Patrick O’Donnell relates that he had two main aims in writing this book: to give Americans back home a better feel for the heroism of our men who are fighting in Iraq and to do this by telling the story of the Marines in 1st Platoon of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, who suffered heavy causulties in the Battle of Fallujah. I picked up the book to learn more about what the fighting in Iraq has been like, specifically in this most intense of battles, the battle for Fallujah. While we can read about Iraq every day in the papers, newspaper reporting rarely gives one a sense either for the men who are fighting or for the specific tactics used and the dangers faced.

In regard to the reasons I had in reading the book, I was fairly satisfied by the close of it. There were, however, a few things by the book’s end which I didn’t quite understand or, perhaps better, couldn’t quite picture. But this probably wasn’t a failing of the author so much as a general difficulty of portraying some of the events recounted in print.

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It’s a wonderful thing that the current pope would choose a concert of classical music with which to celebrate his 80th birthday. Wonderful, I mean, only by comparison to the musical tastes of his predecessor, which seemed to incline towards tribal rhythms and the so-called “rock and roll” of the youth, which is obviously the music of Satan. (Don’t worry, I have this on good authority - not from Satan! - but from certain traditional priests.) I enjoyed in particular this picture from the concert: we can see Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone, the Secretary of State and Camerlengo, as well as Georg Ratzinger, the Holy Father’s brother - notice the red piping of a monsignor on his cassock.

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There has been talk recently of a distinction between “tradition” and “traditionalism.” This includes a critique of what some view as non-essential religious, cultural, political, and social positions (baggage?) often associated with Catholic traditionalism. Andrew of the Holy Whapping has proposed alternative models for traditionalism: “To sloganize the idea, think Latin Mass with an Ignatius Press reading list, perhaps. But of course, that’s a very simplistic example.”

This proposal led me to ask, “What are some positions generally associated with Catholic traditionalism, other than devotion to the Latin Mass and traditional liturgy in general, a critical attitude toward ecumenism, and a critical attitude toward the reforms (at least in their implementation) of the Second Vatican Council?” I regard these three as pretty much the defining characteristics of traditionalism, though perhaps not the only ones.

The rest of this post will be a list, not necessarily in any particular order, of other positions/attitudes often held by Catholic traditionalists. Continue reading

In light of the recent anniversary, I thought our readers might be interested in this article from Human Life Review. George McKenna tracks the attitudes taken towards abortion by the major American political parties, and asks the perplexing question: how did the Democrats become America’s pro-abortion party? As McKenna points out, it’s not what one might have expected in the 1960’s, when the Democrats counted the great majority of Catholics among their voters, and trumpeted the defense of the weak as their primary agenda. Republicans, the historically anti-Catholic and pro-middle class party, flirted with abortion at a time when a young Ted Kennedy was declaring it morally repugnant. And yet, just a few years later, the Democrats were adding a plank to their platform declaring a “universal right” for women to procure an abortion, while Republicans were recasting themselves as the defenders of life. What happened?

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