Mother O’ Mine
If I were hanged on the highest hill,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
I know whose love would follow me still,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
If I were drowned in the deepest sea,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
I know whose tears would come down to me,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
If I were damned of body and soul,
I know whose prayers would make me whole,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
Rudyard Kipling
Episcopal Activism: Girls Scouts of the United States
As the Girl Scouts of the United States (GS-USA) celebrates its 100th anniversary, it struck The Motley Monk as somewhat odd to read in the Washington Post that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) would be launching an official inquiry into the organization.
“Surely something’s awry here,” The Motley Monk thought as he read the headline in the Washington Post. “They’ve certainly got bigger fish to fry than this.”
Well, it appears, this official inquiry is extremely important.
So, what’s the big problem?
The inquiry is to be conducted by the USCCB’s Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth. In a March 28, 2012 letter sent to his fellow bishops by the Committee’s Chairman, Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne, IN, the Committee will be examining the Girl Scouts’ “possible problematic relationships with other organizations” and various “problematic” program materials that conflict with Church teaching.
According to a Visiting Fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Mary Rice Hasson, GS-USA has not been responsive to its critics and has been “whitewashing” programs and policies that contradict church teaching. Hasson said:
They just repeated the Girl Scouts’ denials. Families’ concerns were minimized or ignored.
A collision course is probably a good description of where things are headed. The leadership of the Girl Scouts is reflexively liberal. Their board is dominated by people whose views are antithetical to the teachings of the Catholic Church.
GS-USA argues that the concerns raised by Catholic critics are recycled complaints that GS-USA has denied repeatedly and categorically. GS-USA spokeswoman, Michelle Tompkins, said:
I know we’re a big part of the culture wars. People use our good name to advance their own agenda.
For us, there’s an overarching sadness to it. We’re just trying to further girls’ leadership.”
GS-USA maintains that it has no partnership with Planned Parenthood, and doesn’t take positions regarding sexuality, birth control, or abortion. However, GS-USA is a member of the 145-nation World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) which does maintain that girls and young women “need an environment where they can freely and openly discuss issues of sex and sexuality.” WAGGGS also has called for increased access to condoms to protect against sexually transmitted diseases.
Critics allege that GS-USA materials contain links to groups such as Doctors without Borders, the Sierra Club and Oxfam which support family planning or emergency contraception. In addition, EWTN has alleged that an International Planned Parenthood brochure was made available to girls attending a Girl Scout workshop at a 2010 United Nations event. The brochure—”Healthy, Happy and Hot”—advised young people with HIV about how to engage in so-called “safe sex” and to lead sexually active lives. Lastly, GS-USA offers a patch honoring the Hispanic labor organizer Dolores Huerta, who received an award in 2007 from Planned Parenthood.
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| The Girl Scouts’ Delores Huerta Patch |
It’s estimated that 25% of the 2.3M GS-USA members are Catholic. If the complaints being lodged against the organization are accurate, the USCCB should be concerned that these materials may be making their way into parish-based Girl Scout troops and investigate whether that’s happening.
It may not be all about selling cookies.
The Motley Monk asks: Why should the bishops not be inquiring into GS-USA?
To read the Washington Post article, click on the following link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/catholic-bishops-continue-to-delve-into-concerns-about-girl-scouts/2012/05/10/gIQAqaRlGU_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines
To read The Motley Monk’s daily blog, click on the following link:
http://themotleymonk.blogspot.com/
Come Cheer Up My Lads
Something for the weekend. Heart of Oak. Written by actor David Garrick in 1759, with music by Dr. William Boyce, the song is a rousing tribute to the Royal Navy. Garrick penned the song during the Annus Mirabilis of 1759 when Church bells in Great Britain and America were constantly ringing in celebration of British victories, including the taking of Quebec, on land and sea. The song was an immediate hit both in Great Britain and its colonies.
The video clip above is taken from That Hamilton Woman (1941) starring Vivian Leigh and Laurence Olivier. In many ways simply a historical pot boiler common for films during the period, the film also celebrates British resistance to the tyranny of Napoleon which of course strongly resonated with British audiences in 1941. It was Churchill’s favorite movie and he would frequently show it to guests during the War.
The playing of Heart of Oak at the beginning of the clip is not a conceit of the film. When British ships of the line were sailing into battle the bands of the ship would strike up Heart of Oak, always a favorite of the sailors on board. Serving in miserable conditions, sometimes pressed (“compulsorily volunteered” was the phrase), the song did reflect how the sailors perceived themselves. They were almost all ardent patriots, as they demonstrated during the fleet mutinies at Spithead and the Nore in 1797, when the mutineers turned over to the government French agents who attempted to make common cause with them. The leaders of the mutineers told the authorities that they were entirely loyal to England, and they simply wanted redress for their grievances, which the Admiralty eventually granted. Admiral Nelson at Trafalgar, where he smashed the combined French and Spanish fleets and established British naval supremacy for a century, understood the patriotism of the common seaman, which is why he sent the fleet the message, “England expects every man to do his duty” prior to sailing into the fight.
Nelson in the film is shown as saying of the decorations that he wore in the engagement, “I won them in battle? Then I’ll wear them in battle.” although he of course realized that this made him a prime target for French snipers. Nelson had previously lost a right arm and a right eye in prior engagements. At Trafalgar his luck ran out and he was killed by a French sharpshooter. However, his stance was not foolhardy. To direct a fleet action in the early Nineteenth Century an admiral needed to be on deck, and Nelson understood that the attribute prized above all others by the men he led was physical courage. Nelson was a complete cad in his personal life, but he had in abundance that quality. The men would fight much harder if they saw their officers coolly displaying complete contempt for death in action, and therefore it was necessary for Nelson to do so. Additionally, throughout his career he had struggled for better conditions for the men under his command, and they fought their hardest when led by him. Continue reading
Coolidge Speaks!
Ironic that the president who has the reputation for being the most taciturn man to ever occupy the White House is also the first president to ever appear in a “talkie” in the above video.
Coolidge is a fascinating man and in future posts I will have much more to say about him. One fact I will note now is that he was ever a friend of Irish Catholics in his home state of Massachusetts and fought against the discrimination they frequently endured. Most Irish Catholics were Democrats, but that did not stop Coolidge from standing up for them. As mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts he developed a life long friendship with Father Joseph Gordian Daley who shared Coolidge’s love of Latin and Greek. Coolidge helped Father Daley build a mission church in Northampton. There was a great deal of compassion to this dry, unemotional Yankee.
It is not a myth that Coolidge was tight-lipped. The archetypal example is when a young lady encountered him at a White House reception and said that she had bet a friend of hers that she could get him to speak three words to her. “You lose” was Coolidge’s terse response. As the video indicates Coolidge was not a scintillating speaker, droning monotone being a better description. However, in his writings Coolidge indicates that lack of verbal expression did not indicate a lack of thoughts on the issues of his day, and many of which are quite relevant to our day:
There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.
I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.
If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.
We live in an age of science and abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create the Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all of our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage bequeathed to us, we must be like minded as the Founders who created. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had and for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshipped.
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
The government of a country never gets ahead of the religion of a country. There is no way by which we can substitute the authority of law for the virtue of man. Of course we endeavor to restrain the vicious, and furnish a fair degree of security and protection by legislation and police control, but the real reform which society in these days is seeking will come as a result of our religious convictions, or they will not come at all. Peace, justice, humanity, charity—these cannot be legislated into being. They are the result of divine grace. Continue reading
Msgr. Pope on Obama’s Use of the Golden Rule
Of all the things in Obama’s performance interview where he came out of the closet and ended his farcical opposition to gay marriage, his citation of the “golden rule” as one the impetuses behind his “evolution” was most revolting. Msgr. Charles Pope details why Obama’s usage of the golden rule as a prop was problematic.
It is a common problem today that people often present simplistic portraits of Jesus Christ to support a variety of agendas. And the portraits of Jesus are not only simplistic, they are incomplete (usually intentionally so), and fail to accept that Jesus cannot be reduced to a simple sentence or two.
I would argue this is what the President is doing here. As if to say, “Jesus, was basically a nice and affirming person, who spoke of Love, and so beautifully and taught us to do unto to others as we would have them do to us. “Surely,” the thinking goes, “this Jesus would affirm and rejoice over two Gay people getting “married.”” It is as if this were all Jesus was or said, “Love…Do unto others”. Never mind that he had some pretty high standards when it came to sexuality (Matt 5:27-30; Matt 15:19; Mk 10:11; Rev 22:15; Rev 21:8) Never mind that he told his apostles he had other things to teach them and would send his Holy Spirit, and never mind that His Holy Spirit inspired the Epistles writers like Paul to speak clearly in the ancient Biblical tradition about the sinfulness of homosexual activity, fornication, and adultery [2] “Never mind all that,” says the modern world, and our President, “I chose the Jesus who said only, ‘God is love, and be kind to one another.’”
Msgr. Pope also touches upon something that has always annoyed me, and that is the left’s depiction of the hippy Jesus.
The modern tendency on the left, from which the President speaks has been to reduce Jesus to a rather harmless hippie who went about talking about love and inclusion and healed people. Gone from this harmless and politically correct Jesus are volumes of verses that help complete the picture: a Messiah who claimed authority in our lives, who spoke quite clearly of sin, yes even sexual sin, and who warned repeatedly of the coming judgment, and the reality not only heaven, but of hell.
But Jesus is not either of these descriptions alone, he is both. Orthodoxy is in the balance, not choosing one or the other or tipping in one direction.
Much more at the link. Msgr. Pope discusses at length the heresy of picking and choosing the parts of Scripture one adheres to. Clearly the cafeteria is open, and Catholics aren’t the only ones at the buffet.
Wanted: Orthodox Catholic Political Leaders (Time To Get Serious)
My adult conversion to Catholicism came about through many converging spiritual streams, but one of the things I remember that had perhaps, the biggest positive impact, was my introduction to the Papal Social Encyclicals. I was immediately impressed by the non-ideological, Biblically-consistent worldview expressed by the Catholic Magisterium. As my initial conversion led to graduate Theological studies, teaching in Catholic high schools around the world, and a run for Florida State House; I have remained an ardent admirer of the Social Doctrine of the Church.
It is one of my lifetime goals to find ways to promote the social teachings of our Catholic Magisterium, and to find practical ways to cultivate Catholic political leaders who are similarly dedicated to the work of building civilizations of love founded upon the principles of our complete corpus of social doctrine teachings. As a candidate I discovered that most parishes are ill-equipped to nurture future Catholic leaders or even assist in the process of educating and informing the laity of how they can better influence elections on the basis of the many important moral issues (which have specific Magisterial guidance). It is great to pray for Christian Justice in our world, and it is necessary to take up the responsibility of voting when given that opportunity. But grace builds upon nature, and there is so much more that we could be doing as Catholics to better organize ourselves to have more positive collective impact on our communities and American society.
I urge that we work on two fronts simultaneously-1. Educating the Catholic laity to the Catholic social teachings and the guidance given by our Pope and Bishops’ 2. Use our religious freedoms more effectively at the parish level. I often make use of the story of William Wilberforce, a Christian politician who fought tirelessly to stop the slave trade in Great Britain- he was eventually successful utilizing organizational tools which we could use today (as the Civil Rights Movement here in America demonstrated). I hope my practical advice will be of some use for all those interested in maximizing our public Catholic witness in the social (temporal) realm.
Here are some specific practical proposals:
1. Every parish should organize “Social Doctrine Nights” where specific issues are discussed in the context of the social doctrine, as taught in official sources like Papal Encyclicals, the Compendium of Social Doctrine, the Catechism, US Bishop Pastoral Letters, and so forth. The parish priest should be front and center publicizing the Nights from the pulpit and being present for the meetings to put teeth into the promotion.
2. It would also be good if every parish started a “Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church book club”. This would help to locate a core group of lay persons who are truly interested in fulfilling their responsibility to the Temporal Order, to reform the world according to Christ’s teachings and will, as revealed by our Church’s authoritative documents. These hardy souls will go far in sharing their knowledge on those Social Doctrine Nights. At the least, we will give the laity many chances to inform their consciences on public policy matters.
3. As the election cycle nears, every parish should start scheduling town hall meetings and Candidate Forum events. Political candidates should be held accountable before the election takes place. They need to go on record with their thoughts on the issues that our parishioners deem important. The only requirement for such forums is that all candidates are invited with no
obvious bias during the event. Town hall meetings should be convened on singular issues of great importance, and local leaders and potential leaders should be invited to participate or attend.
4. Documents from the U.S. Bishops’ Conferences should be distributed widely in every parish. These documents can easily be inserted into every Sunday Bulletin.
5. Questionnaires for candidates from Catholic Conferences and reputable Catholic Pro-Life organizations should be distributed with information on the issues providing the reader with a clear idea of what the official Church is advising/teaching on the political issue being raised. These questionnaire results should be widely distributed well in advance of the actual Election Day.
6. Potential Catholic political leaders need to be groomed and supported by the Church by all legal means. We cannot be hamstrung by laws that seem bent on keeping an artificial (and false) wall of separation between Church and State. Both the Church and State have particular functions in society, they are not the same, but they are not to be pitted against one another. One way to cope with the reality here, in the United States, is to help private Catholic action groups and organizations, to form apart from the official dioceses and Catholic conferences. These private Catholic organizations could form PACS and contribute directly to Catholic individuals who are seeking to serve the common good first and foremost. They should be committed to serving the official Church social doctrine.
7. Catholic schools should also do more to promote the social doctrine among the youth. I once organized a debate for all congressional candidates in the Catholic high school where I was teaching. The students wrote the questions and had a chance to mingle with the candidates afterwards. It was the only such debate for those candidates in the entire election cycle and many students were positively impacted by the experience. Another area of improvement would be in the development of textbooks with a Catholic perspective, and that covered such areas as Literature, History, Media, Social Studies and so forth. The Catholic worldview and social doctrine have been confined to religion classes, and this has contributed to the compartmentalization of Catholic understanding and expression. Catholic students, with rare exceptions, are not graduating and moving the public debate beyond the narrow partisan/ideological confines of Political Left/Right.
I offer these suggestions because I believe that, as Catholics, we have the blueprint for building a civilization of love at every level of human society. The blueprint is our social doctrine and the gift of our Magisterium in guiding the principles and teachings of Christ into our complex world. As a candidate for public office I discovered a huge void in our Catholic parishes for offering a
place of contact between budding political leaders and the Catholic laity. Nurturing orthodox Catholics to become political leaders in our society is something that also seems missing from the average parish. Having a unique Blueprint (our Social Doctrine) but not having sound organization to carry out the plan is a terrible waste of potential. It is time to go from the drawing phase to building and implementing- to make visible this civilization of love our beloved popes write about with such strong conviction. This is our potential, this is an essential part of our Catholic evangelization. There are a lot of Catholic groups and organizations who lobby politicians after the fact of their election, but we should be intervening in the process from the beginning- nurturing leaders, educating every generation of voter, and providing candidate forums and town hall meetings in our churches (all perfectly legal!).
Once again, these strategies involve the following precepts:
- social doctrine promotion
- town hall meetings
- candidate forums
- encouragement of private Catholic PACS
- Catholic youth mentoring
Pope John Paul II insisted that was necessary for Catholics “to seek the Kingdom of God in dealing with temporal realities and in ordering them in accordance with the divine will.” And he urged us to be courageous in giving witness to our faith in the public arena.
Quoting from “Lumen Gentium”, No.36, Pope John Paul II said that lay men and women, after receiving a sound catechesis and continuing formation, have a clear mission “to extend the Kingdom of God in and through their secular activity, so that ‘the world will be imbued with the Spirit of Christ and more effectively attain its purpose in justice, in love and in peace” (No.3). Hence, the faithful need to receive clear instructions on their duties as Christians, and on their obligation to act in accordance with the Church’s authoritative teachings, the Pope added. And to those who object that such instruction has overly political tones John Paul II stated clearly: “While fully respecting the legitimate separation of Church and state in American life, such a catechesis must also make clear that for the faithful Christian there can be no separation between the faith which is to be believed and put into practice and a commitment to full and responsible participation in professional, political and cultural life” (No.3).
10 CommentsThe Anti-Catholic Party
Cardinal Dolan yesterday released this statement regarding Obama’s announcement that he had “evolved” and now, as he did in 1996 when first asked about it, supports gay marriage:
May 9, 2012 WASHINGTON—Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), issued the following statement:
President Obama’s comments today in support of the redefinition of marriage are deeply saddening. As I stated in my public letter to the President on September 20, 2011, the Catholic Bishops stand ready to affirm every positive measure taken by the President and the Administration to strengthen marriage and the family. However, we cannot be silent in the face of words or actions that would undermine the institution of marriage, the very cornerstone of our society. The people of this country, especially our children, deserve better. Unfortunately, President Obama’s words today are not surprising since they follow upon various actions already taken by his Administration that erode or ignore the unique meaning of marriage. I pray for the President every day, and will continue to pray that he and his Administration act justly to uphold and protect marriage as the union of one man and one woman. May we all work to promote and protect marriage and by so doing serve the true good of all persons.
When the Tokugawa shogunate was stamping out Christianity in Japan, it made use of Fumi-e (stepping on pictures). Regime officials would place pictures of Jesus or Mary before suspected Christians and order them to step on them. Refusal to do so, if persisted in, would end in execution. In our own country we are seeing the growth of a movement just as antithetical in theory to Catholicism and traditional Christianity as the Tokugawa shogunate, and it finds its home in the Democrat party.
What we have seen over the past few decades is the evolution of the Democrat party into an overtly anti-Catholic party. The Obama administration is the culmination of this trend. This of course is deeply ironic, because the Democrat party is a major party in this country with the help of the votes of tens of millions of purported Catholics.
In the past four decades the Democrats, with honorable exceptions, have championed abortion which is anathema to the teachings of the Church. The embrace of homosexuality followed, which has caused governments around the nation to drive the Church out of adoptions because the Church refuses to arrange adoptions by homosexual couples. In California, a state wholly controlled by the Democrat party, homosexual indoctrination, masquerading as education, is now mandated in public schools. For cynical political purposes the Obama administration this year has proposed that Catholic institutions, and individual Catholic employers, be required to provide “free” contraceptive coverage, and is quite willing to run roughshod over the First Amendment to accomplish this goal. Now we have the President’s support of gay marriage, although, until he further “evolves” I guess, he “generously” stated his opinion that churches opposed to gay marriages should not be required to officiate at them. These changes in society are the modern Fumi-e by which believing Catholics and traditional Christians are made to renounce, in effect, the teachings of Christ step by step. Continue reading
Surprise! Barack Obama Now Supports Gay Marriage
Actually I am rather surprised, not by the fact that he supports gay marriage, his alleged opposition was the most transparent lie in contemporary politics, but by the fact that he announced his switch in positions now. As the thumping that gay marriage took in North Carolina yesterday indicates, gay marriage is not popular in swing states crucial in November. Additionally, his support ensures that there will be a plank in the Democrat platform calling for gay marriage throughout the nation and that this will become a major issue in the fall. I assume that Obama and his advisors think that this will excite his base, but this makes zero political sense to me. Homosexual activists are most powerful in deep blue states that Obama has in the bag. They are relatively weak on the ground in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania where this election is going to be decided. Continue reading
Bad Night for Barack
In a Presidential election year, primaries become much less newsworthy after the presidential nominees for each party are decided. However, last night’s elections were of interest, and the results are bad news for President Obama:
1. President Obama won the West Virginia primary with approximately 60% of the vote. His opponent, who got approximately 40% of the vote, was Keith Judd, or as he is also known, Inmate No. 11593-051. Judd is serving a 14 year term for extortion in a Federal prison in Texas. Democrat Senator, and former West Virginia Governor, Joe Manchin refuses to say if he voted for Obama in the primary.
2. There is a strong push in the Democrat party to have the President come out in favor of gay marriage. Biden recently came out in favor of it, citing the old sitcom Will and Grace, which I am sure played a huge role in his decision to support changing an institution as old as Man. There is a move afoot in the Democrat party to have a plank put in their party platform calling for gay marriage. The party convention will be held in North Carolina. Last night the voters of the Tarheel State approved a constitutional amendment, 60-40, banning gay marriage and the fake gay marriages called civil unions. The Democrat party in North Carolina is in chaos as a result of the party chairman of the state party being accused of gay sexual harassment. It is rare for a party to wish to raise a social issue that will harm them in the general election, especially in the key swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, but that is apparently what the Democrats are in the process of doing. Pass the popcorn!
The Pre-history of the Declaration of Independence
A guest post from Almost Chosen People commenter Fabio Paolo Barbieri.
Would it Be Such a Big Leap From Inviting Sebelius?
Yet another controversial speaker at a Catholic college:
In a move already denounced by Catholic bishops & other leading religious conservatives, St. Sincerus University, the nation’s 84th largest Catholic university, has invited Satan to deliver its commencement speech later this month. Also known as the Prince of Darkness, Lucifer, &, more popularly, the Devil, Satan is a divisive figure among Catholics & other Christians. Several Catholic universities have upset religious conservatives in recent years by inviting controversial figures to deliver commencement speeches, as when the University of Notre Dame, the nation’s largest Catholic University, invited President Barack Obama, who supports a woman’s right to abortion, in 2009. The invitation to Satan by SSU president Fr. Thad Despereaux comes at a time when many Catholics are highly critical of the Obama administration’s attempts to reform health care, which some claim would force Catholic institutions to violate their Church’s teachings by providing contraceptives as part of their health insurance plans. Fr. Despereaux, in comments made to the Daily Sham, SSU’s student newspaper, said that having Satan on campus gives bold witness to a central Catholic principle that God can be found in all things. “The continuing politicization of the faith indicates just how important it is for us to build bridges,” Fr. Despereaux said. “Our whole mission as a university is to bring people together. Satan is badly misunderstood by many people, & we hope to show our graduates that stereotypes, & the hatred they engender, have no place on a Catholic campus. As Catholics we are to hate hate.” Continue reading
Hard Truths for Grads
Bret Stephens has an op ed in the Wall Street Journal of a graduation address that all graduates should hear but won’t:
Dear Class of 2012:
Allow me to be the first one not to congratulate you. Through exertions that—let’s be honest—were probably less than heroic, most of you have spent the last few years getting inflated grades in useless subjects in order to obtain a debased degree. Now you’re entering a lousy economy, courtesy of the very president whom you, as freshmen, voted for with such enthusiasm. Please spare us the self-pity about how tough it is to look for a job while living with your parents. They’re the ones who spent a fortune on your education only to get you back— return-to-sender, forwarding address unknown.
No doubt some of you have overcome real hardships or taken real degrees. A couple of years ago I hired a summer intern from West Point. She came to the office directly from weeks of field exercises in which she kept a bulletproof vest on at all times, even while sleeping. She writes brilliantly and is as self-effacing as she is accomplished. Now she’s in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban.
If you’re like that intern, please feel free to feel sorry for yourself. Just remember she doesn’t.
Unfortunately, dear graduates, chances are you’re nothing like her. And since you’re no longer children, at least officially, it’s time someone tells you the facts of life. The other facts.
Fact One is that, in our “knowledge-based” economy, knowledge counts. Yet here you are, probably the least knowledgeable graduating class in history.
A few months ago, I interviewed a young man with an astonishingly high GPA from an Ivy League university and aspirations to write about Middle East politics. We got on the subject of the Suez Crisis of 1956. He was vaguely familiar with it. But he didn’t know who was president of the United States in 1956. And he didn’t know who succeeded that president.
Pop quiz, Class of ’12: Do you?
Many of you have been reared on the cliché that the purpose of education isn’t to stuff your head with facts but to teach you how to think. Wrong. I routinely interview college students, mostly from top schools, and I notice that their brains are like old maps, with lots of blank spaces for the uncharted terrain. It’s not that they lack for motivation or IQ. It’s that they can’t connect the dots when they don’t know where the dots are in the first place. Continue reading
President Obama Must Be Defeated: Rick Santorum Endorses Romney
Rick Santorum, the candidate who I supported in the primaries, has endorsed Romney in an e-mail to his supporters. I agree with every word of his email:
Thank you again for all you did as one of my strongest and committed supporters. Your belief in our campaign helped us start a movement of Americans who believe deeply that our best days are ahead as long as we fight to strengthen our families, unshackle our economy and promote freedom here and around the world. Karen and I will be forever grateful for the support, kindness and commitment you showed us, as well as our children, over these last months.
On Friday, Governor Romney came to Pittsburgh for an over-hour long one-on-one meeting. The conversation was candid, collegial and focused on the issues that you helped me give voice to during our campaign; because I believe they are essential ingredients to not only winning this fall, but turning our country around.
While the issue of my endorsement did not come up, I certainly have heard from many of you who have weighed in on whether or not I should issue a formal endorsement. Thank you for your counsel, it has been most helpful. However, I felt that it was completely impossible for me to even consider an endorsement until after a meeting to discuss issues critical to those of us who often feel our voices are not heard by the establishment: social conservatives, tea-party supporters, lower and middle income working families.
Clearly without the overwhelming support from you all, I never would have won 11 states and over 3 million votes, and we would not have won more counties than all the other candidates combined. I can assure you that even though I am no longer a candidate for president, I will still continue to fight every day for our shared values – the values that made America the greatest country in the history of the world.
During our meeting I felt a deep responsibility to assess Governor Romney’s commitment to addressing the issues most important to conservatives, as well his commitment to ensuring our appropriate representation in a Romney administration. Continue reading
May 8, 1862: Battle of McDowell
Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible; and when you strike and overcome him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow; for an army routed, if hotly pursued, becomes panic-stricken, and can then be destroyed by half their number. The other rule is, never fight against heavy odds, if by any possible maneuvering you can hurl your own force on only a part, and that the weakest part, of your enemy and crush it. Such tactics will win every time, and a small army may thus destroy a large one in detail, and repeated victory will make it invincible.
General Thomas J. Jackson
True genius is a rarity on this planet, and it is amazing when it suddenly appears. Humans who display it often do so unexpectedly. So it was with Confederate General Thomas J. Jackson, nicknamed Stonewall, after the decisive role played by his forces at the battle of First Manassas (First Bull Run) in 1861. The name probably seemed appropriate to the few observers at the time who had followed his career. Jackson had a reputation as an unimaginative, albeit valiant, soldier. As a Professor of Natural Philosophy, Optics and Artillery Tactics (!) at VMI prior to the War he had a reputation as a deadly dull instructor who would repeat his lectures word for word if his students failed to grasp the lesson that he was teaching. He once spent a night in an office at VMI because his superior told him to wait for him, and then forgot about his appointment with Jackson. Other than his part in the victory at First Manassas, Jackson had distinguished himself mostly by being an almost fanatically strict disciplinarian. If genius were needed in the War, Jackson would not have been the man even those who admired him would turn to. Yes, the nickname Stonewall suited this stolid soldier.
It took the Valley Campaign of 1862,where he outmarched and outfought numerous Union armies, each larger than the force he led, for Jackson to astonish North and South with the fact that behind this dull facade lurked one of the Great Captains of History.
Jackson opened the Campaign on March 23, 1862 with an attack on part of General Nathaniel Bank’s Union forces in the Shenandoah at Kernstown. Outnumbered almost three to one, Jackson suffered a tactical defeat but a strategic victory. This attack by a Confederate force so far north in the Valley and so close to Washington caused Lincoln to take a division from the Army of the Potomac and send it to the Shenandoah, to cancel any plans to reinforce the Army of the Potomac with troops from the Shenandoah and to order that McDowell’s corps would stay close to Washington during the ensuing Peninsula Campaign, rather than advancing overland towards Richmond to help McClellan on the Virginia Peninsula. Few defeats have been so beneficial as First Kernstown (there was a second battle of Kernstown during the 1864 Valley Campaign) was for the Confederacy.
The Valley Campaign now entered a long quiet period during which Jackson’s command skirmished with the various Union forces beginning to mass against his army. On May 7, 1862 Jackson saw an opportunity on the southwestern fringe of the Valley as Fremont’s men under General Robert Milroy, consisting of three regiments, were in an exposed position south of McDowell. Milroy on Shenandoah Mountain escaped an attempted encirclement by Jackson and withdrew to McDowell. There he was joined at 10:00 AM on May 8th, by Brigadier General Robert Schenck and his command that had arrived with after a forced march from Franklin, West Virginia. Schenck being senior took command of the combined force of approximately 6500 opposing Jackson’s army of 6000. Fighting continued until dark with the Union force, which had been on attack most of the day, withdrawing in good order. Casualties were fairly light: 259 for the Union (34 killed, 220 wounded, 5 missing), and for the Confederates 420 (116 killed, 300 wounded, 4 missing). It could be argued that tactically the battle was a draw, but in the following week the Union force retreated back to Franklin with Jackson pursuing all the way, returning to the Valley on May 15, 1862. This turned what was a tactical draw into a strategic victory. More posts on the Valley Campaign during this May and June. Here is Jackson’s report on the battle of McDowell: Continue reading
Cutting Off Planned Parenthood IS About “Ideology”
Just recently, Arizona joined Kansas, North Carolina, and Texas in cutting off all funding to Planned Parenthood. For Governor Brewer, it is a simple matter of “common sense”, respecting the repeated desire of the majority of Americans to be exempt from funding abortion with their tax dollars. For pro-life advocates, it is about scoring another direct hit against the largest symbol of “abortion rights” in the United States. Here is how Planned Parenthood sees it, however:
“Many in the legislature will never know what it’s like to feel a lump in their breast and have to worry about the cost of a doctor’s visit,” said Bryan Howard, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Arizona.
“This is the reality with which many Arizona women are faced, at the hands of a legislature determined to reduce access to prevention care while pursuing its ideological political agenda,” he said.
Why should those of us who are pro-life deny it? We are pursuing an ideological political agenda, as of course are they. Our ideology, if you really want to call it that (and I typically don’t), is that every human being has a right to life from the moment of conception until the moment of death. Some of us differ on whether or not, or under what circumstances, a human life may be justly taken, but we all agree that the killing of innocent children inside or outside of the womb is a grave moral evil and cannot be tolerated by a just and humane society. This is an “ideological political agenda” worth pursuing, and I’m not ashamed to say so. Without respect for human life, society will degenerate into something more cruel and callous than the jungle.
Forget “Occupy Wall Street”: It’s now “Occupy Anna Maria College”…
Those who follow The Motley Monk might recall an April post in The American Catholic—”What’s A Bishop To Do?
In that post, The Motley Monk discussed how academic administrators at Anna Maria College (AMC)—a small Catholic college located in the Diocese of Worcester (MA) and having close ties to the Diocese—had withdrawn their invitation to the widow of Senator Ted Kennedy, Victoria, to deliver the institution’s 2012 commencement speech. The invitation was withdrawn due to the opposition of Bishop Robert J. McManus, who cited Kennedy’s moral views that conflict with Roman Catholic teaching.
For those who thought the story would end there, they thought wrong.
Ensuing controversy over the withdrawal of the invitation to Kennedy is now threatening to mar the event. Rumors persist that protesters might demonstrate.
Think of the threat as “Occupy Anna Maria.”
Apparently, the threat has AMC’s President, Jack Calareso, and the Chairwoman of the AMC’s Board of Trustees, Sister Yvette Bellerose, so concerned that, according to The Boston Globe, they recently met at the diocesan offices and politely disinvited Bishop McManus, claiming “the bishop would be a distraction to the event.”
A spokesman for Bishop McManus said: “He was going to attend, but that’s not going to happen now.”
AMC’s academic administrators subsequently issued a statement indicating that the relationship between AMC and the Diocese of Worcester “remains strong.” In addition, they promise “the two organizations will continue to work together with respect and collegiality to advance the goals and values of quality Catholic education.”
In the world of the politics of Catholic higher education, The Motley Monk would observe, those words are the refrain for the hit tune “Tit for Tat.”
To read The Motley Monk’s post in The American Catholic, click on the following link:
http://the-american-catholic.com/2012/04/02/whats-a-bishop-to-do-wink-and-nod/
To read the Boston Globe article, click on the following link:
http://articles.boston.com/2012-05-05/metro/31574538_1_gay-marriage-graduation-exercises-commencement-speakers
To read The Motley Monk’s daily blog, click on the following link:
http://themotleymonk.blogspot.com/
Thanks for Julia!
As part of their campaign to convince every female voter that if Romney defeats Obama they will be barefoot, pregnant and cast into a Mormon harem, the Obama campaign came up with a piece of agit-prop called The Life of Julia, which may be viewed here. My co-blogger Paul Zummo has ably blogged about this here. Julia is shown as a strong and independent woman who would be completely adrift but for the man in her life: Uncle Sucker. Sugardaddy Sam takes care of Julia at every stage of her life with some handout entitlement provided gratis by the taxpayer and the good unicorns who magically make money appear in government coffers.
It is said that generals tend to fight the last war and that politicians are often running in the last election, and that is certainly the case with this homage to life as a carefree government serf. In 2008 there were Obama voters who did think that he was going to magically change their lot in life:
After four years I think only the most demented and delusional of Obama’s followers actually believe this. With Julia Obama is appealing only to voters he already has. For many other voters, I think this paean to government dependence might have echoes of a promise anything snakeoil salesman as in this cartoon from the forties:
So as a political tool for Obama to seek re-election I think this Julia campaign is rather ineffective. What is interesting about this episode is how much backlash there has been to it, and so quickly. Here is a sample:
Then we have Iowahawk’s hilarious take on the life of Julia here, the Heritage Foundation with a better life for Julia here, City-Journal has the life of Zachary, the son of Julia, here, and Emily Stimpson at CatholicVote.org contrasts her life with that of Julia’s here.
Ross Douthat, the only thing worth reading in the New York Times since they do not have comics, unless one counts Paul Krugman, summed it up in his column: Continue reading
Just In Case…
You have a case of the Mondays.
Put on your headphones at your cubicle or home office. It helps. Trust me.
The Game is Ever Afoot
Time to refresh my creds as Chief Geek of the blog. Season 2 of the series Sherlock is debuting in America on Mystery tonight on most PBS channels at 8:00 PM Central Time. The series is a grand bringing of Sherlock Holmes into the present century. It is wittily written, part send up of the original Holmes created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and part homage. The improbably named Benedict Cumberbatch is superb in the title role, playing Holmes as a genius as a detective and a moron in dealing with all of humanity, but for Dr. Watson. Dr. Watson, Martin Freeman, is a British medical officer, fresh from traumatic injuries due to his service in Afghanistan (yes, the more things change, often the more they stay the same), who blogs about Holmes’ exploits as part of his therapy. I highly endorse the series for anyone who likes to either think or laugh.
Sherlock Holmes is a prime example of a literary creation that completely escapes from his creator. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle grew tired of Holmes and attempted to kill him off, only relenting to bringing him back after his “death” at the Reichenbach Falls due to unceasing demands from Holmes’ devoted, if not crazed, fans. Doyle tended to look down his nose at Holmes: “If I had never touched Holmes, who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding one,” he once wrote, which is a hoot since his other writings were the most forgettable drek imaginable. Doyle wrote the last of his Sherlock Holmes stories in 1926 and died in 1930. Since that time not a year has gone by without authors trying their hands at new Holmes stories, and placing Holmes in every setting imaginable including the distant future, outer space, fantasy realms, etc.
The continuing popularity of Holmes is something of a mystery, which is appropriate. It is hard to attribute it to simply love of mystery stories, since most mystery sleuths are dead as soon as their creators shuffle off this vale of tears. Perhaps it is because Holmes, through his powers of observation, can so simply and swiftly glean the truth. What an all important ability to possess! Alas the same could not be said for his creator, Sir Arthur. He deserted Catholicism for spiritualism (seances and that sort of rubbish) which is akin to feasting on a rich mud pie and then developing a fondness for eating actual mud. GK. Chesterton, who drew illustrations for an unpublished, during his lifetime, edition of the Holmes story, upon learning of Doyles’ conversion had this memorable quip: It has long seemed to me that Sir Arthur’s mentality is much more that of Watson than it is of Holmes. Continue reading
Surprise: Anti-Catholic Bigot Heads Pro-Abort Organization
Anti-Catholic bigot, homosexual activist and Episcopalian minister Harry Knox is back in the news. Long time readers of this blog will recall that President Obama appointed Knox to his Advisory Council on Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships back in 2009. Go here to read a post on that appointment.
Knox has recently become the head of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. He has a post on the Huffington Post explaining why religious people should support the slaying of children in the womb, a post which proves, once again the truth of Socrates’ adage that an unexamined life is a tragedy. Christopher Johnson, a non-Catholic former Episcopalian, and a man who has taken up the cudgels so frequently in defense of the Church that I have designated him Defender of the Faith, gives one of the arguments of Mr. Knox a proper response:
A homosexual Episcopal minister named Harry Knox is set to become Führer und Reichskanzler of the national organization of Einsatzgruppen America the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and while explaining why “religious” people should be celebrating abortion rather than mourning it, wrote one of the five or six stupidest statements I’ve read this year:
The harsh and condemning judgments of some religious leaders are troubling. They suggest that abortion is morally wrong, while ignoring the fact that miscarriages and unwanted pregnancies are common. They deny that God is present in these times
Let’s take that one out for a spin, shall we?
(1) The harsh and condemning judgments about dropping a nuclear bomb on Tehran are troubling. They suggest that the complete annihilation of Iran’s largest city and every single man, woman and child in it is morally wrong while ignoring the fact that hurricanes and tsunamis regularly destroy cities and kill innocent people. They deny that God is present in these times
(2) The harsh and condemning judgments about setting off that bomb in a crowded city are troubling. They suggest that terrorism is morally wrong while ignoring the fact that volcanoes regularly explode, killing thousands of people all over the world. They deny that God is present in these times.
(3) Your harsh and condemning judgments about me boinking your wife are troubling. They suggest that adultery is morally wrong while ignoring the fact that more men and women have sex outside of so-called “wedlock” than in it. They deny that God is present in these times. Continue reading
Georgetown: Final Examinations for the Bishops
The Crusades and Historical Ignorance
The above video is a salute to Rick Santorum, former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, for understanding the essential nature of the Crusades as a defensive reaction to Islamic aggression. In the video below we have a rather mindless reaction to the same quote from a talking head from the liberal group Young Turks, who, judging from his comments, gained his knowledge of the Crusades from the laughably ahistorical crusader bashing flick Kingdom of Heaven (2005).
Ignorance of the depth displayed in the video above is always to be lamented, and is not unusual, as noted by Dr. Thomas Madden, one of the foremost of the scholars of the Crusades, who, over the past 40 years, have revolutionized our knowledge and understanding of that epoch:
Jonah Goldberg, in his just released book Tyranny of Cliches, demonstrates that he is aware of the current scholarship on the Crusades:
The great irony is that the zealot-reformers who want to return to a “pure” Islam have been irredeemably corrupted by Western ideas. Osama bin Laden had the idea that he was fighting the “new crusaders.” When George W. Bush once, inadvertently, used the word “crusade,” jihadists and liberal intellectuals alike erupted with rage. It was either a damning slip of the tongue whereby Bush accidentally admitted his real crusader agenda, or it was a sign of his stunning ignorance about the Crusades. Doesn’t he know what a sensitive issue the Crusades are? Doesn’t he know that the Crusades belong alongside the slaughter of the Indians, slavery, and disco in the long line of Western sins?
After all, it’s been in the papers for a while. In 1999, Muslim leaders demanded that Pope John Paul II apologize for the Crusades. “He has asked forgiveness from the Jews [for the Church’s passivity in the face of the Holocaust], so he should ask forgiveness from the Muslims,” Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, told the New York Times.3 Across the country sports teams have been dropping their crusader mascots because they’re offensive to . . . someone. Wheaton College changed their seventy-year-old team name from the Crusaders to the Thunder (no word from Thor worshippers yet as to whether they are off ended). Even Campus Crusade for Christ opted to change its name to Cru partly because the word crusade has become too radioactive. “It’s become a flash word for a lot of people. It harkens back to other periods of time and has a negative connotation for lots of people across the world, especially in the Middle East,” Steve Sellers, the organization’s vice president told Christianity Today. “In the ’50s, crusade was the evangelistic term in the United States. Over time, different words take on different meanings to different groups.”4
I’ll say. Until fairly recently, historically speaking, Muslims used to brag about being the winners of the Crusades, not the victims of it. That is if they talked about them at all. “The Crusades could more accurately be described as a limited, belated and, in the last analysis, ineffectual response to the jihad—a failed attempt to recover by a Christian holy war what had been lost to a Muslim holy war,” writes Bernard Lewis, the greatest living historian of Islam in the English language (and perhaps any language).5 Historian Thomas Madden puts it more directly, “Now put this down in your notebook, because it will be on the test: The crusades were in every way a defensive war. They were the West’s belated response to the Muslim conquest of fully two-thirds of the Christian world.”6 Continue reading
The High Chapparal
Something for the weekend. The theme song to my favorite television western of the Sixties, The High Chapparal. Broadcast on NBC from 1967-1971. Set in the Arizona territory in the 1870′s the series was well acted by regulars Leif Erickson, Cameron Mitchell, Mark Slade, Linda Cristal and Henry Darrow. The scripts were literate with a more realistic feel than was common at the time. Here is a longer rendition of the theme song:
Georgetown Invites Sebelius to Deliver Commencement
If you’re still clinging to the fiction that Georgetown University is a Catholic institution then this should disabuse you of that notion.
In what can only be interpreted as a direct challenge to America’s Catholic bishops, Georgetown University has announced that “pro-choice” Catholic Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and lead architect of the Obama administration’s assault on religious freedom through the HHS contraception mandate, has been invited to speak at one of Georgetown’s several commencement ceremonies.
The Cardinal Newman Society has posted a petition to protest this outrage here: GeorgetownScandal.com. It has also alerted Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl and sent a letter to Georgetown President John DeGioia urging him to immediately withdraw the invitation.
It is a scandal time any time a Catholic politician who so publicly breaks with Church teaching is invited to speak at a nominally Catholic institution. That Georgetown has decided to invite Sebelius after all that has taken place can only signal that Georgetown is laying down the gauntlet, and they are firmly in the camp of the dissident left.
H/t: CMR.
Point of Clarification: Sebelius will be addressing the Public Policy Institute, not the university generally. This hardly diminishes the university’s guilt. Somebody high up still had to approve of her speaking to the school, and her appearance at any university function as an invited speaker is a disgrace.
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