I’ve been watching with interest the explosion of indignation on the left following Sarah Palin’s cracks about Barack Obama’s “community organizer” experience. Most famous, of course, is the t-shirt about how “Jesus was a community organizer; Pilate was a governor.” But in addition, blogs and news sites have hastened to publish rhapsodies about how truly wonderful community organizers are, while ordinary citizens have been putting up YouTube videos in hopes of lecturing the Alaskan governor about the importance of this exalted office. It’s amazing how many great people were community organizers, and the rest of us never even knew it! In addition to lefty heroes like Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King (two people who wouldn’t have gotten my vote for president) I’ve seen cited Mother Theresa and, of course, Our Lord as excellent examples of community organizers.

So I was thinking about this, and it dawned on me. Barack Obama should not be our next president. He’s much too good!

Continue reading

An issue came up this week in the comment thread of my previous post. I thought I might as well throw it up as a head post and see if anybody else has thoughts about it. The question is: when, if ever, is it ever okay to vote for a politician who believes that abortion should be legal?

I was pointing out that the Church needs to make it more clear, across the board and not just to particular politicians, that support for legalized abortion prevents one from being a Catholic in good standing, and (according to the CCC) incurs and automatic latae sententiae excommunication. In other words, people who have supported legalized abortion should not be receiving Communion until they have visited a confessional and made things right with God and the Church. And that support need not necessarily take the form of, say, actually working as an abortion doctor or as support staff at Planned Parenthood. It could also take the form of driving a person to an abortion clinic, helping to pay for an abortion, trying to bolster political support for Roe v. Wade, or (as I put it) deliberately voting for a pro-choice politician.

Continue reading

Is there anything sexier in American politics than having the Church “come after you?” Hard to think what it would be. Everybody loves a rebel, but it’s just so darned hard to be one these days in America, where authority has been so thoroughly denigrated that there’s just not much left to flaunt. This is where liberal Catholic politicians have a real edge. They actually have somebody to answer to when they say heretical things. And not just any old somebody… the Catholic Church, the most favorite bad guy of all time! Just think how jealous those liberal Protestants must be! Most of them probably dreamed, early in their political careers, of taking on the evil conservative establishment in the name of goodness and rightness. But they’d practically have to start sacrificing children before their flabby denominations would say anything about it (oh, wait…), whereas the Catholics can be rebels merely by voicing completely standard liberal views on civilized talk shows. Some people have all the luck.

Continue reading

I haven’t been on the blog for awhile, in large part because I spent the last week at a conference at Princeton, discussing the work of Elizabeth Anscombe. As usual when I’m away for awhile, I came home with lots of ideas for potential posts, many of which will probably never be written. But one in particular seemed salient to life on this blog. It was inspired by an argument I had with another student at the conference, concerning philosophy and polemics. The question is: is it always better to be patient and respectful in discussion of another’s ideas? Or can there be a place for sarcasm, snarkiness, or even a little self-conscious unfairness in addressing other views?

Continue reading

The irony has become very old and tiresome by now, but it isn’t that often that it’s illustrated by someone as high-profile as Mark Shea, in a forum like InsideCatholic.com. So, one of the most frequently heard criticisms of traditional Catholics is that they’re angry, bitter and uncharitable. It’s by no means a totally unfounded complaint. But, for my money, I think the angriest of the angry trads are at least matched in unreasoned bitterness by the angry, bitter anti-trads. Shea has always been prone to bitter outbursts; it’s just one of his foibles. But his recent piece on “Angry Traditionalists” was really over the top, the kind of hateful, offensive language for which he ought to apologize, if only to salvage his own credibility. Like I say, what’s really absurd is the irony: his main contention is that Trads are scaring people away from the Church by their bitter, angry attitudes, but the piece itself is exactly the sort of rhetoric to make me think that “I wouldn’t touch the faith with a barge pole” if I thought that were at all representative of what the Catholic church is like.

Continue reading

I tend to lose track of the dates during these summer months. In the dentist’s office yesterday morning, I was filling out forms and hazarded a guess that it was sometime around August 9. I was slightly startled, therefore, when my computer calendar informed me later in the evening that it was in fact August twelfth, which means that 1) I had missed the feast day of my patroness, and 2) it was my mother’s birthday. So, although this is a bit belated, I wanted to pay a tribute to them both.

St. Clare is a somewhat retiring figure compared to her colorful male counterpart. She seems to make her reputation largely as St. Francis’ sidekick, famous mostly for her inclusion in the Assisi crowd but far behind Francis when it comes to colorful stories and amazing miracles. There is, of course, the famous monstrance story, but where Francis wandered around, preached to birds, stripped naked for beggars, tamed violent animals, traveled to the Middle East, etc etc, Clare seems mainly to have settled down in Assisi, gathered her Poor Ladies around her, and quietly assumed the mantle of responsibility. It was the custom of the Poor Ladies (they assumed the name “Poor Clares” only on her death) to keep silence most of the time, to hold their eyes downcast, and, of course, to live always in great poverty. And behind that mantle of silence and poverty, St. Clare largely vanishes. The impact of her firm and loving leadership can be seen in the order she established, which gathered scores of women in her lifetime (including her own mother and sister) and continued into the centuries afterwards. But in the drama of Assisi, she remains largely a background figure, always present but usually taken for granted.

Continue reading

I’ve been considering the question this week since we had the Good Samaritan story as a Gospel reading on Sunday. The most common interpretation of this passage (which is more or less what we got in the homily) is that the answer to the lawyer’s question (”Who is my neighbor?”) was: everyone. I’m not sure that’s quite right, or, at any rate, it seems to me that it’s missing some critical points in the story.

Now, obviously, there is some rhyme and reason to this standard answer. The man who was robbed and left on the road was a Jew. Of the three men who walked by, the one who stopped to help was the least likely one, the one who seemingly would have had the least reason to stop and help the wounded man. This is surely not an accidental feature of the story, and it seems that we can at least conclude that, contrary to what some might like to think, everyone is potentially a neighbor. Nobody can be automatically screened out on the basis of superficial external characteristics.

Continue reading

Woohoo! The Holy See has granted a recognitio to the improved English translation of the Mass, and we can now peruse it in all its glory! Cardinal Arinze’s letter makes clear that this translation is now fixed as the one to be implemented in the new English missal for the Novus Ordo Missae. That is a very good thing, both because it means that the process can now move forward (though no doubt more slowly than we would like) and also because this new translation is so much better!

Take a look for yourself. I’ll just point out a few of the highlights.

Continue reading

Perhaps I just wasn’t so well informed before, but it seems, doesn’t it, that we’ve been seeing an upswing recently in the number of women pretending to be ordained? Fr. Z has mentioned several lately, and in his most recent post asked for suggestions about what one might say in a chance encounter with a woman who believed that she had been ordained to the priesthood. I find that a difficult question to answer in the abstract. There would be a mountain of issues to tackle with such an individual, about the nature of the priesthood, authority, obedience and the differences between men and women… well, I’m not one to shy away from engaging people in debate, but I think I might have to play that one by ear a little. A woman who has actually been (pretend) ordained and subsequently excommunicated, is pretty far gone already.

Continue reading

Apologies for being MIA the last week and a half. I was down South visiting family… and since returning my brain has been in that mode where I feel like starting lots of things, but can’t seem to finish any of them. Anyway, I was thumbing through my alumni magazine yesterday evening and was annoyed to see that they’d marked the anniversary of Humanae Vitae by publishing this story by E.J. Dionne, a visiting professor in the journalism department last year. I had the idea that his name looked vaguely familiar, and when I glanced at the bio I figured out why; he’s the author of one of those sleazy political books that you see on the front tables as you’re walking into Barnes and Noble — the kind with blunt, hit-you-upside-the-head titles and the obvious intention to snag those lefties in a panic about the evil conservatives and all the havoc they’re wreaking in America. His particular title? Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right. Cute.

Continue reading