GOP Presidential Poll for August
The American Catholic (TAC) has been running a periodic poll of the GOP presidential field. So naturally following the Iowa Straw Poll we have this months poll for our TAC readers. We have included candidates that have declared their candidacy as well as other speculative* candidates. As the primaries arrive the field of candidates should narrow down a bit.
Tim Pawlenty has dropped out, but Rick Perry has “officially” entered the race. A newcomer to our poll is Representative Thad McCotter of Michigan. Tim Pawlenty garnered 13 votes in our last TAC poll, we’ll see where Pawlenty’s supporters will go to next. Rick Santorum won the last TAC poll.
You can view the results of our last poll here.
Update: My apologies, I have added Michele Bachmann.
* For example even though Chris Christie has denied he is interested in running, he still will be in Iowa for an inexplicable reason. Until then, he will be showing in the poll until we don’t see his name on the actual roll.
Truth About The Riots In England
We live in a low and dishonest age. Political considerations cause almost all politicians and vast sections of populations to refuse to make fairly obvious statements of fact about the time in which we live. I therefore take notice when someone decides to break this taboo. Max Hastings, a British historian, we see a sample of him at work in the above video, shatters one great taboo by honestly describing the process by which modern Western society all too effectively produces amoral barbarians within its midst. He begins:
If you live a normal life of absolute futility, which we can assume most of this week’s rioters do, excitement of any kind is welcome. The people who wrecked swathes of property, burned vehicles and terrorised communities have no moral compass to make them susceptible to guilt or shame.
Most have no jobs to go to or exams they might pass. They know no family role models, for most live in homes in which the father is unemployed, or from which he has decamped.
They are illiterate and innumerate, beyond maybe some dexterity with computer games and BlackBerries.
They are essentially wild beasts. I use that phrase advisedly, because it seems appropriate to young people bereft of the discipline that might make them employable; of the conscience that distinguishes between right and wrong.
They respond only to instinctive animal impulses — to eat and drink, have sex, seize or destroy the accessible property of others.
Their behaviour on the streets resembled that of the polar bear which attacked a Norwegian tourist camp last week. They were doing what came naturally and, unlike the bear, no one even shot them for it.
A former London police chief spoke a few years ago about the ‘feral children’ on his patch — another way of describing the same reality.
The depressing truth is that at the bottom of our society is a layer of young people with no skills, education, values or aspirations. They do not have what most of us would call ‘lives’: they simply exist. Continue reading
Bye Bye Pawlently
Tim Pawlenty is the first casualty of the Republican primary contest for President, with his announcement today of his dropping out. I am not too surprised. His only hope as a candidate was to win the Iowa caucuses. His attacks against the frontrunner in Iowa, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, in the debate last week proved completely ineffective. His loss in the Saturday Aimes, Iowa straw poll, coming in a distant third after Bachmann and Ron Paul (R. Pluto), demonstrated that his hopes in Iowa were minimal. Continue reading
Saint John of Damascus on the Assumption
Thy blessedness was not death, nor was dying thy perfection, nor, again, did thy departure hence help thee to security. Thou art the beginning, middle, and end of all goods transcending mind, for thy Son in His conception and divine dwelling in thee is made our sure and true security. Thus thy words were true: from the moment of His conception, not from thy death, thou didst say all generations should call thee blessed. It was thou who didst break the force of death, paying its penalty, and making it gracious. Hence, when thy holy and sinless body was taken to the tomb, the choirs of angels bore it, and were all around, leaving nothing undone for the honour of our Lord’s Mother, whilst apostles and all the assembly of the Church burst into prophetic song, saying: “We shall be filled with the good things of Thy house, holy is Thy temple, wonderful in justice.” And again: “The Most High has sanctified His tabernacle. The mountain of God is a fertile mountain, the mountain in which it pleased God to dwell.” The apostolic band lifting the true ark of the Lord God on their shoulders, as the priests of old the typical ark, and placing thy body in the tomb, made it, as if another Jordan, the way to the true land of the gospel, the heavenly Jerusalem, the mother of all the faithful, God being its Lord and architect.
Thy soul did not descend to Limbo, neither did thy flesh see corruption. Thy pure and spotless body was not left in the earth, but the abode of the Queen, of God’s true Mother, was fixed in the heavenly kingdom alone. O how did heaven receive her who is greater than heaven? How did she, who had received God, descend into the grave? This truly happened, and she was held by the tomb. It was not after bodily wise that she surpassed heaven. For how can a body measuring three cubits, and continually losing flesh, be compared with the dimensions of heaven ? It was rather by grace that she surpassed all height and depth, for that which is divine is incomparable. Continue reading
Why the Youth are Rioting
I beg your patience over my absence, and I ask for your prayers. In June I accepted an administrative position with a new school district. While this is a very good opportunity in so many ways, I have never in my life found myself so overwhelmed. I can only say this: teaching was so easy!
At any rate, while this post is not original by any means, I couldn’t help but share the content of an article I ran across today. The liberal left often likes to pin social unrest on the ills created by the conservative right. You know how the goes … the economy is in the pits because of right wing policies put in place by George W. Bush … because people don’t have jobs they become socially discontent … because they are socially discontent they rise up “against the man”, so to speak. Rarely are people actually held accountable for their actions. Instead, we live in a culture that seeks to pin people’s actions on something external to the human will, something other than sin (dare I even use the word). Actually, this is nothing new. It is merely a modern version of ancient Christian heresies that seek to separate the body and soul, in this case to separate the external actions from the internal person. How often as a teacher did I hear a student explain their dishonesty with, “I know I cheated, Mr. Tawney, but I am not a cheater. I am a good person.” The danger in separating our actions from our persons will be catastrophic for the world. The Christian principle of sacramentality, understood here in its most general sense, says quite the opposite: the external is a reflection of the internal, and at the same time the external forms the internal. This is true whether we are talking about the words of consecration (which are externally symbolic of the underlying reality and are simultaneously efficacious in bringing about the internal reality) or whether we are talking about the moral act. Friends, we are how we act, and we act how we are. When we stand before God, we will not be able to pin our sin on the social policies of one party or another.
I have rambled enough … more than I intended. With that, I give you the motivation behind these thoughts: an article on the London riots.
The depressing truth is that at the bottom of our society is a layer of young people with no skills, education, values or aspirations. They do not have what most of us would call ‘lives’: they simply exist.
Nobody has ever dared suggest to them that they need feel any allegiance to anything, least of all Britain or their community. They do not watch royal weddings or notice Test matches or take pride in being Londoners or Scousers or Brummies.
Not only do they know nothing of Britain’s past, they care nothing for its present.
They have their being only in video games and street-fights, casual drug use and crime, sometimes petty, sometimes serious.
The notions of doing a nine-to-five job, marrying and sticking with a wife and kids, taking up DIY or learning to read properly, are beyond their imaginations.
Read the rest here.
Saving Civilization One Word at a Time
For the end of the world was long ago,
And all we dwell today
As children of some second birth,
Like a strange people left on earth
After a judgment day.
For the end of the world was long ago,
When the ends of the world waxed free,
When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,
And the sun drowned in the sea.
When Caesar’s sun fell out of the sky
And whoso hearkened right
Could only hear the plunging
Of the nations in the night.
G.K. Chesterton
Something for the Weekend. From the endlessly talented songsters at Music For History Lovers, Illuminated Manuscripts sung to the tune of Nowhere Man by the Beatles. Monks toiling in Scriptoriums in monasteries throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and thereby rescuing some of the classic works of Antiquity is a cliche, but a true cliche. When the secular world of the Western Empire dissolved in chaos and ruin following the babarian invasions, it was the Church that rescued the lamp of knowledge. Only an institution like the Church, a rock in the river of time, could century following century ensure the survival and copying of manuscripts that preserved a precious fraction of the writings of Greece and Rome. Jerusalem rescued Athens. Continue reading
Hey, You Filthy Right-Wing Bigots: Stop the Hate!
Ah, but Klavan on the Culture, Conservatives, because of their ideas, are by definition always uncivil, while Liberals are always civil, at least according to the Mainstream Media, also known as the Media fewer and fewer people pay attention to. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air took a look at an example of this recently:
“Froma Harrop, a member of The [Providence] Journal’s editorial board and a syndicated columnist, has been named president of the National Conference of Editorial Writers. The NCEW is a 64-year-old professional organization. Its members include editorial writers, editors, broadcasters and online opinion writers. One of its new missions, the Civility Project, endeavors to improve the quality of political discourse.”–Providence Journal, April 15
Morrisey noted the above and then had this example of Harrop being civil in one of her columns:
“Make no mistake: The tea party Republicans have engaged in economic terrorism against the United States–threatening to blow up the economy if they don’t get what they want. And like the al-Qaida bombers, what they want is delusional: the dream of restoring some fantasy caliphate. . . . Americans are not supposed to negotiate with terrorists, but that’s what Obama has been doing. . . . That the Republican leadership couldn’t control a small group of ignoramuses in its ranks has brought disgrace on their party. But oddly, Obama’s passivity made it hard for responsible Republicans to control their destructive children. The GOP extremists would ask Obama for his firstborn, and he’d say, ‘OK.’ So they think, why not ask for his second-born, to which he responds, ‘Let’s talk.’ ”–Froma Harrop syndicated column, Aug. 2
That dig apparently annoyed Harrop, who responded on her own web site yesterday. Her explanation is, to say the least, entirely self-serving, and she twists the definition of “civility” into knots in order to explain her double standard:
I see incivility as not letting other people speak their piece. It’s not about offering strong opinions. If someone’s opinion is fact-based, then it is permissible in civil discourse. Of course, there are matters of delicacy, and I dispensed with all sweet talk in this particular column. And I did stoop to some ad hominem remarks, I’ll admit. Continue reading
Tribute to a RINO
As readers of this blog know, I have little use for RINO’s, (Republicans in Name Only), politicians who call themselves Republicans but once in office vote like Democrats. However, every rule has exceptions and an exception to my antipathy to RINOs is the late Mark Hatfield. Hatfield died on August 7 of this year, at 89 years of age. He served in the Navy as a landing craft officer in the Pacific during World War II at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. He was one of the first Americans to see the ruins of Hiroshima after the surrender of Japan.
Beginning in 1950, he embarked upon a 46 year career in politics as a Republican in Oregon. He served in the Oregon legislature and was twice elected governor of the state. He served 30 years in the Senate from 1967-1997. In office his votes were often indistinguishable from a liberal Democrat. He was a dove on Vietnam, supported the nuclear freeze, cast the deciding vote in the Senate that defeated a balanced budget amendment and was opposed to the death penalty. In 1964 he denounced Goldwater conservatives as extremists. Ronald Reagan, who was a friend of Hatfield, once noted in his diary while he was President that with Republicans like Hatfield, who needed Democrats. He was a RINO’s RINO. Of course you know there is a but coming.
Close, But No Cigar
Unions spent north of $30 million* in a recall effort in Wisconsin in order to gain control of the state senate. Six Republican senators faced recall elections, and the Democrats needed to win three in order to win control of the upper house. They won two. What’s more, two senate Democrats face recall elections next week, and the GOP has a good chance to win at least one of those two races. So, in the end, the unions would have spent $30 million to gain a whopping one seat. Not a very good return on investment.
Evidently the “news” team at MSNBC was trying to spin this as a victory for Democrats, but that strains credulity past the breaking point. Of the two seats they won, one was in a fairly Democratic district and the other involved a scandal-plagued senator. In fact, as Ed Morrissey suggests, this should be seen as a big defeat for big labor.
Next Tuesday, two more recall elections take place for the state Senate, this time two of the fleabagger seats, thanks to the reaction from the GOP to the union’s efforts to recall Republicans. It’s possible that the unions will go 0 for 3 in 2011 and end up handing back the two pickups they got last night. The unions will have ended up spending millions to end up right where they began — locked out of Madison — while adding a powerful display of electoral impotence to their brand. They have discredited themselves with Wisconsin voters in a way that Walker and the GOP couldn’t possibly have planned, the victim of their own arrogance in attempting to overturn elections for no other reason that protecting their own featherbeds.
Markos Moulitsas is pushing the kool-aid that this is a progressive victory over at Daily Kos. It’s actually kind of cute to see a man so delusional.
Beyond Wisconsin, if we can enjoy a similar “loss rate” in Republican-held districts (picking up 33 percent of them), Speaker Nancy Pelosi will have a huge majority in 2013.
Yes, because the rate of victory in a special election in one state featuring roughly 1/5 of one legislative chamber is clearly a sign of things to come.
It’s going to be a long year, and tens of millions of dollars of Koch money (in addition to hundreds of millions more from Rove and allies) are going to force us to fight like hell for every inch of territory. They won’t cede it willingly or fairly. They’ll do their best to cheat or buy whenever they feel they can’t win fairly.
This is going to be the rallying cry for progressives. As always, they complain when people besides themselves actually spend money and campaign against their interests. I get a particular sense of amusement from the bellyaching about the evil Koch brothers, because it’s not like the Democrats have their own deep-pocketed sugar daddy, right? And really, do guys like Kos want to talk about cheating to win elections?
But I can understand Kos’s wishful thinking. They were on the precipice of revolution. That revolution was halted in the fall of 2010. This election was to mark the turnaround that jumpstarted that revolution. The good people of Wisconsin were to throw off the shackles of their tyrannical GOP overlords and send a stinging rebuke to the heart of that evil monster Scott Walker. The people would finally join the progressives and take the necessary step to inch them closer to the utopia.
And then the people of Wisconsin sort of yawned and said they’ll keep the government that they have, thank you very much.
Dagger. So what’s left to do? Admit defeat? Acknowledge that maybe the populace isn’t as enamored with your lofty plans as you’d like? What are you crazy? No, it’s time to just double down, retrench, and like Homer Simpson cry out that “It’s still good! It’s still good!”
Whatever you say, Markos.
*: $30 million figure seems to be a combined spending figure. Union amount was in the $15 million range, give or take. Still a lot invested for little return.
Biden to the Rescue!
In these dark days of the credit downgrade of the nation, an economy falling back into recession, a crashing stock market, etc, one man shines out as a beacon of hope: Veep and Beloved National Clown Joe Biden. As the Three Stooges lightened the American mood during the Great Depression with their comic pratfalls and buffoonish antics, so Biden lightens the national mood by constantly, and deliberately I am sure, saying the stupidest things imaginable.
When Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford recently returned to Congress after being shot in the head, Biden welcomed her as a fellow member of the “cracked head club”. As the nation was still howling at that, he dauntlessly followed up with the gutbuster that the members of the Tea Party were “acting like terrorists“.
Note the master at work. Joe of course realizes that calling people who organized peacefully, won the Congressional elections in 2010, and whose representatives in Congress are seeking to enact legislation embodying the beliefs they campaigned on as terrorists, is absurd. He therefore willingly makes himself absurd and a national joke in order to give us all something to laugh about in these dark days. What a true patriot!
However, in the event that I am wrong and that Joe really meant that tea party members are acting like terrorists, below are depicted the intellectual godfathers of this dangerous movement, and perhaps Homeland Security needs to put them under surveillance pronto: Continue reading
The Side of Civilization
In Homage to Catalonia
Once I had heard how things stood, I felt easier in my mind. The issue was clear enough. On the one side the C.N.T. [anarchists], on the other side the police. I have no particular love for the idealize ‘worker’ as he appears in the bourgeois Communist’s mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.
I had a similar feeling fo clarity today when I read this today:
As officers lost control of the streets locals were forced to take the law into their own hands, arming themselves with sticks and chasing looters away from their properties.
In Dalston and Hackney, north-east London, Turkish shopkeepers and their families fought back against looting youths, before spending the night standing shoulder-to-shoulder in an attempt to deter further attacks.
One man said: ‘This is Turkish Kurdish area. They come to our shops and we fight them with sticks.’
… Continue reading
The Gods of the Copybook Headings Provide The Commentary
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
Newsweek and the Demonization of Michele Bachmann
Newsweek, the newsmagazine worth every cent of the dollar it was recently sold for, is running a hit piece against Congresswoman Michele Bachmann this week. They aren’t especially subtle about what they are doing as the cover indicates:
Here is a photograph of Michele Bachmann by a photographer not employed by Newsweek: Continue reading
Our Divine Pope
Hat tip to the Midwest Conservative Journal for finding what might be the dumbest thing ever written by a journalist about Catholicism. Considering the competition, that’s actually saying quite a lot.
Though most in the Coptic Orthodox community send their children to Catholic school, they are not Catholic themselves. The differences are slight — they use the same liturgies, though Orthodox Christians differ from Roman Catholics in their belief that the Pope is a human being, not a divine figure — which has meant Coptic Orthodox children most often are sent to Catholic school.
Approximately one-third of Toronto’s citizenry is Roman Catholic. Even granting the large number of nominal Catholics, this means that Murray Whyte, unless he has truly lives in a sheltered environment, must encounter a decent amount of Roman Catholics. Sure, this doesn’t mean that he’s going to know or understand the finer details of our faith, but are you kidding me here?
Chart of the Day: Spending Spree
Via Greg Mankiw comes this stark chart from Tino Sanandaji of Super-Economy, it shows non-defense spending as a percentage of US GDP over the last 35 years.
A few things to note:
Continue reading
Give Us This Day
William Thomas Cummings, pictured viewer’s left in the above photograph, is known for the phrase, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” This is the story of the priest behind the phrase.
Born in 1903 he studied at Saint Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California and was ordained a priest in 1928. Wanting to be a missionary priest he joined the Maryknoll Order. In December 1941 he was serving as a missionary priest in the Philippines. On December 7, 1941 he showed up at the American Army headquarters in Manila in white vestments and offered his services as a chaplain. The commandant of the Manila garrison attempted to talk him out of it. He was 38, old for a combat chaplain, and he was nursing a back injury. He was also near-sighted and lean as a rake. Father Cummings vehemently replied that he was determined to be an Army chaplain. Commissioned as a first lieutenant, he joined the Army in its epic retreat to the Bataan peninsula, where American and Filipino troops, on starvation rations and wracked with malaria, would make a heroic stand for months against the Japanese Imperial Army.
Believing themselves deserted by the US, the troops sang this bit of bitter doggerel:
We’re the battling bastards of Bataan,
No mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam.
No aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no nieces,
No pills, no planes, no artillery pieces.
And nobody gives a damn.
General Douglas MacArthur, in command of all American and Filipino troops in the Philippines, continually pleaded with Washington for a relief force to Bataan. Shamefully, some of the messages from Washington indicated that a relief force was being put together. These were lies. After Pearl Harbor the US simply lacked the naval assets to successfully reinforce Bataan. Any attempt to do so would almost certainly have led to a military disaster for America. MacArthur refused an order that he leave Bataan, and stated that he would resign his commission and fight as a volunteer. He finally left after a direct order from President Roosevelt, but refused to be smuggled out in a submarine, instead going by PT boat to demonstrate that the Japanese blockade of the Philippines could be penetrated. After he arrived in Australia he was shocked to learn that there were no plans for the relief of the Philippines. His main goal throughout the war thereafter was the liberation of the Philippines and the rescue of the American and Filipino POWs.
On Bataan Chaplain Cummings quickly became an Army legend. On Good Friday 1942 at a Bataan field hospital undergoing bombardment Nurse Hattie Bradley witnessed Father Cummings in action: More piercing screams. Scores must be dead or dying, she was convinced. She dashed into the orthopedic ward for help. There, panic was on the verge of erupting. Then she saw the chaplain…standing on a desk. Above the roar of the airplanes, the explosions and the shrieks of the wounded, his voice could be heard: “Our Father, who art in heaven…” Calmed by his prayers, the patients quieted.” Father Cummings did this in spite of one of his arms being broken by shrapnel from a bomb.
On Bataan he was always with the troops near or on the front line. He said innumerable Masses, administered the Last Rites to the dying and helped with the wounded. His field sermons were memorable. In one of them he made the famous observation that “There are no atheists in foxholes.” The quotation was passed on in the book “I Saw the Fall of the Philippines” by General Carlos P. Romulo, one of the Filipino troops evacuated from Bataan, which was published in 1942.
What Pro-Abort Catholics Must Believe
Hattip to Mathew Archbold at Creative Minority Report. The poster is funny and devastating. However, I would find it even more humorous if purported Catholic newspapers didn’t publish articles like this, or if articles like this were not dead on accurate as to the attitudes of radical nuns or if so many pro-aborts, an example is here, didn’t end up in positions of power within agencies associated with the Church. The pro-life cause would be so much more effective if so many Catholics in this country were not actively supporting the right to kill unborn kids.
Vacations and Reality
I divide the causes of human laughter into Joy, Fun, the Joke Proper, and Flippancy. You will see the first among friends and lovers reunited on the eve of a holiday. Among adults some pretext in the way of Jokes is usually provided, but the facility with which the smallest witticisms produce laughter at such a time shows that they are not the real cause. What that real cause is we do not know. Something like it is expressed in much of that detestable art which the humans call Music, and something like it occurs in Heaven—a meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience, quite opaque to us. Laughter of this kind does us no good and should always be discouraged. Besides, the phenomenon is of itself disgusting and a direct insult to the realism, dignity, and austerity of Hell.
Fun is closely related to Joy—a sort of emotional froth arising from the play instinct. It is very little use to us. It can sometimes be used, of course, to divert humans from something else which the Enemy would like them to be feeling or doing: but in itself it has wholly undesirable tendencies; it promotes charity, courage, contentment, and many other evils.
CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
My family and I had a great time on our vacation. Gen Con was grand as it always is, and, as the picture at the top of the post indicates, I made a new friend! (I am the one who is not green.)
During vacations I attempt to studiously ignore the news, forget about the Law, and focus in on my family and fun. I find that a bit difficult to do, as I always take a great deal of interest in the noteworthy events of the day, and my legal practice tends to be fairly consuming of my time during non-vacation periods. Fortunately my family I also find fascinating, and after a day or two I am in full vacation mode and everything but my family fades into the distance for a time.
Alas, vacations always end. When I go back to my office on Monday, I know that I will have many messages to return, and a full schedule of appointments and court appearances to deal with. Back home with the internet, I will spend at least an hour each day getting up to speed with current events, and writing my blog posts, and my life proceeds in its familiar non-vacation manner.
It would be easy for me to think that the vacation was a temporary illusion and the way I normally spend my life the reality, but this is incorrect. God gives us this life as an entirety and it is not for us to divide it. Our different activities each year and each day are merely facets of the time on this planet we have as a free-will gift from our Creator. What we do with the time, good and bad, is up to us, but no portion is less our reality than any other portion. It is our task to enfuse everything we do with love of God and love of our neighbor.
Get Off the Track!
Something for the weekend. Get Off The Track! by the Hutchinson Family Singers, a family group of singers who were very popular in the North during the 1840′s, 1850′s and 1860′s. They were fiery abolitionists and this song became the anthem of the crusade against slavery in the US.
Continue reading
Failure
Congrats. You’ve managed to do what even Jimmy Carter couldn’t accomplish.
The United States lost its top-notch AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor’s on Friday in an unprecedented reversal of fortune for the world’s largest economy.
S&P cut the long-term U.S. credit rating by one notch to AA-plus on concerns about the government’s budget deficits and rising debt burden. The move is likely to raise borrowing costs eventually for the American government, companies and consumers.
“The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics,” S&P said in a statement.
Maybe we should have listened to those tea party “terrorists.”
Search for the Jeff Davis
I recently wrote about William Tillman and his encounter with the Confederate privateer Jeff Davis, and that post may be read here. The above video clip is from a film on the search for the sunken Jeff Davis. Continue reading
Voting for Polytheists
Jimmy Akin must have had a bet with someone who dared him to write a post that got more comments than the Fr. Corapi stuff. This may not beat the Corapi story, but this should get . . . interesting before all is said and done.
Jimmy’s post is titled “Should America Elect a Polytheist Who Claims to Be a Christian?” If you’re not sure who he is referring to, I’ll let him explain:
In various races, we might be asked to vote for candidates who are Mormon.
While they may be very nice people and may even share many values with Christians, Mormons are not Christians. They do not have valid baptism because they are polytheists. That is, they believe in multiple gods. This so affects their understanding of the baptismal formula that it renders their administration of baptism invalid and prevents them from becoming Christians when they attempt to administer the sacrament.
Unlike other polytheists (e.g., Hindus, Shintoists), Mormons claim to be Christian.
Casting a vote for a Mormon candidate thus means casting one’s vote for a polytheist who present himself to the world as a Christian.
He goes on to argue that voting for a Mormon in a national election poses grave concerns.
It would not only spur Mormon recruitment efforts in numerous ways, it would mainstreamize the religion in a way that would deeply confuse the American public about the central doctrine of the Christian faith. It would give the public the idea that Mormons are Christian (an all-too-frequent misunderstanding as it is) and that polytheism is somehow compatible with Christianity.
In other words, it would deal a huge blow to the American public’s already shaky understanding of what Christianity is.
That means it would massively compromise a fundamental value on the scale of the abortion issue.
Jimmy writes that he’d sit out an election between a Mormon and a pro-abortion candidate.
Before stating my disagreement with Jimmy, let me point out where is he is right: Continue reading
The New York Times Has All The Answers!
You are correct Klavan on the Culture! The New York Times does have all the answers, and most of them are wrong! Ad revenues for the print New York Times have been declining for years and the Old Gray Lady is about as profitable as a Soviet Tractor Plant circa 1986. However, the Newspaper of Record has a plan. It seems there is this thing called the internet, and the New York Times will get suckers subscribers to pay for access to New York Times content.
This was tried before by the Times and it was a dismal failure, but this time it will succeed for sure! And if it doesn’t, the fish wrap industry is just waiting to be conquered!
Knights of Columbus to Take Over JP II Center
Supreme Knight Carl Anderson (and member of my council) announced today at the Supreme Convention in Denver that the Knights of Columbus are acquiring the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington, DC.
“True to Pope John Paul II’s vision, and using the story of his life as an inspiration, the shrine will be an opportunity to evangelize and spread the Good News of the Gospel through a New Evangelization,” Anderson said in a public statement.
“Because of his tireless evangelization efforts, an entire generation of Catholics has become known as the ‘John Paul Generation,’ and, certainly, we are honored to continue to spread his profound and powerful message of hope for our country, our continent and our world.”
Archbishop Allen Vigneron of Detroit confirmed that the Knights will provide a $20 million cash payment to the Detroit Archdiocese, which had poured $54 million into the cultural center, a project marked by cost overruns that continued to require large-interest payments from the Detroit Archdiocese.
Wonderful news for a site that was really struggling.
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