Biden Was Right-Take II
Well, somewhat to my chagrin I have to use the phrase “Biden was right” again. With North Korea launching a missle that traveled 1900 miles before it crashed into the Pacific, Biden’s prediction of an international crisis early in the Obama administration is coming true again, and this time I doubt if doing nothing will probably work either short term or long term.
“but it's not all THAT bad.”
Hattip to Dawn Eden. Yesterday Notre Dame Professor of Philosophy Alfred J. Freddoso addressed a rally of NDResponse, a student group at Notre Dame opposed to the Obama invitation to be the commencement speaker on May 17, 2009. Here is the text of his remarks:
Taxes Aren't The Only Problem
I’ve noticed a few posts dealing with the problems of taxation and government spending. With the social teaching of our Church clearly warns against the dangers of burdensome taxation, it nonetheless remains that tax rates have been cut dramatically in the last 30 years, even as government spending has increased. The losses of tax revenue were offset by a massive accumulation of debt, because a society such as ours requires a great deal of wealth to continue functioning.
I will be the one to point out, then, that far more perilous to the position of the working American family is the stagnation and overall decline of real wages – wages adjusted for inflation – during that same stretch of time. Both global pressures as well as corporate and government offensives against the social position of the American worker have contributed to a decline in real wages and have caused a build up of consumer debt that rivals the government’s debt.
We were told by endless propaganda no different in its shrillness and anxiousness that cutting taxes on the incomes of the wealthy, on dividends and capital gains, on estates and every other business venture, would create jobs and prosperity for all.
US Ambassadorship to Vatican Difficult for Obama to Fill
According to Massimo Franco, author of “Parallel Empires,” a recently published book on U.S.-Vatican relations, the Obama administration has put forward three candidates for consideration but each of them have been deemed insufficiently pro-life by the Vatican.
The Ballad of the Goodly Fere
Ezra Pound, fascist, anti-Semite, traitor and loon, was still a great poet. I have always admired this poem, not because of the way Christ is portrayed, but the imagination behind it. Christ and the apostles transformed into quasi Viking heroes of a medieval chronicle! All very odd. I am interested in opinions from our readers on the poem and on Pound as a poet. Here is T.S. Eliot on Pound as a poet.
Christianity and Mainstream Entertainment
Typically if one discusses the reflection of American culture in mainstream entertainment, there are very little positive things to be said—especially in Christian circles. But there is rarely a clear solution to the problem. Some discussions of the issues, in my experience, fail to reflect the gravity of the matter. I think it matters, more so than just casual condemnation in conversation. The entertainment center in America—Hollywood—matters because it is the global center of art and entertainment. Art is the way we humans respond to the cosmos. Every generation delivers something beautiful for future generations to brood over and take delight in. Storytelling is the way human beings learn. It is the way we define our values. It gives us heroes and noble dreams. Entertainment is the way we stretch beyond the limits of our day to day work to experience the depth of our human nature. Entertainment should lead us to laugh hard, to cry with empathy, and to feel exhilaration and wonder.
It is frightening to think that Christians are missing from this unbelievably influential and urgent landscape. Christians have something to offer that is direly missing from Hollywood. We bring hope, the mandate of concern for the world, and most importantly, the glory and creative energy of the Holy Spirit.
This is needed terribly in movies, television shows, videogames, and the Internet. We need not only to be donating to and praying for organizations such as ActOne, which has a Christian vision for entertainment, we need to encourage faith-filled artists and professionals to be writers, directors, actors, and so forth, in order to change the landscape and give our youth better idols to look up to. This is a moral imperative for all Christians.
Make Mine Freedom
Darwin’s Progaganda Post has inspired me to post Make Mine Freedom, a cautionary tale from 1948 of what can happen when people exchange freedom for promises of endless government largesse. Interesting now as a cultural artifact from the forties, I think it also makes fairly shrewd observations of how different segments of society can be quite willing to make a faustian bargain with government if the promises made by snakeoil salesmen running for office are grandiose enough. Obviously anti-Communist and pro-capitalist propaganda it does tell one glaring truth: the bigger the government the smaller the freedom over the long run.
God or Government Spending: Choose One?
Correlation isn’t causation. That said, I thought this from the Wall Street Journal was interesting:
A recent study of 33 countries by Anthony Gill and Erik Lundsgaarde found an inverse relationship between religious observance and welfare spending. Countries with larger welfare states, such as Sweden, Norway and Denmark, had markedly lower levels of religious attendance, affiliation and trust in God than countries with a history of limited government, such as the U.S., the Philippines and Brazil. Public spending amounts to more than one half of the GDP in Sweden, where only 4% of the population regularly attends church. By contrast, public spending amounts to 18% of the Philippines’ GDP, and 68% of Filipinos regularly attend church.
Vatican: Knights Templar Hid The Shroud of Turin
Breaking news emanating from the Vatican today concerning the missing years of the Shroud of Turin. It seems that the Knights Templar, after the sacking of Constantinople in A.D. 1204, held the Shroud of Turin until the dissolution of the order by Pope Clement V in A.D. 1307.
Dr. Barbara Frale, a researcher in the Vatican Secret Archives, wrote in the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano:
However her study of the trial of the Knights Templar had brought to light a document in which Arnaut Sabbatier, a young Frenchman who entered the order in 1287, testified that as part of his initiation he was taken to “a secret place to which only the brothers of the Temple had access”. There he was shown “a long linen cloth on which was impressed the figure of a man” and instructed to venerate the image by kissing its feet three times.
Propaganda
Various sides of our modern political spectrum often thrown around the term “propaganda”. I’ve had it explained to me by those on both the far left and far right that our news media is nothing but propaganda. In the process, we perhaps forget what real propaganda looks like. While looking up vintage Donald Duck cartoons for the kids, I ran across this little gem about the importance of paying your taxes. (The IRS did not yet have the power to do withholding during WW2, and so government revenues relied upon people actually handing over money to the government at intervals through the year.)
Of course, this is incredibly mild compared to the propaganda put out by communist and fascist regimes during the 30s and 40s. But next time someone tells you that the Bush era was dominated by knee jerk patriotism and propaganda, consider the FDR era by comparison.
In Defense of Notre Dame
In the Land of Lincoln, when we have any great moral question to address, we often turn to the Daley clan who make their pronouncements from the Duchy of Daley, motto Ubi Est Mea, sometimes mistakenly called Cook County. Now the brother of the current Duke, Richie the Lesser, William M. Daley, has come to the defense of Notre Dame and lambasted Francis Cardinal George for his statement taking the administration of Notre Dame to task for their planned adoration session with Obama on May 17. Father Z has given this statement the fisking to end all fiskings, so I will let him do the honors.
O Sacred Head
Something for the weekend. O Sacred Head Now Wounded sung by Fernando Ortega with scenes from The Passion of the Christ. The lyrics of this hymn derive from the latin poem Salve Mundi Salutare. The authorship is open to doubt although I agree with those who attribute at least part of the poem to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, based upon stylistic similarities with portions of his other writings. The sanctity and eloquence of Saint Bernard alloyed with the musical genius of Johann Sebastian Bach makes a potent combination indeed.
On a personal note this hymn has always moved me as no other does. It reminds me that God died for me, something I find absolutely stunning. Love and sacrifice begin and end with God, who regards each man as if there were no other.
Northwestern Indiana Humanist University
Bishop Thomas Doran of Rockford, Illinois pulls no punches in his letter to Jenkins regarding the homage to Obama day scheduled for May 17, 2009 at the college currently known as Notre Dame.
President Obama, War President
Our President was elected under the influence of great anti-war sentiment. He was “the anti-war candidate”. It ought to be disappointing then, for his supporters, to learn that he is decidedly not the anti-war President. In fact, President Obama is actively pursuing the war-on-terror, significantly expanding the Afghanistan theatre with another troop surge. And we shouldn’t forget that President Obama hasn’t pulled the troops out of Iraq yet, and the best estimates are that troops will be in Iraq for 2-3 more years - the same amount of time President Bush would have kept them there. (The article says all “combat troops” will be out of Iraq in August of 2010, but this is misleading. The article goes on to say that there will still be 30,000-50,000 troops there until 2011. The Obama administration redefined people who count as “troops”.) President Obama’s continuation of the war on terror says a number of things. First, the silence of his anti-war constituency indicates that they were not opposed to the Iraq war on principle, but rather opposed to the Iraq war when a Republican candidate was president. In fact, they seem to have a great and newfound tolerance for war now that they like the guy at the helm of it all. It also tells us that the foreign policy of President Bush was not offensive enough for the country to elect a President who would have actually changed things.
Symbolic Action
Symbols mean things, but they do not necessarily accomplish things in concrete fashion, so they often seem to be a prime source of argument and misunderstanding in the political arena.
Last week, environmental activists throughout the US participated in a “green hour” in which they all committed to turn off all electricity-using appliances in their possession for one hour (from 8-9pm, as I recall). This was supposed to express to the leaders of the G-20 nations the importance of moving to implement regulations to reduce the burning of fossil fuels.
Not being a major devotee of the global warming cause (I don’t think the kind of restrictions that could realistically be passed would do much good if global warming is in fact a man-made phenomenon, so I would be more interested in putting resources into mitigation than regulating power production) this gesture strikes me as a bit silly. If you really thought that reducing power consumption was important, it seems to me you should reduce your power consumption. Permanently, that is, not just for one hour and then go back to normal.
In the same sense, I suspect that the continuing controversy over Notre Dame University honoring President Obama looks silly to outsiders.
A Different View
There is so much being said and debated in this Notre Dame controversy, and so I want to add one more perspective to the mix. I wrote an essay for my personal website and I don’t want to take up a lot of space with it here, so I will simply provide the link and discussion can take place below.
I know many of you will disagree, perhaps even take offense at what I am saying, though essentially I agree with what most of you have already said (no I will not be defending Obama, or abortion – I am 100% pro-life). I think we should all be mature enough to handle a different perspective. I’m aware of the potential for things to get quite ugly, but I think there is a painful truth that needs to be acknowledged.
If I am truly wrong, so be it – I can be wrong. But if I’m right, or partially right, then it does no good to kill the messenger.
http://geocities.com/joeahargrave/notredame.html
Receiving Holy Communion
A beautiful picture of a young child receiving Jesus from Papa Bene himself!
(Biretta Tip: Fr. Zuhlsdorf)
I Write to you with a Heavy Heart
Archbishop Alfred Hughes sent a letter to Jenkins yesterday regarding the Obama homage on May 17, 2009:
I've Seen Worse
From the only reliable source of news on the net, the Onion. The sad thing is that Franz Kafka doesn’t seem as bad as some other airports that I could name. As a loyal son of Illinois I stoutly contend that any list of terrible airports that does not have O’Hare near the top is a fraud!
The Cause of Canonization for Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II may be canonized on Divine Mercy Sunday according to several news sources. Pray for the canonization of the late Holy Father, whom was an incredible witness to the Gospel of Life in the 20th and early 21st century.
According to news sources, the Vatican is investigating a ‘miracle’ of a guy who survived being shot in the head, believing that it was the intercession of John Paul II:
When Jory Aebly was shot in the head, execution-style during a mugging five weeks ago in Cleveland, Ohio, that should have been the end of it. Doctors at the Metro Health Medical Center told his family it was a “non-survivable” injury, according to the hospital’s Web site.
Notre Dame Has Certainly Turned Against The Church
Hattip to my friend Feddie at Southern Appeal. In a scathing letter Archbishop Eusebius J. Beltran of Oklahoma City denounces the decision of Notre Dame to pay homage on May 17, 2009 to President Obama.
Happy Belated National Atheists' Day
Hattip to Regular Guy Paul. I am afraid I got busy yesterday and I forgot to wish everyone a Happy National Atheists’ Day. Here are some quotes of atheists of yesteryear for the occasion:
Notre Dame, This Is What A Principled Pro-Life Stand Looks Like
Hattip to the ever-alert Jay Anderson of Pro Ecclesia. Bravo to Bishop Gerald A. Gettelfinger of Evansville:
“Bishop Gerald A. Gettelfinger of Evansville said he will not attend an April right-to-life dinner where Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, is scheduled to speak because he objects to comments the GOP leader made about abortion.
Hell and Back Again
For those American Catholic readers who aren’t familiar with my previous online life, I’m on my third year of blogging through Dante’s Divine Comedy on my personal blog as a Lenten exercise. On the category page here you can find entries for the entirely of the Inferno and nearly all of Purgatorio, which I should be wrapping up by Easter.
Time and motivation permitting, I may start Paradiso during Easter season — or perhaps I’ll have to save that for next year. If you’re interested, feel free to stop by and read along in this timeless spiritual and literary classic during what remains of Lent.
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