Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy

Well its here! "Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy" by Denis McNamara is now available. This product description says it all.

This unique book delves into the deep meanings of liturgical art and architecture, and by association, the Sacred Liturgy itself. It is meant to help pastors, architects, artists, members of building committees, seminarians, and everyone interested in liturgical art and architecture come to grips with the many competing themes which are at work in church buildings today. The object of Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy is help the reader to drink deeply from the wells of the tradition, to look with fresh eyes at things thought to be outdated or meaningless, and glean the principles which underlie the richness of the Catholic faith.

We have shown you the incredible testimonials by people such as Scott Hahn, Archbishop Raymond Burke, Fr. Robert Barron, and more. If you haven't purchased it yet, here is a little taste of what you are missing. With permission, I present to you some excerpts.

Introduction I

Any book about liturgical art and architecture therefore must be a book about Beauty, Truth, and Goodness because liturgical art and architecture are about a compelling revelation of God which moves us to grow in conformity to him. Since Beauty is the compelling power of Truth, its splendor and attractiveness draw us out of ourselves to approach and investigate a beautiful thing. We can then be transformed by it. So this is also a book about Goodness, where human acts are made with moral sense, which is informed by a grace-filled reason. The result of these beautiful and good acts is joy and love, and love is willing the good of the other as other, unselfishly so. And what greater good could one wish on another than eternal salvation in the warm embrace of God? So a book about liturgical art and architecture must also be about salvation. And salvation, being perfect, is indeed beautiful. And we start all over again. Amid all of this theological language are the real, tangible objects of liturgical art and architecture, which rightly belong to the spiritual order even as they affect our earthly lives...

Page 1

Is our recent liturgical art and architecture so attractive that we bring our out of town guests to see our new Catholic churches? Or do we still make the trek downtown to see the nineteenth-century Gothic romanticisms when we want people to see a church that “looks like a church”? I would suspect that the latter is the case. More ominously, does this lack of Beauty suggest that we have lost our sense of the Truth? In many cases, the answer is yes...

Pages 4 & 5

Art and architecture are critical features of this process. They are not merely neutral backdrops for gathering, nor arethey opportunities for sumptuous display alone. Liturgical art and architecture should instead be considered features of the rite itself, part of the cluster of symbols used in a particular order. They form the very symbolic image of the heavenly Jerusalem, the “place” where God dwells and acts with hispeople. In that sense art and architecture are properly called sacramental. Their arrangement should be designed so as to best allow the full, conscious, active, and fruitful participation in the liturgy in its deepest dimensions: the reality of heaven itself.

When liturgical art and architecture are thought of as sacramental and not just a neutral setting or museum of devotional objects, the present-day arguments about these matters from the liturgical left and right are shattered; both are either
incomplete or distortions in one way or another. Christ was prefigured in the shadows of the Old Testament, revealing the Father even by veiling his glory while on earth, and now reigns in heaven. So the church-ness of a church embraces the
memory of the synagogue and the temple in ancient Jerusalem and reveals the Church (ekklesia) gathered today in a time and place. It shows us a sacramental image of the heavenly Jerusalem to which we journey as pilgrims. This heavenly city is described in the book of Revelation in quite specific terms: Christ reigns on the throne, surrounded by an orderly arrangement of saints, angels, the Mother of God, and innumerable multitudes singing God’s praises. The city itself has numerous portals, walls with the qualities of gold and gems, and everything radiates the light of God. Churches through the ages have tried in one way or another to capture this image of heaven, filling sanctuaries with gem-like mosaics, stained glass, and figural and carved imagery in fine stone, gold, and color.

We think of churches that look like this as “churchly” because they capture the qualities of heaven itself: a radiant place filled with the presence of the Trinity and heavenly beings into which we are allowed to enter and pray, participating in the divine life of the Trinity and our destiny to praise God forever (Revelation 4:20). This is exactly the sacramental nature of a church building for which every church architect and artist should strive. Of course heaven is not so much a “place” as a state of restored relationship with God; one cannot attempt to try to replicate heaven in a literal sense because eye has not seen nor ear heard what God has prepared for us (1 Corinthians 2:9). But nonetheless, with sacramental mediation, we use the material of this world to make an image of those heavenly realities to the best of our abilities when aided by the Spirit.

Since architecture is the built form of ideas, only with proper ideas about the very ontological nature of a church building can one even begin to consider building a proper church, a church which reveals its “ontological secret,” the very reality of its being. Our task is to build beautiful churches because Beauty makes the Truth of Christ in the liturgy attractive, drawing people toward it, inviting them to engage in it, be transformed by it, and in turn transform the world. Our task is to build beautiful churches that engage us most actively and fully in the liturgy, allowing us to see the presence of the angels, the saints, and even the Trinity itself at an altar that is the very image of the Heavenly Banqueting table. We build beautiful churches to glorify God and grow toward salvation. No other artistic task rises to this level of importance.

The book is now available and you can purchase it here.

Gay Advocates Protest Catholic Church

Gay advocates now believe they can tell the Church how to spend its money.

About one hundred protestors stood outside the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica on Sunday, angry with the archdiocese's use of $10,000 in "private gifts" in a campaign to support traditional marriage in Maine.

Of course, many of the people there pretended that they were mad because they think the money could've gone to help local poor people or local Catholic schools. But in reality, this was a protest meant to scare bishops into not supporting traditional marriage in the future.

Guys like Ed Reggi who organized the protest talked to the media about the importance of the Church keeping the money local but Reggi is a gay advocate and organizer of "Show Me No Hate." In a tell tale sign, he asked the crowd rhetorically. "Why not fund love, archbishop?"

You've got to love that gay advocates feel that they are entitled to tell an Archbishop what he's allowed to spend the Church's money on. St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson didn't agree they had the right.

St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson released a statement in response to Sunday's protest, saying the donation came from a "special needs fund" supported with "private gifts" that is not used for formal operations. The fund, used at the archbishop's discretion, has provided help to other dioceses for such causes as disaster relief and abortion issues.

"We do have the obligation as Catholics to carry out Christ's teachings, whether in the privacy of our own home or in the public square," Carlson said.

Of course, some "concerned Christians" at the protest said they believed that the Church should be stripped of its tax exemption because it is involved in politics. That, of course, is ludicrous. The Church should not be forced into silence by the government or by gay advocates.

Expect more of this in the future.

Here's a local news story on the protest:

One interesting note was that James O'Keefe of the now famous ACORN Pimp videos and the Lila Rose pro-life videos was present at the protest. Reggi said it was O'Keefe showing support for the cause but I have my doubts.

Spelling Mishap

I think that perhaps I should spend less time blogging and more time working on spelling with the six year old.



I think the teacher handled this very nicely, no? Then again, maybe he really doesn't like apples.

Gen. Patton Like Nidal Hasan...or Something

In what can only be described as a blatant and ridiculous display of moral equivalence, Anthony Stevens Arroyo of WaPo's On Faith blog compares Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood Killer with Gen. George S. Patton and Medal of Honor winner Alvin York.

In writing about what he considers "bad prayers" Arroyo writes:

But the granddaddy of bad prayers is, "Allahu Akbar!" uttered before shooting innocent people or setting off bombs to slaughter innocents to advance your own salvation. Such abuse by violence of God's will was not invented at Fort Hood. After all, General Patton ordered the composition of a prayer for good weather so that thousands of Germans could be bombed. Army sharpshooters - like the famous Alvin York of the First World War - prayed to God for a good aim to kill people.

So Patton praying for good weather to aid the allies' cause against Nazis was similar to Nidal Hasan's shouting of "Allahu Akhbar" before opening fire on his fellow American soldiers?

The prayer Arroyo is referring to which Patton disseminated was actually written by by Catholic chaplain James H. O'Neill who wrote:

Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish Thy justice among men and nations.

So according to Arroyo, General Patton asking for God's help in defeating the scourge of Nazism was similar to Nidal Hasan taking out his fellow American soldiers with a prayer to Allah.

Maybe Mr. Arroyo isn't aware but war is different than murder.

Nidal presumed to know God's will and to kill in his name. Patton's prayer is a prayer for assistance, leaving the response to God.

One is a request, the other a statement.

And impugning Alvin York is outrageous as well. York was a war hero who, at first, was a conscientious objector but finally (after much prayer) saw fit to fight in World War I after praying on a mountainside for two nights.

York was awarded the Medal of Honor for leading an attack on a German machine gun nest, taking 32 machine guns, killing 28 German soldiers and capturing 132 others. He described the scene of the incident where he earned the Medal of Honor:

And those machine guns were spitting fire and cutting down the undergrowth all around me something awful. And the Germans were yelling orders. You never heard such a racket in all of your life. I didn't have time to dodge behind a tree or dive into the brush… As soon as the machine guns opened fire on me, I began to exchange shots with them. There were over thirty of them in continuous action, and all I could do was touch the Germans off just as fast as I could. I was sharp shooting… All the time I kept yelling at them to come down. I didn't want to kill any more than I had to. But it was they or I. And I was giving them the best I had.

That day, York and seven other Americans took 132 German prisoners.

I'll ask Mr. Arroyo, how many prisoners did Nidal Hasan take?

Bang The Drum Slowly

I have always liked Michael Moriarty as an actor. So it was with happy surprise that I learned that Moriarty had penned (can we still say that?) an editorial at the conservative Big Hollywood.

Mr. Moriarty describes himself as a pro-life libertarian. While I certainly do not subscribe to the libertarian ethos, I maintain a soft spot for any public pro-lifer of any political persuasion (including democrats).

Libertarianism, while often aligned with conservatism on issues of the day, is a radically different philosophy. Leaving that aside, I do not think that Moriarty's mental meanderings constitute an effective defense of any political philosophy. To suggest that his essay has entirely too many asides would, by implication, pose that there was a central point from which to veer. Alas, alack.

I think that Mr. Moriarty's political instincts may be good, but his philosophy inconsistent. Moriarty, as part of his crusade against the "revolutionary tide" and in defense of the unborn, assails Chris Matthews for his badgering of Bishop Tobin. Like I said, his instincts are good. What follows, however...

Recently, in the best French Revolutionary tradition, that enlightened despot rode roughshod over a rather royal member of the Catholic Church who was defending Rome’s decision to excommunicate a Kennedy for supporting abortion.

Wha? Chris Matthew's is an enlightened despot? He is a talk show host. Besides, the food channel's "Ace of Cakes" has better ratings than Chris Matthews. He is hardly despot material. While Matthews is certainly in the tank for Obama, even Obama can only rightly be called a budding despot. But that is just the beginning of the trouble.

Moriarty suggests that Matthews was running roughshod over Bishop Tobin. He was, but that is what Matthews does and it shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone, least of all Bishop Tobin. Hardball is not where one goes for a fair hearing. Moriarty then suggests that Bishop Tobin was there to defend "Rome's decision" to "excommunicate" Patrick Kennedy.

Um, no and no.

Bishop Tobin was there to defend the Church's consistent teaching on life and his decision two years ago to request that Congressman Kennedy refrain from communion until he changed his public stance on life. Nobody was excommunicated here and Rome had nothing to do with it.

That is a whole lotta wrong in just one sentence.

May God bless Mr. Moriarty for his defense of life, but I hope I am not unkind in suggesting that perhaps he is not the best spokesman for the cause.

Climate Lies

by LarryD

(Special thanks to LarryD of Acts of the Apostasy for his generous contributions this past week to CMR as guest blogger. It has been a lot of fun. If you don't already read Larry, be sure to bookmark Acts of the Apostasy.)


More information continues to come out on the East Anglia CRU leaked emails and documents that are providing details on the hoax known as Anthropogenic Global Warming. Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma is calling for congressional inquiries, for instance. While it's too early to tell, this development could mean the end of Cap and Trade legislation in the US, and will hopefully lead to investigations worldwide on the whole scam.

One thing you haven't heard is that Al Gore and some of his cronies at the CRU have released a song about this whole sordid affair. AoftheA has gotten a bootleg copy of the lyrics, and I'm reproducing them here.

Climate Lies (to the tune of "Lyin' Eyes", by the Eagles)

Sung by Al Gore and The CRUners

Scientists just seem to find out early
How to open doors in politics
A perfect scam
And we won't have to worry
As long as no one figgers out our tricks!

"Day and night, our fragile Earth is heatin'!"
We'll tell the hapless folks it's all their fault.
We'll say they're why the glaciers are retreatin'
While taxpayer monies fill up all our vaults.

And we'll tell them that the Earth will soon be burnin'
Cos' of oil and CO2 and made up facts.
The media will keep folks out there from learnin'
That we're cheatin', lyin', data-changin' quacks.

Now we can't hide our climate lies
And our graphs are a thin disguise.
We hoped by now the seas would rise
But there's no way to hide our climate lies.

On the other side the skeptics are all waitin'
With fiery eyes and threats we're goin' down.
We thought we could get by without debatin'
If only those polar bears had gone and drowned!

If this had come out after
Copenhagen.
Then all these allegations wouldn't take.
Think of all those taxes we almost raked in
If no one proved our hockey stick was fake.

But we can't hide our climate lies
And our graphs are a thin disguise.
We hoped by now the seas would rise
But there's no way to hide our climate lies.

We're gonna go and pour ourselves a tall one
And curse because it isn't hot as hell
There's still a chance our careers aren't all done
As long as there's no skit on SNL.

We wonder how it ever got this crazy.
This whole event we'd rather just forget
Did we get tired, or did we just get lazy?
We wish I never built the Internet.

My oh my! We sure knew how to arrange things
We set it up so well, so carefully.
But now this goldang hacker's gone and changed things
And forced us to try and spin this cleverly.

Cos' we can't hide our climate lies
And our graphs are a thin disguise.
We hoped by now the seas would rise
But there's no way to hide our climate lies.

Just no way to hide our climate lies.
I'm not givin' back my Nobel prize
Even if this means our full demise
Honey, we can't hide our climate lies.

Catholics Instigate Anti-Catholicism

This might be a new one. We all know the Catholic Church is responsible for all the evils in the world but now Joel Connelly, a liberal columnist for the SeattlePi, wrote that Catholics who take Catholicism seriously are responsible instigating anti-Catholicism.

Connelly starts off his column pretty impressively with some obfuscation, smoke, and then quickly devolves into lies. And he does it all impressively in one line. Check it out:

When he should get time to reflect after his father's recent death, and to appreciate the life of his assassinated uncle, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., is being told -- in effect -- to get out of his church.

He should be given time to appreciate his uncle who died over 40 years ago? Look, how much time does this guy need? I think his therapist might be overcharging.

But you see, Patrick Kennedy unfortunately has done very very little with his own life so Joel Connelly was forced to raise the specter of Kennedy's father and uncle as a way to reflect some borrowed glory on Patrick Kennedy.

What is it about liberals and the name "Kennedy?" They all start acting like 13 year old girls who just saw the Jonas Brothers. Seriously, you want to see a liberal freak out just criticize a Kennedy. It's kinda' fun. Bishop Tobin knows this all too well by now.

So after Connelly's done dragging out every Kennedy but Bobby, he lies. Bishop Tobin obviously never told Patrick Kennedy to "get out of his church." Not even close.

But Connelly's rolling so we'll let him continue. He says that Bishop Tobin's words are instigating a rash of anti-Catholicism.

"Millions of American Catholics have gone somewhere else -- in my case, long ago, to the Episcopal Church -- or chosen to stay home, because of the actions and pronouncements of prelates like Bishop Tobin.

In recent years, the Vatican has seen fit to install bishops who show no respect for conscience, or for a U.S. Constitution that wisely separates Caesar from Peter.

They give orders, demand unquestioned obedience, and treat Communion wafers as political weapons..

The behavior of hard-line prelates elsewhere has stoked the fires of anti-religious and anti-Catholic prejudice. Just read certain "liberal" Seattle blog sites and in the printed word.

The bishops have made it difficult to begin a necessary dialogue on prevention of unwanted pregnancies. They've made it immeasurably tougher the job of articulating legitimate ethical objections to assisted suicide.

Nor have the faithful taken political counsel from purple hats. Barack Obama, the pro-choice presidential nominee, captured a majority of votes from American Catholics in the 2008 election.

Thomas Keefe, a Spokane lawyer (and expatriate Seattlite), Catholic University law grad and former nominee for Congress, reacted to the latest brouhaha by sending off a blistering letter to the Diocese of Providence.

"It should come as little wonder why the Catholic Church continues to lose appeal in our society when a fool like Bishop Tobin passes for a church leader," Keefe wrote.

So the loony anti-Catholics are out for blood and whose fault is it? Bishop Tobin's of course.

And the poor Vatican must be reeling because some guy who ran for Congress (AND LOST!) called Bishop Tobin a "fool." I'm sure the Vatican is quivering that some lawyer from Spokane dashed off a blistering letter.

The odd thing here is that Connelly admits that he left the Church. And so can Kennedy. So can anyone. It's a volunteer organization. The Church is the Church. Nobody's forced to join. But for some reason, people freak out all the time about the Church "forcing" people to do this or that. How? The Swiss Guard?

I know. I know. The Church is responsible for all the evils in the world. And now, according to Connelly the Church is also responsible for anti-Catholicism.

Oddly, I don't remember Connelly's column excoriating Muslim terrorists for instigating anti-Islamic behavior but maybe that's next.

The Science Is Scuttled

Hah!

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

Scientists, my arse. The top CRU excuses and/or responses.

• Uh, the dog ate my hockey stick graph.
• No, no. We said the seance was settled.
• An angel showed Michael Mann a set of golden plates which he translated into the Book of Warmin'. The plates have since been lost but it doesn't matter since only Michael Mann could translate them anyway.
  
• Why would we keep the raw data? The science is settled. Did Newton keep the apple?
• In light of recent developments, we decided to change our name to the Climate Research Unit Deleters (CRUD)
• Two words, Plausible Deniability.
• If you can't reproduce it, it is not science!
• Save the raw data? We thought you said save the flawed data.
• Our plan is working, CRU has created or saved 1,000,000 snobs.
• Al Gore told us to.

Feel free.

What The Irish Church Abuse Scanal Isn't

I think Gerald Warner at the Telegraph makes an important point about the horrific abuse scandal that has unfolded in Ireland. The headline set the tone.

"Let's get it straight: Irish child abuse was perpetrated by the trendy, modern post-Vatican II Catholic Church"

Warner decries efforts to link a traditional Bishop, skeptical of "Spirit of Vatican II" reforms, to the abuse scandal.

...The Most Reverend John Charles McQuaid, Archbishop of Dublin (1940-1972) was a great Catholic prelate. Under his pastoral leadership, the numbers of clergy and religious increased by more than 50 per cent, he created over 60 new parishes and built over 80 new churches and 350 schools. But he was a Vatican II sceptic who implemented reform conservatively, in accordance with what would now be called the “hermeneutic of continuity”. So he is a bogey figure to radicals.

Warner goes on the show how the study, rather than impugning the Archbishop, it largely vindicates him. I think it is important and anyone interested should read the entire thing. But Then Warner let's it out.

Well, who ever did, in the trendy, let-it-all-hang-out 1970s and 1980s? The image that has sedulously been propagated is of Irish child abuse perpetrated by priests in soutanes and birettas, cowled monks muttering Latin incantations and nuns in starched wimples and mediaeval habits.

On the contrary, the nightmare orgy of relentless mortal sin recorded in this report was committed by modern priests, with a strip of white celluloid in place of a Roman collar – if they deigned to wear clerical dress – devastating their church sanctuaries as badly as they devastated childrem’s lives, abolishing all the devotions such as Benediction, the Rosary, regular confession, devotion to saints, etc that had sustained Irish faith for centuries. One priest admitted to abusing over 100 children. For that he was indulged; but if he had celebrated the Latin Tridentine Mass his feet would not have touched the ground.

Then after pointing out the absurd media bias the pretends that the stcitiness of Catholicism and the discipline of a celibate priesthood are to blame, Warner finishes with this.

Let us set the record straight. This filthy abomination was a scandal of the post-Vatican II, open-windows, relevant, touchy-feely (often, it seems, inappropriately so) Catholic Church. So let the ecumaniacs, the liturgical animators, the Easter People take ownership of it and desist from blackening the reputation of a decent prelate and, by implication, of the unchanging Church that sustained Ireland through centuries of oppression.

I don't pretend to know all the facts in Ireland, but this mirrors my understanding of what happened here. Read the whole thing.

This is Not About Human Rights

The very public trials of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others are said to be about human rights. But I don't believe it. I think these trials are simply a way to publicly embarrass the former President. And since there's likely a lot we don't know maybe there's lots of stuff that President Bush should be embarrassed about.

But let's not pretend that this is about President Obama's great concern for human rights. Remember that while Obama is practically tripping over himself to ensure that terrorists from other countries are being given trials, he refuses to see the rights of the unborn as even an issue. Remember, it's above his pay grade. And he's more than happy to ignore the human rights of the Chinese because we owe them so much money. The President's party is also currently advocating forcing people into prison for not buying health insurance. Prison. And this is the "human rights" party?

I know I've said this before but we have a President who very plainly advocated the killing of his own grandchild. So spare me the sanctimony please.

Did You Hear?

Two people who looked real nice and pretended to be something they are not, fooled their way into the Whitehouse.

In other news, so did some party crashers.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation

But remember America was intended by our Founding Fathers to be a completely and militantly secular government.

Could you imagine if a President said this today? There would be six lawsuits filed by the end of the speech by the ACLU.

HT NRO

Thanksgiving Reality

I love this video.

Oh Dear! Jurassic Ecumenism Lives

This picture is of Archbishop Nichols of Westminster. Visiting the leader of the Hindus,His Holiness Pramukh Swami Mahara, Archbishop Nichols..; well let''s let Archbishop Nichols own (original and now hastily amended) press release say it so that you don't think I am misreporting it.

Yogvivek Swami guided the Archbishop around the Mandir complex, including the sanctum sanctorum where the Archbishop offered flowers at the altar to the deities. He then moved to the deity of Shri Nilkanth Varni (Bhagwan Swaminarayan) where he joined Yogvivek Swami in praying for world peace and harmony.

Oh dear. I will stipulate that the Archbishop probably does not believe in these pagan gods, but how dumb can you be? Damian Thompson says, "The offer of the candle and the words accompanying it imply that Hindus worship the same God as Christians, which I would have thought even a primary-school textbook would make clear is not the case." Yes, even a schoolgirl would know better.

So why would someone like Archbishop Nichols, who should and presumably does know better, do something like this? The short answer is that someone forgot to tell the good Archbishop that this old school Jurassic ecumenism is dead. This old school ecumenism,ya know the kind that says that it doesn't really matter what I believe or what you believe had been very sickly since 2005, finally died last month. One can forgive poor ol' +Vin, so caught up with the surprise Anglican Apostolic Constitution, he may not have heard the news.

So please, if any of our readers are in the UK, somebody run over and tell +Vin that his old buddy passed away. Maybe we can then avoid this kind of embarrassment in the future.

Oh, and by the way, would somebody be kind enough to let Cardinal Kasper know? I don't think he has heard the news either.

Is 'Dogma' a Dirty Word?

What's in your dogma? On what belief do all your other beliefs rest? What's that one belief from which all other beliefs and motives derive?

I heard about two weeks ago a man say in conversation that he's a Catholic but he doesn't believe in all the rules or "dogma" of the Church. (He even threw up the air quotes when he said the term.) He said he doesn't believe God is into rules. (I didn't ask him to explain the Ten Commandments as I wasn't part of the conversation.)

But I know that many people think that way. That's what's behind all the "I'm spiritual but not religious" thing. That means you don't believe there are any rules. That simplistic view, I fear, views rules as impediments to happiness. And they can work themselves into some kind of righteous indignation that somehow all the rules of Christianity interfere with real love which they, freed from rules, are now capable.

But the rules of Catholicism are not incomprehensible. They are the well thought out conclusions of thousands of years of study by the brightest and holiest among us guided by the Holy Spirit. Their thinking is available in the documents of the Church. And moreover, these rules were established for our happiness. These rules are the best thinking on love; real love.

Case in point. The rules against abortion are not a "You shall not!" they are a request to be open to life. The Church is asking all of us to say the great "yes" just as Mary did over 2,000 years ago.

Just as the Church's "rule" that men should be faithful to their wives shouldn't be seen as "No!" to millions of women. It is more properly viewed as a "Yes" to your wife.

The Church's rules on contraception are not meant to make sex less fun. The Church is not prudish about sex. Evidence of that is that many Catholics have lots of babies. The Church seeks to elevate sex into lovemaking which puts the other before the self. Because only when we free ourselves from our selfish desires are we capable of love. Truly love.

Just look at what our culture has done to sex. Our culture argues openly for the meaningless of sex. It's good because it feels good. That's it. But that worldview views humans as animals who simply act on a primal instinct. And what does that bring us? People treating each other as animals. As less than human.

And somehow that's supposed to bring us happiness?

It is the Church's dogma which protects humans from that worldview. But I think that ironically for most people today "dogma" is a dirty word. I wonder without the Church's teaching, what is their dogma? What lies at the bedrock of all their decision making?

I wonder if in the end it isn't immediate personal happiness that lies at the bedrock of those who resist "dogma?" Which would be ironic because the Church's dogma is made for our eternal happiness. And chasing our own selfish desires leaves people in our culture today looking inward which leads them only further into themselves, like a snake devouring its own tail, forming a perfect circle which doesn't allow anyone outside to enter.

If Sarah Palin Were In Twilight

HT Viral Footage

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Global Warming Catch-phrase Is No More

Truth be told, I feel a perverse glee at the unraveling of the greatest scientific hoax of all time. The Marxist front—ironically turned big business—global warming, has now been shown to be based in large part on purposeful fabrications (aka lies).

While acknowledgment, grudging or otherwise, that the right-wing-kook denialist fringe was right all along will likely not be forthcoming from the heretofore censorious pseudo-scientist crowd, relish may be taken from the knowledge that their most insipid and unprincipled catch-phrase has been rendered impotent.

Never again will I be forced to listen to the benighted liberalati utter the anti-intellectual phrase, "the science is settled!" For now this phrase comes with an automatic and delightfully rhyming rejoinder.

"No my friend, the science is meddled."

Libs: Obamacare Destroys Private Insurance!!

File this under being hoisted by your own petard. I've come to learn that petards are dangerous because the only time you hear about them is when someone is hoisted by their own.

We've been told for months by liberals that the public option will have absolutely zero effect on the private insurance industry. We've been consoled that if you like your insurance you can keep your insurance.

But now you've got liberals who've previously said the public option won't affect private insurance now screaming that they're worried that the public option will harm private insurance and decrease choices.

Wanna guess why? Did they suddenly gain respect for the free market? Nah. It's just because they're worried about...ABORTION!

You see, now it's something that liberals love. It seems pro-choicers are worried that if the healthcare bill includes the Stupak Amendment, it will negatively affect access to even private insurance for abortion.

But I thought that nothing in the public option would affect the private insurance industry? Were they...gasp...not telling the whole truth?

From the GW Hatchet:

The author of the controversial amendment to the House of Representatives-approved health care bill is rejecting the findings of a Nov. 16 report authored by five GW professors in the School of Public Health and Health Services.

The study found that the Stupak-Pitts amendment - which is designed to restrict how abortions could be offered by a government-run insurance plan and through private insurance bought using government subsidies from the health care plan - would eliminate insurance coverage for medically indicated abortions in the long run, and not just those covered by the new health care plan.

Wow! Remember how liberals laughed when conservatives argued that a public option plan would harm or even eliminate private insurance. They laughed and laughed right up until the moment when the Stupak amendment passed. Then everything changed, I guess.

Now, what I really find hilarious is that Stupak is quoted as essentially using the liberal talking points against the pro-choicers by insisting Obamacare will not affect private insurance at all.

My, how infuriating it must be to have your own talking points used against you.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., told the political blog Talking Points Memo D.C. that the report is based on speculation and the amendment would not limit private health insurance companies from offering medically indicated abortions.

"The idea that insurers will stop providing abortion services because of the Stupak-Ellsworth-Pitts amendment is nothing more than speculation," Stupak said in a statement to TPMDC. "There is no language in this amendment that in any way prohibits private health insurance companies from offering these services."

I'm starting to really like this Stupak guy.

I don't think the lead author of the GW study, the Department of Health Policy Chair Sara Rosenbaum, feels the same warm and fuzzy feelings about Stupak though. She said she believes:

"The treatment exclusions required under the Stupak-Pitts Amendment will have an industry-wide effect, eliminating coverage of medically indicated abortions over time for all women, not only those whose coverage is derived through a health insurance exchange."

What?! The public option will "eliminate coverage?" What?

Now, just a few months ago Sara Rosenbaum was quoted in an NBC story, as being a strong advocate of the public option exactly because it would lead to:

"much broader coverage, more benefits, more services, deeper coverage, thereby allowing people a choice of a product that actually is tailored to their needs."

So you see the public option encouraged more choices in everything until the Stupak amendment. That doesn't make much sense now does it?

Liberals are caught in their own talking points and Stupak knows it. There's no way liberals can argue vociferously that the public option will harm private insurance without exposing their own lies. So I'd bet liberals plan to keep their petards in hiding and intend to win the healthcare battle not by argument but the old fashioned way- they'll buy the votes.

Funny Anti-Harry Reid Ad

Now, that's an imaginative ad.

HT Campaign Spot

He Heard Every Word!

This is horrendous. I don't even want to imagine it because it freaks me out. A guy in a car crash was believed by doctors to be in a "vegetative state" for 23 years. BUT HE WAS CONSCIOUS THE ENTIRE TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can you believe that? 23 years of internally screaming "I'm in here!!!" and nobody can hear you? And although this story has what you could classify as a happy ending I can't help but think of the people who've been starved to death because doctors believed incorrectly that they were in a "vegetative state."

The Daily Mail reports:

A car crash victim has spoken of the horror he endured for 23 years after he was misdiagnosed as being in a coma when he was conscious the whole time.

Rom Houben, trapped in his paralysed body after a car crash, described his real-life nightmare as he screamed to doctors that he could hear them - but could make no sound. 'I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,' said Mr Houben, now 46, who doctors thought was in a persistent vegetative state.

'I dreamed myself away,' he added, tapping his tale out with the aid of a computer.

But three years ago, new hi-tech scans showed his brain was still functioning almost completely normally.

Mr Houben described the moment as 'my second birth'. Therapy has since allowed him to tap out messages on a computer screen.

Mr Houben said: 'All that time I just literally dreamed of a better life. Frustration is too small a word to describe what I felt.'

His case has only just been revealed in a scientific paper released by the man who 'saved' him, top neurological expert Dr Steven Laureys.

'Medical advances caught up with him,' said Dr Laureys, who believes there may be many similar cases of false comas around the world.

The disclosure will also renew the right-to-die debate over whether people in comas are truly unconscious.

Ya' think? You'd hope that something like this would humble the doctors who are quick to starve those in a "vegetative state." It probably won't.

This is similar to discovering a truly innocent man on death row. When that happens that should make death penalty advocates think twice, shouldn't it? So when it turns out that what we call a "vegetative state" might just be a condition we don't yet have the tools to diagnose, shouldn't we reconsider starving people to death with the same diagnosis?

HT Ace of Spades

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Does Michael Sean Winters Hate Kennedy?

Does Michael Sean Winters hate Patrick Kennedy? I'm serious.

If a friend of mine were running straight towards calamity I'd be inclined to yell out. Heck, even if an enemy of mine were dashing towards a ruinous end I'd be inclined to at least clear my throat or suggest they take a gander around.

No matter what, I certainly wouldn't give press interviews about people's right to run in any direction they choose.

But is liberal Catholic writer Michael Sean Winters' hatred of all things Patrick Kennedy so raging and intense that he's defending Congressman Patrick Kennedy's right to run straight into danger?

That's the big question that comes to my mind when reading Winters' comments condemning Bishop Tobin's private request of Kennedy not to receive Communion because of his public stance against life in the womb.

CBS reports:

Michael Sean Winters author of “Left At the Altar: How Democrats Lost The Catholics And How Catholics Can Save The Democrats” condemns Tobin’s punitive actions.

“It’s really bad theology,” said Winters. “You’re turning the altar rail into a battle field, a political battlefield no less, and it does a disservice to the Eucharist.”

Firstly, it is Kennedy who is making this a political battlefield. Bishop Tobin acted confidentially in a kind and loving way with Kennedy way back in 2007.

Kennedy, on the other hand, seems to believe that he can score some political points by casting himself as some kind of modern day Gallileo battling the Church but intent on only proving that he himself is the center of the universe.

Bishop Tobin's actions are clearly meant as a way to ensure that other Catholics are not misguided into thinking that Kennedy's behavior is condoned by the Church but also as a wake up call to a man who is putting his very soul in danger. I don't suspect that Winters' believes that reception of the Eucharist should have no requirements whatsoever so the only question that remains is whether Michael Sean Winters cares so little for the soul of Patrick Kennedy that he would condemn the bishop's attempt to save him?

If one believes that supporting abortion is a sin, then one would also likely believe that supporting abortion (as Kennedy does) would put one's soul in danger. While Winters clealy believes that Bishop Tobin's reaction was harsh, does Winters believe that Bishop Tobin's silence would be less so?

BCS Rankings 2009

by LarryD

This is a guest post by our friend LarryD of the fine blog "Acts of the Apostasy." LarryD is one of the few remaining tax payers in metro Detroit; father of two, husband of one, chief of staff for the pet cat; blogging since March 2008; still waiting for that Great American Novel to write itself ; professional penitent; all around good guy even he is a Detroit Red Wings fan.

* * *

Hello sports fans! If there's one topic in the world of athletics that can turn friendly discussion into heated debate, it's the BCS. And this year is no exception. As this anything-but-ordinary season winds down in the final week of competition, uncertainty is the only sure thing, and the only common ground is controversy. No matter how the rankings come out, someone is bound to disagree and argue with the results.

It was a season filled with surprises, upsets and thrills unmatched by any other to date. Pundits and observers throughout America have been weighing in since the start. Now, one week before the end of the season, AoftheA weighs in as well.

So let's talk about the BCS - the Bishop Championship Series.

The pre-season rankings were murky and unsettled. With perennial powerhouse Archbishop Burke moving to the Holy See in 2008, it appeared that the top spot in 2009 was up for grabs. Numerous bishops and cardinals throughout the Ordinary Season vied for the #1 ranking, a season filled with unexpected twists and turns. The Notre Dame scandal. The healthcare debate. Catholic identity. The sudden retirement of Bishop Martino. Abortion and embryonic stem cell research. Gay marriage. CCHD.

The Notre Dame scandal in the Spring immediately knocked out hundreds of episcopal contenders, substantially trimming the field. Throughout the month of April and early May, positions were taken and statements were issued. It was furious and frenzied - with perhaps the most ardent speech being delivered by Bishop Finn of Kansas City ("We Are At War", delivered at a Gospel of Life Convention) - but by mid-May, the polls had settled. Bishop D'Arcy of South Bend, IN took over top position with his early statements and steely consistency, and he solidified his ranking when, at the last moment, he surprised everyone by attending the prayerful on-campus protest while President Obama gave the commencement address. This kept others, who had joined the campaign condemning Notre Dame's actions, such as Cardinal DiNardo, Bishop Martino, Cardinal George, Archbishop Chaput and Bishop Nickless and more than 70 others, from moving up in the poll.

Bishop D-Arcy maintained #1 for several weeks, followed closely by Bishop Finn. Some felt that D'Arcy was getting sympathy votes due to his upcoming resignation, while Finn supporters believed that their man deserved to be first. Bishop Martino, who had been top-ranked on the strength of his February announcements he would refuse Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians, slipped to third. There were rumors he threatened to ex-communicate anyone who didn't vote for him, but those remain unsubstantiated.

Throughout the summer, the issue of nationalized health care took center stage. Numerous bishops entreated upon their faithful to reject any plan that provided tax-payer dollars to fund abortion. Week after week, the rankings shifted slightly, but by and large, the status quo held sway.

Then, in August, a bombshell exploded that threw the rankings for a loop: Bishop Martino unexpectedly resigned from the Diocese of Scranton. This created a void near the top of the rankings, and dioceses throughout America realized that they were handed a great opportunity to move up in the poll.

Here are just a few of the highlights of 2009:

• Bishop D'Arcy slipped several notches as rumors swirled that the Holy Father was going to accept his resignation, but maintained firm footing in the top ten with a late August letter urging continued pressure upon Notre Dame.
• Bishop Nickless issued a strong letter in mid-October declaring the "spirit of Vatican II" must be exorcised.
• Bishop Finn continued his vigorous "wildcat-style" offense, issuing another episcopal strike by publishing a letter concerning healthcare (with Archbishop Naumann) in early September.
• Bishop Blair made waves when he was selected to spearhead the Apostolic Visitation of the LCWR, giving him a platform to start from for the 2010 Ordinary Season.
• Archbishop Dolan, assigned to New York City earlier in the season, posted a powerful piece on anti-Catholicism in the media at the archdiocesan blog that practically assured him a first tier finish.
• Bishop Malone of Portland ME began a steady rise to the Top Ten by battling so-called gay marriage in his state, with the election victory in early November all but guaranteeing a solid finish.
• Cardinal DiNardo, by being selected to lead the powerful USCCB Pro-Life Office, stands to finish strong for a third straight season.

But as it seems to happen in competitive sports, and even across all walks of life, a contender appears out of nowhere to take everyone by surprise, and come away an unexpected winner. In a stunning late-season development, the bishop from the smallest state made the biggest impact.

Bishop Tobin's November 12 open letter to Rep. Patrick Kennedy was the shot across the bow, and that rocketed him into the Top Ten. Then, in the early hours of November 22, with just less than one week remaining in the Ordinary Time Season, it was reported that Bishop Tobin has barred Kennedy from receiving communion, instructing his priests to uphold that ban. This display of episcopal authority and intense care for the soul of one his flock has catapulted Bishop Tobin to #1 in the BCS rankings for 2009.

Here's the 2009 BCS Top Ten:

1. Bishop Tobin, Providence RI
2. Bishop Finn, Kansas City
3. Cardinal DiNardo, Galveston/Houston
4. Archbishop Chaput, Denver
5. Bishop Nickless, Sioux Falls
6. Bishop Malone, Portland
7. Bishop D'Arcy, Fort Wayne/South Bend
8. Cardinal George, Chicago
9. Archbishop Dolan, New York
10. Archbishop Nienstedt, St. Paul/Minneapolis

Undoubtedly there will be disagreements over this year's BCS Rankings; no one ever said it was a perfect system. Let's just hope it doesn't get brought up before a US Senate subcommittee...

Bp. Tobin Bans Kennedy From Communion

Hardball. I likey!

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin has banned Rep. Patrick Kennedy from receiving Communion, the central sacrament of the church, in Rhode Island because of the congressman's support for abortion rights, Kennedy said in a newspaper interview published Sunday.

The decision by the outspoken prelate, reported on The Providence Journal's Web site, significantly escalates a bitter dispute between Tobin, an ultra orthodox bishop, and Kennedy, a son of the nation's most famous Roman Catholic family.

"The bishop instructed me not to take Communion and said that he has instructed the diocesan priests not to give me Communion," Kennedy told the paper in an interview conducted Friday.

Kennedy said the bishop had explained the penalty by telling him "that I am not a good practicing Catholic because of the positions that I've taken as a public official," particularly on abortion.

He declined to say when or how Tobin told him not to take the sacrament. And he declined to say whether he has obeyed the bishop's injunction.

Good for Bishop Tobin. You will remember, of course, the choice words of Kenndy's that got him into this state.

CNS Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I) told CNSNews.com that the Catholic Church is doing nothing but fanning “the flames of dissent and discord” by taking the position that it will oppose the health-care reform bill under consideration in Congress unless it is amended to explicitly prohibit funding of abortion.

“I can’t understand for the life of me how the Catholic Church could be against the biggest social justice issue of our time, where the very dignity of the human person is being respected by the fact that we’re caring and giving health care to the human person--that right now we have 50 million people who are uninsured,” Kennedy told CNSNews.com when asked about a letter the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) had sent to members of Congress stating the bishops' position on abortion funding in the health-care bill.

“You mean to tell me the Catholic Church is going to be denying those people life saving health care? I thought they were pro-life?” said Kennedy. “If the church is pro-life, then they ought to be for health care reform because it’s going to provide health care that are going to keep people alive. So this is an absolute red herring and I don’t think that it does anything but to fan the flames of dissent and discord and I don’t think it’s productive at all.

Website To Out Suposedly Gay Priests

We have seen many despicable attacks on the Church and our priests, but this honestly is about as low as you can go.

The Washington City Paper has this:

A new Web site hopes to use the oldest trick in the book to combat the Catholic Church’s opposition to same-sex marriage: A good, old-fashioned forced outing!

At ChurchOuting.org, you’re invited to scroll through a list of every Achbishop, Bishop, and Reverend in the Archdiocese of Washington, zero in on one you know is gay, and then submit your “detailed account of how you know the priest in question is being hypocritical through his silence.” (Alternately, get at them via Twitter or Facebook).

Tim Graham at Newsbusters notes "The web site's creator is Phil Attey, who just last year was an Obama Pride coordinator in DC. The DC gay magazine Metro Weekly adds that Attey worked for the left-wing gay activists at the Human Rights Campaign for the "bulk" of the 1990s."

The website gives this as its raison d'être:

For generations, in Catholic churches across the country, LGBT youth are told they should be ashamed of who they are and that they should lead loveless lives as social and religious abominations. The emotional, psychological and spiritual abuse inflicted on them by Catholic priests and our church hierarchy is in reality as damaging as the physical or sexual child abuse anyone would quickly condemn. Yet to this abuse, few raise their voices and say "ENOUGH!"

So opposing gay marriage is the same as child abuse. The sad irony that the priest doing the actual child abuse were mostly homosexuals is lost on them.

It goes without saying that this evil invites the slander of any good priest against whom somebody has a grudge. Just evil.

Perhaps sensing the evil of what they are doing, they try to couch it in the language of "choice." Why do they always try to conflate evil with choice? Anyway:

It is not the intention of this site to complicate the lives of closeted gay priests, rather to help them make the difficult choice to stand up against the hateful and harmful new direction the Church hierarchy is taking the Holy Mother Church

Ahem, there is nothing new about it. Our "hateful bigotry" goes all the way back to Jesus and beyond. They are going to help priests "choose" to oppose the Catholic Church, whether they like it or not. Not much of a choice.

Just One Pro-Life Dem?

There are no blue dogs in the Senate. They are a myth like Bigfoot and Chupacabra. We need just one pro-life Democrat to put a stop to this madness of a healthcare bill. But sadly, that doesn't seem to be happening.

According to Fox News, Republican Senator Mike Johanns said: "We don't need 40 Democrats to stand up for what's right. We need just one. if just one pro-life Democrat would say I will not vote to move this bill until it's fixed, until it's truly pro-life, that would happen. So those who say they are pro-life but refuse to take that stand, I worry are not standing up for life. "

There are supposedly three pro-life Democrats in the Senate. One of them is Harry Reid who isn't pro-life at all.

Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania seems to be a lost cause as well. His latest announcement was that he hasn't yet had time to digest the abortion language and its implications in the 2,074-page bill. "The most important thing right now is getting the bill to the floor," he said. "I'm going to have lots to say. I have provisions I've been working on that are not in the bill yet; I've got a long list."

But that's the problem. Bob Casey always has a lot to say about abortion. He just doesn't do much to prevent it. He voted with Obama on the Mexico City policy and had a long list of reasons why.

I don't understand Casey at all saying he's got to read over the whole bill in order to weigh things. Presumably, if you're pro-life you believe that killing the unborn should be illegal as it is the murder of a person. What other details in the bill could be paramount to signing off on the federal funding of the killing of human beings?

And according to the Washington Post pro-life Democrat Ben Nelson, who seemed to be our only hope, just announced he's a "yes" for health care reform.

The moderate lawmaker told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., that he would vote with rank-and-file Democrats to move ahead on the legislation.

So, that's what pro-lifers get for voting in pro-life Democrats who have a lot to say but will turn on us when party pressure is applied.

And in the end this will likely come down to Bart Stupak in the House, who says he's got 10-15 pro-life Democrats who will block the legislation if it throws out the Stupak-Pitts amendment. Once again, Stupak may be our only hope.

Update: Steven Ertelt of LifeNews.com reports that Nelson may not have completely crumbled.

A key pro-life Democrat, who is seen by political observers as one of the Democrats who would help defeat the pro-abortion Senate health care bill, says he will vote tomorrow for the Motion to Proceed -- allowing the Senate to debate the bill that contains massive abortion funding.

However, Sen. Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat, says not to interpret his vote to begin debate as him supporting the bill itself.

The entire weight of the party will be leaning on him. Let's pray he has the strength to withstand it.

I Can Only Imagine, Murder

They had to go and do it! One! In the history of my life I like one Christian pop song and now I can never listen to it again.

We all know that we would prefer mixing soda with poprocks over Christian Pop/Rock any day. Actually poprocks are aptly named cousins of Christian pop/rock, a sugary sweet exploding candy that rumor has it can kill you. Christian pop/rock is that bad, with one exception.

I really like—correction—I used to really like Mercy Me's "I Can Only Imagine." It is what all Christian rock should aspire to be but isn't—good. Now the song is dead to me.

Last Sunday, my daughter's catechism class got together to go to mass, the 5:30 pm Mass, the teen Mass. So we all went to the teen Mass. Then at communion time...

I'm sorry, give me a moment. This is so tough. Pull yourself together Pat! Pull yourself together! Ok. Continuing.

Then at communion time, I heard the first couple of notes. I looked at my wife in total desperation. She looked back. We were helpless.

It is not just that the song was completely inappropriate for a communion hymn, it was just SOOOO bad. The lead singer was passable but the backup vocalist (whose mic seemed to be about 4x louder than necessary) was flatter than that dry salt lake in Utah. They destroyed it. I mean they destroyed it so bad that my wife was actually laughing. Yes, my wife was laughing at communion time. The song was so bad, my saintly wife now needs to go to confession. That's bad.

I am sorry to say, I need to go to confession as well. I am not guilty of my wife's irreverence and poor laughter control. I am guilty of the sin of despair and worse, much worse.

Standing in the back because the baby was being noisy, the atrocity pelted my ears. I quickly looked around, I needed a way out. Perhaps I could use the edge of a bulletin to cut my wrists. Death by paper cut. That wouldn't work, surrounded by all these church-going goody-two-shoes, they would stop the bleeding before I died. I needed something quicker.

Perhaps if I smashed the holy water font, I could use the broken glass. No, still too slow. But then I realized how selfish and cowardly suicide would be. I couldn't just kill myself like that. That would be terribly selfish and wrong. What about all the other people who would be left to suffer. No, I had to take the youth choir with me.

I remembered that I had some garden fertilizer left in the van. I wondered how long it would take me to siphon gas out of my Toyota Sienna and mix it with the fertilizer. Maybe then I could pack the mixture in my socks, secure them to my belt, pop the cigarette lighter, and make a mad dash across the parking lot, through the doors, and straight toward the guitar and drum section.

As I worked out the final logistics of my plan, the song mercifully ended. I slowly backed off the mental ledge that I found myself on. What was I thinking? Now I must confess my crime, my sin. What will the priest think of me?

Will the priest think I am a terrible person? Selfish? Stupid? I mean, that lighter would never have stayed lit while I ran across the parking lot. I needed a fuse.

The Urgency Of Now...Delayed

by LarryD

This is a guest post by our friend LarryD of the fine blog "Acts of the Apostasy." LarryD is one of the few remaining tax payers in metro Detroit; father of two, husband of one, chief of staff for the pet cat; blogging since March 2008; still waiting for that Great American Novel to write itself ; professional penitent; all around good guy even he is a Detroit Red Wings fan.

Well, well, well. Seems that there won't be any Hopenchangen coming from Copenhagen this December after all. Thank goodness! This despite British PM's Gordon Brown warning everybody back on October 19 that the world has only 50 days left (PM Warns of Climate 'Catastrophe') if the world leaders delayed any longer.

Lemme see...Oct 19 + 50 days....carry the 1....that puts it at about December 8. Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Perhaps it ought to be renamed as the Feast of the Inaccurate Deception, just this once. No disrespect to the Blessed Mother, mind you.

Why the latest delay? While on his Bash America tour in Asia, President Obama participated in the annual two-day APEC summit, and it was reported in the BBC that "...leaders have failed to agree a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum.

Officials said the leaders - including presidents Barack Obama of the US and Hu Jintao of China - now viewed the Copenhagen summit as a "staging post", and not an end point, in the search for a global deal to cut emissions of greenhouse gases."

A member of the Obama administration added: "There was an assessment by the leaders that it was unrealistic to expect a full internationally legally binding agreement to be negotiated between now and when Copenhagen starts in 22 days."

How much you want to bet this is because the US Senate hasn't done anything on Cap-n-Tax? Which has to be a major embarrassment to President Man-child. Especially since the German publication 'der Spiegel' has come out and lambasted him for failure to come through on promises made during his Berlin campaign speech:

Barack Obama cast himself as a "citizen of the world" when he delivered his well-received campaign speech in Berlin in the summer of 2008. But the US president has now betrayed this claim. In his Berlin speech, he was dishonest with Europe. Since then, Obama has neglected the single most important issue for an American president who likes to imagine himself as a world citizen, namely, his country's addiction to fossil fuels and the risks of unchecked climate change. Health-care reform and other domestic issues were more important to him than global environmental threats. He was either unwilling or unable to convince skeptics in his own ranks and potential defectors from the ranks of the Republicans to support him, for example, by promising alternative investments as a compensation for states with large coal reserves.

Obama's announcement at the APEC summit that it was no longer possible to secure a binding treaty in Copenhagen is the result of his own negligence. China, India and other emerging economies have always spoken openly about the fact that the US, as the world's largest emitter of CO2, has to be proactive in commiting itself to targets agreed on by way of international negotiation. But that is not America's style. The US is quite happy to see itself as the leader of the Western world. But when it comes to climate change, America has once again failed miserably -- for the umpteenth time.

Ouch! That's gonna leave a mark!

Thing is, more and more Americans are seeing the light, that Cap-n-Tax is nothing more than a jobs killer and an attempt to redistribute wealth. For instance, stimulus money was awarded to Texas to develop large wind farms as part of the shift to renewable energy, and to create jobs. Dirty little secret, though, is that 100% of the parts for the turbines will be manufactured in China. Only 330 jobs will be created here, and of those, only 30 will be permanent, while China will reap the benefit of thousands of manufacturing jobs. Gateway Pundit has the story.

The longer this climate change malarkey is postponed the better. It won't ever go away, sadly, not while politicians and snake-oil salesmen (Al Gore, anyone?) stand to profit from it. Perhaps if politicians continue to make fear-mongering claims of imminent destruction, voters will cast them aside for more practical level-headed leaders. And for many in the US Congress, their 'catastrophe' may strike in about 351 days - Election Day, 2010. Now that's a bold prediction I can look forward to.

Gollum as Screwtape

We referred to this on The Reader but it's definitely worth the main site. Andy Serkis who played Gollum is taking on Screwtape. I gotta' admit. He kind of freaks me out. Check it out.

Prayer Request

One of my older brothers (not Patrick) just had some bad news. He's been fighting brain cancer for years and he's in the hospital now and they've just discovered some tumors have returned.

So if you have a minute or two say a prayer for my brother and his family. It would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Note: If you ever want to appreciate all you have go sit in an oncologist's waiting room for an hour.

The Eucharist as Metaphor

Jesus said: "‘I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.’"

When Jesus said this some people started freaking out because they realized that Jesus sure didn't sound like he was speaking metaphorically. Jesus heard them yapping nervously and told them to quiet down and listen up.

He spoke again and made doubly sure everyone understood what He was saying. "Amen, Amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him."

Then the folks really freaked out. Much hoopla and consternation ensued. A bunch of people skedaddled over the people in the cheap seats and high-tailed it out of there. The interesting thing to note is that Jesus didn't call them back and say He was just kidding or that he was speaking metaphorically. He wasn't.

He said "Amen, Amen I say to you" not "Metaphorically metaphorically I suggest that if you kinda' sorta eat the flesh..."

I'm sure the Eucharist has been used in metaphors before but Dr. Richard R. Gaillardetz, a Catholic theologian seems to go a step further in his lecture called, “Eucharist, Hunger and the Destruction of the Planet: Can a Religious Ritual Heal the World?”

The answer to that would seem to be a resounding "Yes." But sadly, Dr. Gaillardetz seems intent on fitting Jesus into a metaphor. And his lecture seems not to focus at all on what the Eucharist actually is which is the body and blood of our Lord.

Gaillardetz, according to The Independent Collegian, employs the Eucharist as a metaphor for feeding the poor and saving the planet.

He said the examples of the values Jesus displayed at the Last Supper can be utilized by Christians and non-Christians as a way to relieve earth’s social and environmental dilemmas...

Gaillardetz explored the link between worship and ethics by explaining how the Eucharist is a ritual enactment of the Christian practice to feed the hungry and poor... He used the example of Jesus giving bread and wine to his disciples to convey how God gave humans the planet. “The gifts are those of a cooperating relationship between man’s works of the hand with the earth; grain and grapes were not given but rather the product of both with the help of humans,” he said...

What?!

All of that just seems kind of beside the point that in the Eucharist lies the salvation of the world?

But when a member of the audience asked about the idea of religion healing the world being "an extreme view," Gaillardetz said "he knows religion is not the answer to fix everything, but the ideas embodied by Christianity are a step in the right direction for Christians and non-Christians alike."

Just a reminder, Jesus said "I am the way, the truth and the life." He didn't say, "I'm a step in the right direction." Focusing on the Eucharist as metaphor for saving the planet seems to me to be a step in the wrong direction.

Archbishop of Canterbury Is No James T. Kirk

Just in the nick of time we see some real leadership from the Archbishop of Canterbury. No no, he isn't doing anything crazy to save the Anglican communion like embracing orthodoxy or anything. Canterbury leads us in a different direction, off a cliff.

Rowan Williams has come out strongly in favor of the doctrine of higher taxes. Further, he gives us the source of this divinely inspired revelation, Big Brother 11.

[Telegraph]Dr Rowan Williams said that taxation should not be seen as a way of stifling business or redistributing wealth but helping to make the world a better place in which to live.

He called for new levies to be introduced on financial transactions and carbon emissions, and an end to the idea that unlimited economic growth is desirable.

The archbishop also claimed reality television gives us “alarming glimpses” of what the world would look like were everyone to be governed by self-interest.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, who looks remarkably like Sybok from the one of the worst movies of all time Star Trek V, has lost his marbles. As it happens, Sybok's tale is instructive. Sybok, half brother of Spock, has rejected logic and embraced emotions as his guide. This allows him to be fooled by a false God that beckons him to a far-off Planet. Let's call that planet, for the sake of argument, the Socialist Utopian planet.

Sybok cannot get to this utopian planet on his own so, knowing the rightness of his cause, he decides he can force others to do his bidding. In order to accomplish this, he fools people into going along and believing lies by appealing to their emotions. "Come with me", he says "I will take you to a better place where you will be happy and never get sick." It's not true of course, but it convinces enough people who want it to be true to go along for the ride. Let's call this, for lack of a better word, liberalism.

Of course, this is not enough. In order to get to this supposed utopia, he needs to take a few things from those who aren't completely on board with the program. He needs the Enterprise. So Sybok and his emotional friends steal it at the point of a gun. Let's call this taxation.

So after they have fooled all the people that they could and forced the rest at gunpoint to go along with their foolish plans, they finally arrive at this supposed utopia. Alas they discover that all that was promised them doesn't materialize. Instead, they are greeted by their false god who, surprise, just wants more. It turns out that the false god wanted the starship (acquired through taxation) for his own nefarious purposes and was never really interested in helping the people in the first place. How disappointing.

Now that I think about, Star Trek V might one of the best political allegories since Animal Farm.

One of the more memorable quotes from this otherwise forgettable movie comes from our hero, James T. Kirk, a rugged individualist if there ever was one. Never fooled by the appeal to his emotions, he questions this false God and asks, "What does God need with a starship?" Ignored, he asks again. Let's call this a town-hall meeting.

I would ask Rowan Williams a similar question. "What does God need with our tax dollars?" Either wake up from your socialist delusion or go back to watching Big Brother. Either way, leave our starship alone.

Phasers are not on stun.

If Jesse Jackson Were a Catholic Bishop

Well you've got to give Reverend Jesse Jackson credit. He doesn't pull punches. He just excommunicated all moderate and conservative blacks from...well...being black.

No. I'm not kidding. According to The Hill:

The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday night criticized Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) for voting against the Democrats’ signature healthcare bill.

“We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”

Obviously what he said is stupid and offensive and says that African Americans aren't allowed to think for themselves.

But there's another angle to this. The media ironically has fits when a bishop says you can't be Catholic and pro-choice but they'll likely give Jesse a pass on saying you can't be black and against healthcare.

I wish all of our bishops were 1/4 as gutsy as Rev. Jesse.

Nancy Pelosi can go on national television and distort the Church's teaching on abortion and what do we get? Hand wringing from many bishops. Notre Dame honors the most pro-abortion President the country's ever seen and what do we see? Priests having priests arrested on a college campus.

If all of our bishops could be 1/10 as serious about abortion as Jesse is on healthcare I'd be impressed.

I guess my only question is that excommunicated Catholics can always become Episcopalians, but where do former black people go? Do they have to sign on to other nationalities or ancestries?

Is Sarah Palin Not Pro-Life Enough?

Warning!: Pro-lifers cannibalizing each other ahead.

Is Sarah Palin pro-life? Not if you ask the American Right to Life which is promoting their site with pro-life profiles of some heavy hitting pro-life leaders. These guys don't cut anyone much slack. Even Fr. Frank Pavone doesn't get their highest rating. Sarah Palin and George W. Bush fare terribly and I'm not sure that's completely fair.

But I thought I'd throw it out there even if some of their standards seem a little wacky to me including an endorsement of creationism as a benchmark of pro-life-ness. There are some, to me, legitimate criticisms of Palin in there as well.

Here's some of it:

•As a Candidate Whom Many Pro-lifers Would Like to Support: her actual abortion record and rhetoric is shocking to the conscience in that Sarah Palin:

- appointed in 2009 a Planned Parenthood board member to the Alaska Supreme Court

- argues that chemical abortifacients that kill the youngest children should be legal

- distinguishes between her "personal" and public pro-life views (personally pro-life means officially pro-choice)

- indicates support for public funding to kill some unborn children

- whitewashes other candidates misleading millions to believe that pro-choice politicians are pro-life

- allows her name to be used in ads promoting grisly government-funded embryonic stem cell "research"

- undermines the God-given right to life by promoting evolution while officially opposing creation

- harms personhood by claiming that "equal protection" should not apply to unborn children

- has never announced support for any state's personhood amendment nor the Federal Human Personhood Amendment

- opposes personhood by claiming that the majority can decide to legalize the killing of children.

In her vice-presidential acceptance speech Sarah said, "there is a time for politics and a time for leadership." During the above, which time was it for her? Sources below document Sarah Palin's record and political rhetoric.

•Thinks the Morning After Pill should be Legal: Palin says that personally she would not take the Morning After Pill (an abortifacient chemical that kills the tiniest children) but that it should not be illegal. "I don't think that it should necessarily be illegal." This demonstrates the ARTL adage that "To be personally pro-life means to be officially pro-choice."

As far as nominating a pro-choicer to Alaska's highest court, Palin kind of had her hands tied on that one. And while I do believe she probably could've made a bigger stink over it, the Democratic legislature only offered her a couple of bad choices.

As for the personhood amendment I know many pro-lifers who don't agree that now is the time to push that agenda. That doesn't make them less pro-life.

So even though I'll admit that what was written about Palin's stance on the morning after pill is troubling and I'll look into it more, this seems like a pretty rough and at times unfair evaluation of Palin's pro-life credibility.

In the end, this kind of thing isn't really all that helpful in my opinion other than to gain awareness for your organization. All in all, I came out of this wondering more about the American Right to Life than I did about Sarah Palin.

Fr. Barron on the Movie "2012"

One of Fr. Barron's very best.

Google Followers - This Shall Not Stand!

We are so grateful for all the positive feedback that we receive on this website. None is more gratifying than the 234 lackeys, aka Google Followers, that hang on our every word.

I take that back. We are not grateful at all. It has come to my attention that Mark Shea has 270 minions, a fact that he rubs in our faces every chance he gets! You may not know this but he mocked us at the last secret blogger meeting held at the La Quinta Inn in Poughkeepsie (They have great tacos there btw!). Yes, he is a well respected author, editor, and radio personality and we aren't, but so what! This shall not stand!

Oh sure, Patrick Madrid has 489 followers, but he has that cool Burt Reynolds mustache. We just can't compete with that. But Mark can and should be knocked down from his perch.

But it isn't just Mark. Father Dwight Longenecker has 258 followers. It is true that he is a priest and we just can't buy that kind of street cred. However we view his Google superiority as evidence of a pernicious form of clericalism. Besides, we have more hair. Well, Matthew doesn't but I do and I probably will for at least six more months. So act now!

Anyway, help us to right these injustices. Follow CMR on Google!

Two Sets Of Rules

by LarryD

This is a guest post by our friend LarryD of the fine blog "Acts of the Apostasy." LarryD is one of the few remaining tax payers in metro Detroit; father of two, husband of one, chief of staff for the pet cat; blogging since March 2008; still waiting for that Great American Novel to write itself ; professional penitent; all around good guy even he is a Detroit Red Wings fan.

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You know how some people - mainly the progressives - complain that the Church is too focused on the Rules? Rules about contraception, rules about divorce, rules about annulments, rules about this that and the other. They say things like "Jesus didn't care about rules. He only commanded us to love". Or "Jesus never said anything about homosexuality, so stop judging".

It turns out that they're only complaining about the Rules they don't like. Because they're totally okay with the rules Vatican II set out, like taking statues out of churches, or getting rid of Latin, or permitting Sr.Kumbaya and The Unifying Spirit Dance Company to take over the liturgy.

Hang on. I forgot - those are the rules they *think* are in Vatican II. So not only do they complain about and/or ignore the rules they don't like, they also imagine rules that don't exist.

Lest you think the progressives are above any sort of actual rules, a story came out yesterday that kinda proves the axiom that the best rule is a rule that gives progressives an advantage.

From the Telegraph.co.uk: Priest Ordered to Pay Court Costs After Repairing Leaks Without Permission [my comments]

A priest and his church warden have been ordered to pay £100 each for repairing leaks to their church roof without permission from a church court.

Geoffrey Tattersall QC, Chancellor of the Diocese of Manchester and a judge of the Church of England's Consistory Court, said he was "appalled" with the way the repair works to Saint Margaret's Church, Halliwell, Bolton had been arranged without proper authority by priest in charge Rev Derek French and churchwarden Robert Abram, and in "blatant disregard" of advice that they were not suitable.

He ruled that some of Mr French's evidence was "lacking credibility" and said that there had been an "attempt to conceal" that the works had already been carried out when they applied to the consistory court for permission.

The judge took the rare step of ordering both Mr French and Mr Abram to each personally pay £100 towards the cost of the proceedings to "mark the gravity of their behaviour".

Mr French and Mr Abram had taken action to have the roof of the Baptistry repaired to put an end to 15 years of leaks at the church, which sometimes required several buckets to collect incoming rainwater.

[Okay - we have a leaky roof that has been in disrepair since the mid-1990's. And Mr. Tattersall says they're lacking credible evidence? Hello? 15 years??]

In late 2007, the Parochial Church Council decided that repairs should be carried out, at a cost of more than £3,000, and submitted a repair proposal to the Diocesan Advisory Committee (DAC) for approval.

However, in September 2008 the DAC responded saying that it could not recommend the proposal because it was "inappropriate and lacking in detail".
It criticised the specification of the lead to be used, as well as the use of polystyrene in the repairs, and the way battens were to be fixed. It advised consultation with the church architect.

[This is how I know the priest was dealing with liberals. Two years ago, he says he has to fix a roof that's been leaking for 15 years. One year later, the committee responds with, in effect, "How many holes are there and show us exactly where they are." And then declares that repairing the roof might result in environmental disaster - shown by the utter disdain for lead and polystyrene.]

On 29 September, a "disappointed" Mr French wrote back saying they had no intention of consulting with the architect for what was a repair job, and did not wish to incur additional fees. He provided answers to the DAC's queries, and urged an "early and favourable response", adding: "In the meantime I would ask the committee to bear in mind that the roof still leaks and the winter weather is drawing in."

[Big mistake, there - expecting a liberal committee to respond to common sense.]
At a meeting on 6 October 2008, the DAC again rejected the proposal, deeming it "wholly inappropriate" and concluding that it would not solve the problem.
Nevertheless, the repairs were carried out between 13 October and 2 November, even though such work requires a "faculty" or permission to be granted by the consistory court.

The judge said that in the subsequent petition for a faculty, dated 19 November 2008, completed by Mr French and signed by both applicants, the question in Item 31, 'How soon will work start after the faculty is granted', was met with the answer "ASAP", and the time estimate for completion given as two weeks.

However, during the course of the proceedings, Mr French revealed that the work had already been carried out "in order to stop the ingress of water that we have been experiencing for some time".

He wrote in a letter to the judge in May this year: "You might be interested to know that we have had no ingress of water throughout this past winter."

However, the judge in his ruling said: "Whilst I accept that the works undertaken have prevented the further ingress of water, it is self evident that only works of an appropriate specification will stop such further ingress in the longer term."

[The priest gets the roof fixed anyway to prevent further damage and more expensive repairs - successfully, as there were no leaks throughout the winter and spring - but the judge says "So what? You failed to pay homage to the almighty committee, and thus you must pay for your sin."

I imagine the priest and his warden consider the fine to be the best £100 they ever spent, just to avoid having to deal with the stupid committee anymore. And they have a dry church to boot, which I'm sure pleases the congregation.]

There are two lessons to be learned here. One, alluding to the start of this post, rules that progressives make are the only rules that must be followed. By everyone. No exception. We are experiencing that in society, and unfortunately in the Church as well.

But here's the second, and it's one that the Catholic Church should consider adopting. In order to curb liturgical abuses, the Vatican ought to authorize theCDF or CDW to develop a "GIRM Offenses To Cease Happening Assessment" plan. GOTCHA, for short. It would be applied when priests, pastoral associates, or liturgy committees commit liturgical abuses. Using Ritz crackers and grape juice? Slap! $1000 fine. Using inclusive language? Ding! 50 bucks please! Halloween Mass? $500, thank you very much. Playing too many MartyHaugen tunes? $250 per offense!

Alright, the last one is more of a pet peeve than an abuse. But who knows? This idea might provide sufficient disincentive and bring some of the worst offenders in line. And the collected fines could defray seminary tuition, or be donated to non-ACORN related charities.

After all, the progressives have been playing GOTCHA! with Church rules for a long time. Time to turn the tables.

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Be sure to check out LarryD's blog Acts Of The Apostasy