about new Russian interests and impacts, including near the North Pole. Alaska has recently been impacted by unauthorized Russian flights that intrude into U.S. airspace.

My personal belief is that McCain's four-time bout with melanoma eventually will become a five-time bout and he will not survive his complete term. That would put Gov. Sarah Palin into the White House. Here's what our oldest son wrote about Gov. Sarah Palin:

"She appears to be the most 'likable' of the four major Pres/Vice Pres candidates. This may have been a stroke of genius on the part of McCain, time will tell. The democrats' reaction strikes me as confused and ridiculous so far. I don't think they were ready. She is not the type of person you can attack head-on and walk away looking very good. I'm feeling better about the Republican ticket's chances in November already. Looking toward the future, I'd give her a greater possiblity of being President of the United States someday than Hillary."

Vice-president Sarah Palin will need to select good advisors, just as President Reagan did in the 1980's. For starters, I'd recommend Pat Buchanan who seems to have some of the best insights on foreign policy, including Russian, Chinese, and Middle East problems.

Demagogy, Change, and Utopian Promises

2008-08-28T22:06:00.008-05:00

H.L. Mencken was right when he defined a demagogue as "one who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." I might change that definition a little: "one who makes promises he knows can't be fulfilled to TV viewers he knows to be forgetful idiots."

I listened to part of Barack Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention and suggest people should read his speech, rather than just listen to it. Obama promised everything but the moon to the American people, and I was reminded of Fidel Castro as he came to power many years ago.

Obama is a fantastically good speaker whose impassioned public speeches appeal to the emotions, fears, and expectations of many people. Here are a few excerpts of promises made tonight by Obama--unrealistic Utopian promises. Notice that Obama mostly uses the personal pronoun "I" in his promises for change. [Do people no longer remember the old saying, "Out of the frying pan into the fire!" meaning to go from a bad situation to one that's even worse?]

So let me spell out exactly what that change would mean if I am president...
I will cut taxes -- cut taxes -- for 95 percent of all working families. Because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle-class. [How does Obama define "working families" and "middle-class." "Economy like this" also gives him an 'out'. ]

And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as president: in 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East. [Yes, but please tell us how much less energy our country will be using at the end of ten years?]
I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. And I'll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy -- wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and 5 million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced. [This paragraph should be re-read a third time! Does Obama have plans to unseat Congress, control wages, run businesses, and add 5 million new jobs to the federal payroll?]

Now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation to provide every child a world-class education... [If w-c implies the best education that money can buy, not every student can or will absorb a w-c education.]

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.... [What's wrong with current teachers? Does Obama really mean an ARMY of new teachers drafted into federal government service?]
Now is the time to finally keep the promise of affordable, accessible health care for every single American. If you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums. [Just like in Canada, where my friend's father would have died because it takes months to get Canadian permission for open-heart surgery. Instead, he came to San Antonio for the surgery.] If you don't, you'll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves. [Get ready for more medical tourism.] And as someone who watched my mother argue with insurance companies while she lay in bed dying of cancer, I will make certain those companies stop discriminating against those who are sick and need care the most.

Now is the time to help families with paid sick days and better family leave, because nobody in America should have to choose between keeping their jobs and caring for a sick child or ailing parent. [Who's going to pay? Private companies already are struggling to stay alive while competing with India, China, and other developing countries.]

Now is the time to change our bankruptcy laws, so that your pensions are protected ahead of CEO bonuses.... [Translated: Bankruptcy laws need to be more lenient so that people who have spent themselves into deep debt can be relieved of their promises to pay what they borrowed. Uninsured medical expenses will be used to justify the easing of bankruptcy laws, although the changes will apply to every debtor who simply bought too much using their credit card.]

Kansas City Air Show

2008-08-25T08:45:00.008-05:00

It's been many, many years since I attended an air show, and I was certainly impressed with this 2008 display of planes and aerial acrobatics at the Downtown Airport. The show started at 10:00 am and we didn't leave until after 4 pm.

I told one of our sons that the plane I was most impressed with was the jet-powered sailplane owned by Bob Carlton, a rocket scientist in Albuquerque, NM. The sailplane's two small jet engines were designed for smaller radio-controlled airplanes, but Bob mounted the engines in a retractable pod on top an Italian Alisport glider. The engines are powered up whenever the plane takes off or performs aerobatics near the ground.

The grandkids were most impressed by the NOISE of the military jets, including a U.S. Navy F-18 that dived and soared with thunderous blasts to bend, if not break, your eardrums. Yes, we used earplugs, but it's hard keeping them in young grandkids.

The best aerobatics had to be Sean Tucker in his Oracle Challenger II. I've never seen anything like the movements his plane performs in the sky. The bright red plane was doing stunts that are very difficult to do because the plane is designed to be quite stable and it resists being put into certain flight configurations, such as tail-down falls or slow forward movements with the nose up (continuous stall?) to make the plane appear to act much like a helicopter.

Corruptio Optima Pessima (of an Ex-Nun)

2008-08-17T09:39:00.008-05:00

Stories that teach well can be either positive or negative. A negative learning story is embedded in the recent obituary of an ex-Catholic nun who appears to illustrate the Latin phrase--Corruptio Optima Pessima ("corruption of the best is the worst"). [I've heard this phrase used to indicate the primacy of the Catholic Church because when you see members of the Church fall--they fall much further downward into a pit of errors.]

The obituary states that the woman was a nun for 25 years before marrying and joining a Unitarian Universalist "church". I've checked the blog of the "pastor" to see a blasphemous post on "God of Queer, Transgressive Spaces." Not surprisingly, "Pastor Sean" has a "partner" and a substance-abusing son.

Why do I focus on the ugly, the blasphemous, and the loss of faith of a particular ex-nun? Because this falling away is only one example of so many other losses of Catholic religious and laity that occurred within twenty years of the significant destruction of Catholic liturgy and practice following Vatican II.

We often talk about "loss statistics" in the Church, but we can't forget each one of these losses is the sad story of an individual person who lost their way. Back in the 1970's, losses became so common that people just accepted it. The local parish lost at least three assistant priests who abandoned their vocations over a less than five year period. It became a joke.

I remember making Legion of Mary visits to fallen-away Catholics in the 1970s when it was common to hear "The Catholic Church has changed and I don't recognize or believe in it anymore." Then the person would say they weren't attending Church. It didn't seem to matter to them what they believed, which church they attended, or if they attended at all.

This particularly affected children who grew up in the 1970's and 1980's, and the result is that the Catholic Church is now trying to convert (not re-convert) an entire lost generation. The beliefs of older Catholics were also thrown into doubt. One example was a practicing Catholic who accompanied me and another fellow to a Catholic chapel where the Indian god of destruction, Shiva, was being honored. When the priest said his ecumenical gesture was not a problem, my friend abandoned the Catholic Church to join Full Faith Church of Love, a fast-growing evangelical church in Kansas City that became approximately half full of ex-Catholics who rejected the "new catholic church." Terrible, terrible times!

One lady approaching death during the 1970's told me that nothing mattered anymore. Because the Church had changed everything, she no longer believed in the Catholic Church or God's laws or Jesus' resurrection. I talked animatedly with her in her hospital room and insisted that enemies inside the Church were trying to obscure the Church's teachings and destroy Her, and that she should remain constant with what her parents had taught her and what she had learned as a child in Catholic school. I read her obituary about a month later and noted she had been buried at a Catholic Mass, but I never really knew whether she had resumed her beliefs in the Catholic faith.

What should be done about the ex-nun described in this post? I will ask Mary to intercede with Jesus for His mercy on this poor soul who descended into such grave errors. Her life is a chilling example of the many great falls that occurred in the unfortunate years following Vatican II.

China's Image

2008-08-16T21:01:00.005-05:00

Bernardo Cervellera of Asia News writes of Chinese hoaxes at the Olympics to preserve the Chinese image, including:

...the fireworks displays seen on television all over the city were not real, but were generated by computers. The illusion was necessary because on the evening of August 8, the Beijing sky was cloudy and hazy - because of the pollution and heat - and visibility was poor.

The Washington Post also reports that ethnic children were not really members of Chinese ethnic groups, but were actors. [Well, if your historical practice is to deceive, it takes a while to learn to stop the deceptions.]

I often turn into China English TV to see what is going on and if China may be changing for the better (it is, but it takes someone smarter than I am to see how much of the change is both real and good). Invariably their TV ads are directed to showing China as a tourist's paradise with peaceful blue lakes, green forests, scenic mountains, and clean air. Obviously, these are very selective pictures--as is the news that is reported.

A couple of days ago I was surprised that CCTV.COM presented a TV feature on the Catholic Church in Beijing that showed the South Cathedral, including Mass offered by a "patriotic priest." The program was unusual in that it displayed the addresses and telephone numbers of at least five Christian churches in the capitol city.

Retreating to Youth

2008-08-16T18:06:00.006-05:00

This afternoon I pretended to be much younger than I really am (very dangerous!). Two ear buds were inserted and tuned to a local Kansas City country music station while I cleaned the car from top to bottom, just like I might have done 50 years ago (substituting a Sansa mp3 player for the car radio).

So what did I learn? First, I learned my arthritis and other problems don't bother me with lively country music sounding in my head. Second, my car really needs to be cleaned more than once every three years! Third, hazards are associated with ignoring REALITY, as taught by some country songs that I heard.

Country music is usually a good bellwether of civilization (or the lack thereof). One song by Brad Paisley struck me as a sorrowful window into the souls of many young people who (1) are lonely, (2) are unsure of their own worth, (3) want to be more than they are, and (4) are driven to exchange acting for reality.

The lyrics to Paisley's "Online" are sung by an overweight, five-foot-three, asthmatic youth who works at the local pizza place. On MySpace, he pretends to be six-foot-five, lives in Malibu, and drives a Maserati. Obviously, he gets the girls' attention with his lies and exaggerations. When he logs in every night, "I grow another foot and lose a bunch of weight."

Unfortunately, this sung fictional autobiography is typical of many young people today who waste their free time by sitting in front of computers, eating snacks, and making up stories about being someone they are not. I wonder if they can ever stop telling stories when they eventually get a girlfriend and wife. Doesn't anyone ever talk about "bad habits" anymore?

A second song may illustrate the unwillingness of modern souls to accept growing old and the reality of dying. "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven" by Kenny Chesney ends with:

Everybody wanna go to heaven
Hallelujah, let me hear you shout
Everybody wanna go to heaven
But nobody wanna go now
I think I speak for the crowd.

A third song by Rodney Atkins, "Cleaning this Gun (Come on in Boy)", is more my type. A daughter is now old enough for dating and the father recognizes the young man needs a reminder, "she deserves respect, that's what she'll get!" Of course, the father is cleaning his gun as he talks to the boy! There will be REAL consequences if the boy does the wrong thing!

Lastly (if you've gotten this far), P_L_EE_AA_SS_EE listen to the www.GodTube.com music about two roosters walking arm in arm by Lewis and Lewis, two Christian country singers. My husband laughed and laughed--even though this is a very serious song.

Summer Vacation

2008-08-16T17:24:00.005-05:00

My husband really enjoys vacationing in the mountains, his favorite cool place in the hot summertime. This year, the temperature in Kansas City was almost as good as Colorado, so we really didn't need to travel to avoid the heat.

We camped with two of our children and their families which turned out to be a great trip. The kids didn't want to come home!

The most beautiful scenery was on the the gravel road from Paonia Reservoir east to the town of Crested Butte. We saw aspen groves like I've never seen before. See the photo which is meant as a belated "Happy Birthday" card for one of our daughters-in-law!

For me, the best parts of our vacation were climbing to the top of the sand dune, hiking up the side of a steep mountain canyon to reach the top and further to a shaded, woody glen, and finally returning home quickly on a private plane.

Splinters from the True Cross

2008-07-29T22:55:00.006-05:00

When saying the rosary of Our Lady, it is best to meditate on each of the mysteries-- mostly incidents in the life of Jesus. This evening I thought about the fourth sorrowful mystery, "Jesus carries His cross up Calvary." During this painful and difficult journey, Jesus would likely have gotten splinters in his hands from the roughly hewn wood. A good meditation is to compare Jesus' splinters with the splinters we get in our own lives. The lesson is to bear small wounds willingly and silently.

I searched for the type of wood of the cross and found lots of guesses, including olive wood, cedar of Lebanon, cypress, planetree, and dogwood. Yet no ancient resource exists that tells us which kind of wood was used to construct the cross of Jesus Christ.

The old Catholic Encyclopedia identifies the wood as pine, which would have many splinters.

A microscopic examination of the fragments of the Cross scattered through the world in the form of relics reveals the fact that it was made from a pine-tree (Rohault de Fleury, "Mémoire sur les instruments de la Passion", Paris, 1870, 63).

Everything has some very interesting comments about the Aleppo Pine that grows in dry climates in the Mediterranean region.

The Aleppo pine, also known as Jerusalem pine, and its close relative, the Brutian pine, are a fixture in the Mediterranean....

This pine grows rather quickly, reaching a respectable height within five years and eventually growing to a height of about 20m (60'), especially if spaced in parks or reforestation projects. It will live to be about 150 years old. In the wild it's often shorter and stunted specimens can be seen living a precarious existence on steep, rocky inclines. Its timber has been used in construction and shipbuilding since ancient times.

There is one theory that says that the Aleppo pine is the original Christmas tree. That actually makes sense. Although we associate the Christmas tree with the spruce or larch of northern climates and surround it with very un-Mediterranean quantities of snow, the pine was the sacred tree of Attis. Now Attis was a thoroughly solar god, and this widespread evergreen figures prominently in his myth and rites, one of which is the winter solstice feast which Christians adopted early on in their history and long before Christianity spread to northern Europe. In the spring equinox rite a pine was cut down and on it was placed an effigy of the god that was then taken to his mother Cybele. Attis would rise on the third day.

So there you have it. Next time you see a Christmas tree, think of easter bunnies. The pine, either Aleppo or Brutian since the ancients didn't really make the distinction between different conifers, is generally thought to be the "fir" of the Hebrew scriptures and, according to one myth, it was blessed by the infant Jesus when it hid the Holy Family during their flight from Herod. The tree also figured in the rites of Bacchus....

The Aleppo pine is a tree used in the service of false gods that may have been used to crucify the real God-man, Jesus Christ. Don't forget that "groves" is used 24 times in the Old Testament to describe the the outdoor places located in or near trees where pagan altars and images were displayed and worshipped. The wooden cross of Jesus is a great sign of contradiction, even more so when we consider the history of the Aleppo pine and Jesus' sacrificial death on the cross.

Kansas City Catholic Conversion!

2008-07-20T17:44:00.003-05:00

Kansas City Catholic has converted to Kansas Catholic! Just to let you know my favorite blogger, WOLFTRACKER, is actively blogging at his new location.

Down Syndrome Baby?

2008-07-13T20:57:00.012-05:00

The pregnant wife was approaching the age when she knew birth defects became more common. It was impossible to ignore the information that babies born to older mothers are slightly more likely to have Down Syndrome with consequent genetic abnormalities.

Down syndrome is characterized by a combination of birth defects, including some degree of mental retardation, characteristic facial features and, often, heart defects, visual and hearing impairment, and other health problems. One of the first signs of Down Syndrome is a single crease across the palm of a baby's hand, rather than the child's palm having the typical three creases.

Downs' Syndrome children are usually the most loving and joyful children parents will have, as The Catholic Down Syndrome Society and others will confirm. I remember a woman introducing her daughter who told us a little about herself--what she liked and how much she loved everything! What came across so forcefully for me was how happy the daughter was to be alive. The mother was an extremely bright career woman who admitted she had never really grown a "sensitive heart" until her Down Syndrome daughter came into her life.

Yet every family wants healthy children, and this particular family of my story prayed diligently for a successful pregnancy and a healthy baby. The father was especially worried about his wife and their child in her womb and so prayed the rosary every day on his way to and from work.

When the baby was born, both mother and father were quite apprehensive when the infant girl had a single crease in her palm. Their worries heightened when the doctor expressed his concern that the baby's heart had a hole that had not closed properly. Even though the baby appeared outwardly normal, everyone was concerned that the little girl had Down Syndrome.

The little baby grew and is now a talkative, energetic, and bright cherub who is the delight of her parents and siblings. Her heart closed properly without medical intervention within three months of her birth. The single crease in the palm--well, it's still there but there appears to be no impairments to the child's health or intelligence.

I tell this true story to show that small miracles happen quite often to people who pray regularly and who are generous with God. They learn that God's generosity will never be outdone by their own. "Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened..."

Not every story is like the above one. For another story about a Down Syndrome baby born recently to Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, see here. I was especially impressed by her husband's comments: "We shouldn't be asking, 'Why us?' We should be saying, 'Well, why not us?'" I guess God had other plans for Gov. Palin.

Papa Benedict XVI, the Juggler

2008-07-10T20:11:00.005-05:00

If there has ever been a master juggler of a Pope, Papa Benedict XVI is It. Think about how many fiery hot rings he has been given to juggle--all at the same time! And not one of these can be dropped without serious spiritual and historical repercussions. At times it seems Pope Benedict is juggling the entire future of world history in his hands, as he attempts to:

Restore the liturgy
Inspire and train youth to follow Jesus Christ
Continue dialogue with the Orthodox, especially to build up a Christian defense against Secularism that is responsible for the death of Christian culture in western countries
Integrate the Chinese Patriotic Church without offending the long-time loyal Underground Church in China
Resolve the irregular situation of the Society of St. Pius X
Clean the Vatican house of insubordination
Deal with the sexual scandals caused by priests
Strengthen the hierarchy with firmly Catholic bishops
Halt the progress of militant Islam
Welcome traditionalists of other churches that oppose women priests and homosexuality
Affirm and promote the Church's positions on a multitude of important religious and social issues
Write a new (third) encyclical that will be issued this fall

I believe that if anyone on earth needs our prayers at this time, it is 82-year old Papa Benedict XVI. I don't see how he can avoid dropping one of these heavy, hot rings unless he receives the benefit of your many prayers.

Miracle of a Praying Woman

2008-07-09T18:18:00.003-05:00

Several times in my life, I have seen very good things happen because of special spiritual circumstances and much intense prayer. This is one story, and several others will follow.

The old woman had lost most of her sight in one eye because of 'dry' macular degeneration. Once I asked her to cover her good eye and tell me about the vehicle ahead of us. She said she could see only to the sides, and couldn't see anything in front. Actually a big yellow school bus was right in front of us!

Eventually the lady's good eye began to deteriorate due to age-related 'wet' macular degeneration (wet AMD). Several laser surgeries were performed to stop the bleeding, but the disease was clearly becoming worse. The poor woman was very distraught because she knew she was going completely blind, and the doctor confirmed that the vision in her remaining eye was now worse than 20/500.

The old woman told me she was not able to read her daily prayers which she kept in a 3-ring binder. Someone had photocopied and significantly enlarged the print of the prayers, but even the very large letters were now indistinguishable. One of her daily prayers was to retain enough sight so that she could continue to read her prayers every morning.

A new treatment with Macugen injections had just been announced and the doctor decided to try the drug on the almost blind woman. The genetically engineered treatment is considered very helpful to halt further progress of wet AMD. However, the doctor noted that patients who start Macugen after wet AMD becomes advanced (as was this woman's disease) cannot expect much if any improvement.

After the course of treatment was completed, the praying woman had recovered most of her sight--better than 20/60 in the wet AMD-affected eye. The doctor marveled at her miraculous improvement and called her a "poster child" for Macugen. He said none of his other 60 patients had recovered their sight as well as this very old woman had.

Strangely, the elderly lady says that while she can now easily read her prayers, she still has a hard time seeing other things. My own opinion is that God gave her back the only sight she really needs.

Crime: Not Reported; Not Punished

2008-06-29T21:30:00.005-05:00

It's not surprising that crime statistics in the U.S. show crimes against people and property are diminishing! A couple of personally-observed incidents make me realize that more and more crimes are not being reported to the police. These stories and other factors make me believe that significantly over 50 percent of crime is now unreported.

Add to that the problem of relatively few captures of criminals and even fewer convictions, and you realize a huge and growing problem is not being dealt with except through the privatization of security. Pay da' man and he will guard your property and person!

[The attached chart shows 2-year average data and identifies "Violent" crimes as including: rape/sexual assault, robbery, aggravated and simple assault. "Property" crimes include: household burglary, theft, and motor vehicle theft.]

Personally, I just learned that all U.S. mail containing economic stimulus checks sent to residents of a nursing home was opened by the nursing home, even though the mail was individually addressed to the residents. One nursing home resident wondered what had happened to her missing check and asked the bookkeeper, who then pulled the stack of checks out of her drawer. All Treasury checks had been removed from their original envelopes.

In the second situation, a "bad" guy drove three times into a fence and tore it down, resulting in over a hundred dollars damage each time. It appeared the man had to be drunk, on drugs, or typically drove in a fit of anger.

Why were these two crimes not reported? The nursing home resident whose check was intercepted fears retribution if she complains or reports the crime. She knows the employees are in total control of her life, and she can't afford to make enemies.

The old lady with the broken fence fears the man who tore down her fence, wonders what good it will do to report the incident to the police, and observes that homeowners' insurance rates will be raised if she reports the damage. She also believes that justice cannot be done because the guy has no money.

The two incidents and other factors inspired me to research the topic of Vigilantism, one of the most interesting subjects I've ever read on Wikipedia. [Note that the Wikipedia definition defines "Vigilante" as a single person. This definition is not historically sound because Vigilantism typically is implemented by committees or groups of citizens. For example, see the example of the citizens of Skidmore, MO.]

Vigilantism can be thought of as the insurance of justice outside of relying solely on government institutions. One way is through the use of private security firms. Private security officers are paid to both deter and capture criminals, but they have no responsibility for insuring justice after arrest of criminals.

Several years ago during Christmas sales, I saw two private security agents tackle a guy running from a store with a piece of electronic equipment in his arms. I found myself clapping as the "bad" guy got caught. Most interestingly, virtually all the many people in the vicinity ended up clapping too! People want justice, and right now very little justice exists--for a multitude of reasons.

How close are we to when Vigilantism will necessarily grow and possibly flourish? Certainly, a Vigilante Committee composed of responsible citizens always takes second place to law and order agencies established by the government. If criminal environments are successfully dealt with by government institutions, civilization has a firm foundation, and vigilantism is unwarranted.

Vigilantism may be necessary when a very large proportion of crime succeeds without interference from law and order agencies. Read the history references in the Wikipedia article before deciding. Especially see here, here, and here.

Damian Thompson of The Telegraph

2008-06-29T20:24:00.004-05:00

I'm going to scan more frequently the short summaries of British news regarding the Roman Catholic Church written by Damian Thompson. Back in late 2007, he reported Pope Benedict XVI was moving faster to accomplish "breathtakingly ambitious" goals. Recent events seem to bear out Damian Thompson's 2007 analysis, including:

It's shaming to have to admit that the bishops of my own Church are the chief obstacle to a significant move of Anglo-Catholic clergy and lay people into full communion with the Holy See - but that's the way it was last time, in the early 1990s, and it's still the case today.

Fortunately, Pope Benedict XVI is more open to experiment than Pope John Paul II. He is taking a close interest in the progress of the rebel Traditional Anglican Communion towards reunion - a process which is under the control of the Congregration for the Doctrine of the Faith, not the Vatican's woolly-minded ecumenists.

I can't betray confidences, but my advice is: look at the new church structures, such as Old Rite parishes [see June 29 DT post], that the Pope is already encouraging, and ask yourself how those models might be adapted for the use of former Anglicans.

Add Damian Thompson to your blog list.

After Archbishop Burke Goes to Rome ?

2008-06-27T19:21:00.004-05:00

Lots of sites, both blogs and news media, comment on the appointment of Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis to head the Vatican's "Supreme Court." His new title is Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura and he will be moving to Rome. A St. Louis Newspaper says:

Burke said he will leave St. Louis for Rome at the end of August, but that because St. Louis is an archdiocese, the Vatican would be apt to name a successor soon. He would not mention candidates but said he would consult privately with Benedict to recommend bishops who would fit well in St. Louis.

So, "Who will be the next Archbishop of St. Louis?" My own opinion is that either one of the two Kansas City Bishops could easily be chosen to return to St. Louis from whence they came. Both men are tall and strong Catholic bishops who have recently and successfully instituted reforms to strengthen the Church in the two dioceses of Greater Kansas City.

Their efforts have resulted in creating a new program to confront the evil of pornography, significantly cleaning up two diocesan newspapers of unorthodox opinions, instituting a major annual celebration of the Holy Eucharist, supporting Catholic communities that treasure the old Latin Mass, reforming Catholic education by appointing new and energetic personnel faithful to Catholic doctrine, etc.

Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City, MO is a likely candidate because of his public relations/news media background that makes him an interesting and articulate leader, and who has been mostly successful in rebuilding the Kansas City diocese with loyal Catholics. Here's how Rocco Palmo of "Whispers in the Loggia" described Bishop Finn in his confrontation with uncooperative liberals who once controlled diocesan structures when Finn first came to Kansas City:

And anyone who has an eagerness for all-out warfare in Kansas City doesn't know Bob Finn and how he operates. He's way too smart -- and effective -- to be a polemicist. In his prior incarination as editor of the St. Louis Review, Finn did block an ad for a talk being given at St. Louis University by John Allen because of the editorial stances of Allen's employer. It caused a similar tempest in a teapot at the time in the Rome of the West.

If anything, it seems, the more constructive (and, ergo, preferred) strategy would be not to defang the Reporter but to build up the Catholic Key as a faithful, well-crafted, informative and orthodox alternative to the gang down the street. That'd be very much in keeping with Finn's earthy, nonconfrontational style and his savvy for building the church in its best light. If anyone could pull it off credibly, it's Finn.

The other Kansas City Bishop is Archbishop Joseph Naumann, who perhaps has the better chance of replacing Archbishop Burke. This affable St. Louis native is just as good a writer as Bishop Finn, and he has shown substantial strength and wisdom in publicly instructing Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius to abstain from receiving Holy Communion until she repents.

Sebelius is a strong pro-abortion "Catholic" who was the featured speaker last year at Planned Parenthood's annual fundraising banquet. [Planned Parenthood is the biggest abortion provider in the U.S.] Gov. Sebelius is considered a front-runner for selection by Senator Obama for his vice-president.

Both Bishop Finn and Archbishop Naumann are gentlemen committed to the Catholic faith. St. Louis could not do better than to receive either of them as the new Archbishop of St. Louis. Of course, many, many Kansas City Catholics would mourn either one of them leaving us.

Mother of 11 Children Needs Your Prayers

2008-06-26T08:21:00.002-05:00

Someone just sent me an email that reports a wonderful Kansas City mother of eleven children (a baby newly born on June 13) is now hospitalized with blood clots in the lungs. These clots can be life threatening and the treatment can be long and even require surgery, according to the NIH.

Please pray for R.R. whose family needs her so badly. She is a convert who attends the Latin Mass in Kansas City, and I'm going to ask Blessed Michael Davies to intercede with God for her return to good health.

Minimum Agreement? Assimilation or Union?

2008-06-24T15:00:00.004-05:00

The five conditions in Cardinal Hoyos' letter of seem carefully worded to allow the FSSPX to accept a minimum proposed agreement with Pope Benedict XVI--perhaps a first step. As translated by Rorate Coeli, here are the five conditions outlined by Cardinal Hoyos and my personal comments:

1. The commitment to a response proportionate to the generosity of the Pope.

Clearly this first of five conditions is not very specific. The "generosity of the Pope" is not specified, but action(s) are implied, possibly even a personal prelature for the FSSPX. Thus, the response of the FSSPX needs to consist of charitable ("generous") actions, as distinguished from words/agreements. Actions could include spiritual activities and gifts, or simply provide a basis for a future, more detailed, agreement with Rome. The FSSPX might also offer priestly support to selected papal endeavors, such as a special mission for conversion of Islam. Actually, my interpretation of this condition is that the Pope already has recommended to the FSSPX the particular response that he wants from a particular generous action to begin a more complete union into the framework of the Church.

2. The commitment to avoid every public intervention which does not respect the person of the Holy Father and which may be negative to ecclesial charity.

This one might be more difficult for the FSSPX, because it states the FSSPX should respect "the person," rather than "the office," of the Holy Father. Other questions arise. What if the present Pope is succeeded by Paul VII? Does the commitment attach to the next Pope, too? The width of this condition implies that under no circumstances can the Pope be publicly criticized! However, this condition always must be interpreted in the Scriptural framework of St. Paul's criticism of Pope St. Peter.

The words "which may be negative to ecclesial charity" is another picky point. Why did this condition not say "which is negative..."? Some commenters have complained that this condition for reconciliation simply says that the FSSPX must "shut up!" in the future. No more complaining about how the Pope is running the Church. BUT, the condition doesn't say that the Vatican bureaucracy cannot be publicly criticized. Mmmm?

3. The commitment to avoid the claim to a Magisterium superior to the Holy Father and to not propose the Fraternity in contraposition to the Church.

I fail to see how this condition would be a problem for the FSSPX because they don't claim to be a "super Magisterium." Rather, they rightly state that all teachings of the Holy Father must conform to the traditional teaching of the Church. If I were in the FSSPX, I could sign this point without any qualms whatsoever because the Church with its Papacy is what I defend. Modernist churches are another matter, so the third condition wouldn't restrict the FSSPX in proselytizing members of church communities in apostasy.

4. The commitment to display the will to act honestly in full ecclesial charity and in respect for the authority of the Vicar of Christ.

The fourth condition appears to be rather nebulous, but I suspect the FSSPX knows what is meant. Nothing here seems to be a real problem, unless one wants to get 'real particular'.

5. The commitment to respect the date - fixed for the end of the month of June - to respond positively. This shall be a condition necessary and required as an immediate preparation for adhesion to accomplish full communion.

This may be a good thing for the FSSPX to decide quickly before pressures build up one way or another. The five conditions seem to be a good start but that will have some pauses in the future. The road now seems to be open, even though under construction.