Ann Coulter

Another triumph in Janet Napolitano's "Let's stay one step behind the terrorists" policy!

Sir George Sitwell

Sir George Sitwell, turned into a comic character in his son Osbert’s autobiography, born 1860 (died 1943). “I must ask anyone entering the house,” he said, “never to contradict me or differ from me in any way, as it interferes with the functioning of the gastric juices and prevents my sleeping at night.”

Koestler

But the Koestler he depicts is consistently repugnant — humorless, megalomaniac, violent. Like many people concerned about “humanity,” he was contemptuous of actual humans.

Geneva convention

John Tonkin, who experienced a great deal of the war. "I have always felt," Capt. Tonkin said, "that the Geneva Convention is a dangerous piece of stupidity, because it leads people to believe that war can be civilized. It can't."

Subsidies

The most damning problem with government "help" is what we saw with the bailout of the U.S. auto industry: Help props up those who are producing things that customers do not want.

Priests

“If you want to know what the Church teaches, never ask a priest.”

Unemployment

#
Labor Dept: Available Labor Rate Increases To 10.2% 12.05.09

Orwell

George Orwell said that the quickest way to end a war is to lose it.

Democracy?

Speaking earlier, Senator Espada began his comments by saying his support for same-sex marriage was not echoed by his constituents. “If this vote was taken in my district today,” he said, “same sex marriage would fail.” He urged senators not to cave to ignorance “or pander to that in our communities.”

Mrs. Pelosi

Well, Nancy, you didn't say anything, but at least you didn't take a lot of time not to say it.

College life

R.R. Reno wrote that higher education has become "the professional training of clever and sybaritic animals, who drink, vomit, and fornicate in the dorms by night while they posture critically and ironically by day."

Social technician

The new social technician, part schoolmarm, part bully,

Thanksgiving

I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth. - Theodore Roosevelt

[W]e shall destroy all of them. - Thomas Jefferson, referring to Native peoples

Ministers

"A minister with TWO ideas! I don't think I've ever..."

English Universities

Sir Humphrey's wonderful "The universities.....both of them."

Senators

“the model that best predicted the network structure of U.S. senators was that of social licking among cows.”

Zabar's

After conferring with everyone at Zabar's, Obama decided...

Capitalism

“Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin,” Meltzer sharply observed.

GM

DETROIT – General Motors Co. said Monday it lost $1.2 billion from the time it left bankruptcy protection through Sept. 30, far better than it has reported in previous quarters and a sign that the auto giant is starting to turn around its business.

The company also said it will begin repaying $6.7 billion in U.S. government loans with a $1.2 billion payment in December. It plans to repay the debt over the next eight quarters, but could pay it back as early as next year. But the money will come from funds loaned by the government".

It will pay back the government with funds loaned by the government. For simple folk, this is called kiting checks.

Liberal

Liberal - some one with whom you are free to agree.

The new medical bill

Fannie Med

ADL

"the ADL is doing its part to combat one stereotype: that Jews have a sense of humor."

Billion

If you sat down to count from one to one billion, you would be counting for 95 years!

Microsoft

As Bill Gates has said, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” (Of course, Microsoft is one of the most litigious companies in history

Talmud

"People were given two ears and one tongue so that they may listen more than speak."

--- Talmud

Lincoln on slavery

“What we want, and all we want, is to have with us the men who think slavery wrong. But those who say they hate slavery, and are opposed to it, but yet act with the Democratic party — where are they? Let us apply a few tests. You say that you think slavery is wrong, but you denounce all attempts to restrain it. Is there anything else that you think wrong, that you are not willing to deal with as a wrong? Why are you so careful, so tender of this one wrong and no other? You will not let us do a single thing as if it was wrong; there is no place where you will allow it to be even called wrong! We must not call it wrong in the Free States, because it is not there, and we must not call it wrong in the Slave States because it is there; we must not call it wrong in politics because that is bringing morality into politics, and we must not call it wrong in the pulpit because that is bringing politics into religion; we must not bring it into the Tract Society or the other societies, because those are such unsuitable places, and there is no single place, according to you, where this wrong thing can properly be called wrong!”

Abraham Lincoln

Loyola U

the Loyola University's press release stated that the "benefits [of contraception] still outweigh risks for most users."

California

The optimistic assessment is that things are going to get worse in California before they get better. The pessimistic assessment is that they’re going to get worse before they get much worse.

Mark Twain & newspapers

Mark Twain said, "If you don't read a newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do, you are misinformed."

Prince Philip

Prince Philip would frequently arrive for breakfast, pick up the morning papers with a sigh and say, “Let’s see what I’m supposed to have done wrong yesterday.”

Sodom

"Half of American high-school seniors surveyed recently thought Sodom and Gomorrah were a married couple." — The National Post

Anglicans

"...the dissatisfied Anglican leaves because his Church ain't what she used to be. The dissatisfied Catholic leaves his Church because she is." — Diogenes

Maureen Dowd

MSW ended his post on the America with this: “It is not that she is wrong, it is that she is so contentedly wrong, so confident in her ignorance, so comprehensively prejudiced against the Church. Why doesn’t she just become a Protestant and have done with it? If you heard her rant on the street, you would give her a dollar and hope she doesn’t spend it on booze. Reading her rant in the Times, you can just flip the page.”

Hegel

Hegelian dialectics, "a succession of leaps from one lie to another by way of intermediate falsehoods."

Horses in the MA

If a horse is made to pull something by means of a strap around its neck, it not only does so ineffectively but also risks being exposed to strangulation. However, the weight-pulling effectiveness of the horse can be increased fourfold with a breast harness, a medieval invention, as is the nailed horseshoe and the harnessing of horses in front of one another. Their use for plowing the fields is first depicted on the Bayeux tapestry, more famous for showing Halley's comet.

Lincoln

Lincoln saw it coming, saying of Hooker’s boastful talk: “The hen is is the wisest of birds; she only cackles after she has laid the egg.”

Anglicanism

the initial statements issued by the USCCB and The Episcopal Church are cautious to the point of contentlessness.

Black genocide

Abortion killed at least 203,991 blacks in the 36 states and two cities (New York City and the District of Columbia) that reported abortions by race in 2005, according to the CDC. "

Lawyerese

new refunds — or “enhanced consumer satisfaction guarantee”

Mr. Obama

Suddenly the man who yearns to be the permanent president of the Student Body,

Liberal thinking

Liberal modus operendi:

“Everything I say can be fully substantiated by my own opinion.”

Mother Teresa

"Jesus did not command us to be successful," she replied, "just to be faithful."

Johnson on the Church

[BOSWELL: I had hired a Bohemian as my servant while I remained in London, and being much pleased with him, I asked Dr. Johnson whether his being a Roman Catholick should prevent my taking him with me to Scotland.]
JOHNSON. 'Why no, Sir, if he has no objection, you can have none.'
BOSWELL. 'So, Sir, you are no great enemy to the Roman Catholick religion.'
JOHNSON. 'No more, Sir, than to the Presbyterian religion.'
BOSWELL. 'You are joking.'
JOHNSON. 'No, Sir, I really think so. Nay, Sir, of the two, I prefer the Popish.'
BOSWELL. 'How so, Sir?'
JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, the Presbyterians have no church, no apostolical ordination.
BOSWELL. 'And do you think that absolutely essential, Sir?'
JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, as it was an apostolical institution, I think it is dangerous to be without it. And, Sir, the Presbyterians have no public worship: they have no form of prayer in which they know they are to join. They go to hear a man pray, and are to judge whether they will join with him.'
* * *
BOSWELL. 'What do you think, Sir, of Purgatory, as believed by the Roman Catholicks?'
JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, it is a very harmless doctrine. They are of opinion that the generality of mankind are neither so obstinately wicked as to deserve everlasting punishment, nor so good as to merit being admitted into the society of blessed spirits; and therefore that God is graciously pleased to allow of a middle state, where they may be purified by certain degrees of suffering. You see, Sir, there is nothing unreasonable in this.'
BOSWELL. 'But then, Sir, their masses for the dead?'
JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, if it be once established that there are souls in purgatory, it is as proper to pray for them, as for our brethren of mankind who are yet in this life.'
BOSWELL. 'The idolatry of the Mass?'
JOHNSON. 'Sir, there is no idolatry in the Mass. They believe God to be there, and they adore him.'
BOSWELL. 'The worship of Saints?'
JOHNSON. 'Sir, they do not worship saints; they invoke them; they only ask their prayers. I am talking all this time of the doctrines of the Church of Rome. I grant you that in practice, Purgatory is made a lucrative imposition, and that the people do become idolatrous as they recommend themselves to the tutelary protection of particular saints. I think their giving the sacrament only in one kind is criminal, because it is contrary to the express institution of Christ, and I wonder how the Council of Trent admitted it.'
BOSWELL. 'Confession?'
JOHNSON. 'Why, I don't know but that is a good thing. The scripture says, "Confess your faults one to another," and the priests confess as well as the laity. Then it must be considered that their absolution is only upon repentance, and often upon penance also. You think your sins may be forgiven without penance, upon repentance alone.'
***
[Dr. Johnson next speaks on death.]
[When we were alone, I introduced the subject of death, and endeavoured to maintain that the fear of it might be got over. I told him that David Hume said to me, he was no more uneasy to think he should not be after this life, than that he had not been before he began to exist.]
JOHNSON. Sir, if he really thinks so, his perceptions are disturbed; he is mad: if he does not think so, he lies. He may tell you, he holds his finger in the flame of a candle, without feeling pain; would you believe him? When he dies, he at least gives up all he has.'
BOSWELL. 'Foote, Sir, told me, that when he was very ill he was not afraid to die.'
JOHNSON. 'It is not true, Sir. Hold a pistol to Foote's breast, or to Hume's breast, and threaten to kill them, and you'll see how they behave.'
BOSWELL. 'But may we not fortify our minds for the approach of death?' ***
JOHNSON. 'No, Sir, let it alone. It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.' He added, (with an earnest look,) 'A man knows it must be so, and submits. It will do him no good to whine.'
I attempted to continue the conversation. He was so provoked, that he said, 'Give us no more of this;' and was thrown into such a state of agitation, that he expressed himself in a way that alarmed and distressed me; shewed an impatience that I should leave him, and when I was going away, called to me sternly, 'Don't let us meet tomorrow.'
I went home exceedingly uneasy. All the harsh observations which I had ever heard made upon his character, crowded into my mind; and I seemed to myself like the man who had put his head into the lion's mouth a great many times with perfect safety, but at last had it bit off.”
_______________________________

Savings bonds

"Money from savings bonds was used to run the daily operating expenses of the government," said Joyce Harris, with the Bureau of the Public Debt.

Committee

COMMITTEE:
A body that keeps minutes and wastes hours.

Mr. Obama

Why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?

The new clergy

Many young practicing Catholics feel called to right the wrongs created by Father Flash and Sister Sunshine

U.S. universities

U.S. universities are constipated. Look at the faces of the professors and administrators.

Media

The lame-stream media

Waugh on Eden

Evelyn Waugh’s assessment of Anthony Eden: “He is not a gentleman. He dresses too well.”

Information

"Digital information lasts forever -- or five years," says RAND
Corp. computer analyst Jeff Rothenberg, "whichever comes first."

Paine

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country".

Freud

"The separation of procreation from sexual intercourse is the root cause of all sexual perversions." Sigmund Freud said that over 100 years ago.

Reagan

You agree with President Reagan that one of the scariest phrases is, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”.

Clergy & hell

"Three hundred and thirty-five said they could find their way to hell without the assistance of clergy.”

Edison & TV

"Do you realize if it weren't for Edison we'd be watching TV by candlelight? "

D v Hildebrand

One succinct observation by Dietrich von Hildebrand quoted in Pope John’s Council by Michael Davies: “The innovators would replace holy intimacy with Christ by an unbecoming familiarity".

Manning

So, in the face of this contradiction between his maximalism and his dismay at the pope’s ruling, he had no choice but to adopt Newman’s more minimalist interpretation. “The Decree of Leo XIII was absolutely true, just, and useful,” Manning said in painful embarrassment. “But in the abstract. The condition of Ireland is abnormal. The Decree contemplates facts which do not exist....Pontiffs have no infallibility in the world of facts, except only dogmatic. The [rent strike] is not a dogmatic fact, and it is one thing to declare that all legal agreements are binding, and another to say that all agreements in Ireland are legal.”

Dostotevsky

The importance of social "feeling" is pointed out in "The Devils" (or "The Possessed") by Dostoyevsky, which is considered a prophecy of the 1917 Russian Revolution, written in 1871. In it Peter Verkhovensky states: "The next powerful force is, of course, sentimentality. You know, socialism among us spreads chiefly because of sentimentality [....] And well, finally, the main force—the cement that holds everything together—is their being ashamed of possessing an opinion of their own [....] I tell you they'll go through fire for me. All I have to do is to raise my voice and tell them that they are not sufficiently 'liberal'" (p. 387, in the Penguin Classics edition).

Cardinal Pell

Modern liberalism has strong totalitarian tendencies. Institutions and associations, it implies, exist only with the permission of the state, and, to exist lawfully, they must abide the dictates or norms of the state.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy L Sayers once wrote: “Tolerance, which in hell is called despair, is the sin which believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and only remains alive because there is nothing it would die for.”

Bp. Sheen

America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance—it is not. It is suffering from tolerance. Tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded.

Orwell

During the past twenty-five years the activities of what are called “intellectuals” have been largely mischievous. I do not think it an exaggeration to say that if the “intellectuals” had done their work a little more thoroughly, Britain would have surrendered in 1940.

Cambridge Med Hist

There is an enormous book called volume 1 of A Cambridge History of the Middle Ages. It is 759 pages in length of close print . . . It does not mention the Mass once. That is as though you were to write a history of the Jewish dispersion without mentioning the synagogue or of the British empire without mentioning the city of London or the Navy (Letters from Hilaire Belloc, Hollis and Carter, 75).

Belloc on doctors

Physicians of the Utmost Fame

Were called at once; but when they came

They answered, as they took their Fees,

"There is no Cure for this Disease.

Henry will very soon be dead."

College life

"You'll never find more intelligent, charming people than the drunk students of the college world."

Health care insurance

“Any plan that relies on the sheep to negotiate with the wolves is doomed to failure.”

New religions

Reverend Leroy was a con artist who, among other things, once took up an offering to go to Las Vegas, explaining he had to study sin in order to effectively preach against it.

John Paul II

“Stupidity is also a gift of God, but one mustn't misuse it.” Pope John Paul II

Wilde

"The Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone — for respectable people, the Anglican Church will do".'

Wealth

Traditional Protestantism spoke of justification by faith; today, we have justification by wealth.

Thomas Sowell

The problem with trying to equalize is that you can usually only equalize downward.

Bible and marriage

"Top 10 Ways to Find a Wife, According to the Bible):

10. Find an attractive prisoner of war, bring her home, shave her head, trim her nails, and give her new clothes. Then she’s yours. – (Deuteronomy 21:11-13)
9. Find a prostitute and marry her. – (Hosea 1:1-3)
8. Find a man with seven daughters, and impress him by watering his flock.- Moses (Exodus 2:16-21)
7. Purchase a piece of property, and get a woman as part of the deal. – Boaz (Ruth 4:5-10)
6. Go to a party and hide. When the women come out to dance, grab one and carry her off to be your wife. – Benjaminites (Judges 21:19-25)
5. Have God create a wife for you while you sleep.-Adam (Genesis 2:19-24)
4. Kill any husband and take his wife. -David (2 Samuel 11)
3. Cut 200 foreskins off of your future father-in-law’s enemies and get his daughter for a wife -David (I Samuel 18:27)
2. Even if no one is out there, just wander around a bit and you’ll definitely find someone. -Cain (Genesis 4:16-17)
1. Don’t be so picky. Make up for quality with quantity. – Solomon (1 Kings 11:1-3)

Lincoln

I have never seen so many words put into so small an idea.

Justice Ginsburg racist

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg gives a racist answer as to why she supports Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that allowed virtually unlimited abortions. Ginsburg spoke with New York Times Magazine and is set to be released in print on Sunday, but the interview has already been published online. Ginsburg says she backs Roe to eliminate "populations that we don't want to have too many of."

Coulter on Palin

Democrats are a party of women, and nothing drives them off their gourds like a beautiful Christian conservative.

Jaki. Proving the existence of God

For reasons inherent in the method of physical science, no watertight proof of the existence of God can be built on its data and conclusions. But this also meant that no refutation of the existence of God could he built on physics either.

Lincoln on slavery

“What we want, and all we want, is to have with us the men who think slavery wrong. But those who say they hate slavery, and are opposed to it, but yet act with the Democratic party — where are they? Let us apply a few tests. You say that you think slavery is wrong, but you denounce all attempts to restrain it. Is there anything else that you think wrong, that you are not willing to deal with as a wrong? Why are you so careful, so tender of this one wrong and no other? You will not let us do a single thing as if it was wrong; there is no place where you will allow it to be even called wrong! We must not call it wrong in the Free States, because it is not there, and we must not call it wrong in the Slave States because it is there; we must not call it wrong in politics because that is bringing morality into politics, and we must not call it wrong in the pulpit because that is bringing politics into religion; we must not bring it into the Tract Society or the other societies, because those are such unsuitable places, and there is no single place, according to you, where this wrong thing can properly be called wrong!”

H R Clinton

Hillary Rodham Clinton, likes the shovel-ready metaphor, too. "You know," she told a television interviewer the other day, "we are in just so many deep holes that everybody had better grab a shovel and start digging out."

Digging out of a hole?

Quotas

"Is the applicant black, female or otherwise handicapped?"

God

If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.

San Francisco

San Francisco—sometimes described as 49 square miles surrounded on all sides by reality—

Walmart

The discussion focused a lot on the degree of autonomy and authority that Wal-Mart employees had. Every employee, for example, not only has access to a wealth of information regarding item costs, profit margins, etc., but any employee has the authority to lower prices on particular items at their discretion. Individual departments also had a high degree of autonomy:

My amiable, laid-back department supervisor had been doing this kind of thing for 15 years. When I asked him why, he took a moment to process the question. He had to think back to other employers he’d worked for in the distant past. None of them, he said, had treated him so well.

What exactly did he mean by that?

His answer lay in the structure of the store. “It’s deceptive, because Wal-Mart isn’t divided into separate stores like a mall,” he said. “But really, that’s how it works. Each section is separate. This is – my pet store! No one comes here and tells me how to run it. I could go for weeks without a supervisor asking any questions.” Here was the unseen, unreported side of the corporate behemoth. Big as it was, it was smart enough to give employees a feeling of autonomy.

NYTimes

NYBehindtheTimes

Clergy v. laity

Always, sensitive to the distress of the faithful, particularly through the usurpation of their rights by the clergy

Unions

The fact is, if you're looking for a messed up organization, look for the union label.

Thinking

If you make people believe they are thinking they will love you, but if you actually make them think you will be scorned.

Tom Lehrer

Tom Lehrer had a song back in those days that captured some of what I am talking about. Here’s his introduction followed by the first stanza of the song:

One type of song that has come into increasing prominence in recent months is the folk-song of protest. You have to admire people who sing these songs. It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee-house or a college auditorium and come out in favor of the things that everybody else in the audience is against like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on. The nicest thing about a protest song is that it makes you feel so good. I have a song here which I realise should be accompanied on a folk instrument in which category the piano does not alas qualify so imagine if you will that I am playing an 88 string guitar.

We are the Folk Song Army.
Everyone of us . . . . cares.
We all hate poverty, war, and injustice,
Unlike the rest of you squares.

Catholics for Choice

O'Brien's statement, as well as his report attacking Catholics in Alliance and Catholics United for our own efforts to find common ground, is a roadblock to progress. It is intended as cover for Catholics for Choice's increasing irrelevance, and its inability to offer any real solutions to the challenges of our day. Despite annual expenditures of more than $3.5 million, the organization accomplishes little more than creating a hostile and divisive political climate—as evidenced by today's statement.

Nice

In casual conversation the word "nice" is often used as a synonym for "good," as when someone compliments a man for being "a nice guy." But a world of difference separates the bland quality of being "nice" from the Christian virtue of charity and the noble virtue of justice. While it is relatively easy to be "nice," charity and justice are exacting and demanding. Anyone can be nice -- that is, easygoing, non-threatening, non-judgmental, and tolerant. A nice person never criticizes or judges; a nice person avoids confrontations and arguments; a nice person does anything and everything to keep peace and make life comfortable for everyone. He hears no evil and sees no evil. A nice person never insists on virtue or ever questions the prevalent practices and trends of the day. A nice person never feels outraged at shameless behavior or shocking injustice. While being nice easily leads to popularity and respectability and never creates enemies, it does not inspire admiration, cultivate heroism, or evoke respect.

Don Marquis

The journalist Don Marquis when, after a month on the wagon, he ordered a double martini and exclaimed: "I've conquered my goddam willpower."

Sunstein

In The Cost of Rights, Sunstein and Holmes argued against the idea of "moral rights," or rights that are valid by virtue of something other than force: "When they are not backed by legal force ... moral rights are toothless by definition. Unenforced moral rights are aspirations binding on conscience, not powers binding on officials."

R E Lee

General Robert E. Lee:

“We made a great mistake in the beginning of our struggle, and I fear, in spite of all we can do, it will prove to be a fatal mistake. We appointed all our worst generals to command our armies, and all our best generals to edit the newspapers.”

Moloch

"Moloch, the pre-Christian god of reproductive health care services."

USNCCB

These were heady days of American episcopal conciliarism, leading to the frequent observation that our bishops felt any problem in Church or the world could be solved by the establishment of a committee, the issuance of a statement, and the decision to have a national second collection.

Mrs. Thatcher

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually, run out of other people’s money.” - Margaret Thatcher

John Courtney Murray, SJ

What is far less known, and certainly not trumpeted by Murray's Jesuit brethren today, is that Murray, a devout Cold Warrior, had twice voted for Dwight D. Eisenhower, despised Adlai Stevenson, thought Kennedy a lightweight, and likely pulled the voting-machine lever for Nixon in November 1960.

GKC on impartiality

What people mean by being impartial; by being undenominational or undogmatic; by being non-political or non-party, or non-controversial. Generally it means that some people suppose the whole world to be of their denomination, and therefore anything that agrees with them is universal and anything that disagrees with them is insane... In other words it simply means that they are very good, sincere, and serious people, only provincial or local or limited in the very last degree...

E.R. Murrow

When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained.

~Edward R. Murrow

Washington governor on abortion

"Gregoire said of Cooper. The governor spoke of "those, candidly, not yet born who will benefit from your leadership."

One asks oneself how those not to be born can benefit...

Orgasm at Harvard

I received a call the other day from a woman distraught that her son was accepted at Harvard. How could this be you ask?

After he was accepted, she took a closer look at the school and came across a story in the school paper, the Harvard Crimson, about the "fifth annual Female Orgasm Seminar."

Abp Quinn on Notre Dame

In 1995, Dominican College (in suburban San Francisco) allowed Gloria Steinem to speak on campus at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser. The college authorities were careful to point out that: (1) the school was merely renting its facilities to an outside organization (2) the purpose of the event was to discuss violence against women in the context of attacks at abortion clinics and (3) ''the college does not seek to judge or endorse a speaker's comments or the political positions of a sponsoring organization.'' In other words, a known abortion-rights advocate affiliated with an organization that openly supports abortion rights spoke on a Catholic college campus, just as President Obama (who is a known abortion-rights advocate affiliated with a political party that openly supports abortion rights) will be speaking at Notre Dame. The only differences are that Dominican did not INVITE Steinem to speak on campus and did not HONOR her in any way, although she is arguably as ''admirable'' a symbol of gender equality as President Obama is for race.
At the time, Archbishop Quinn issued what I guess he would now call a ''strident outcry'' against the Dominican administration: ''Dominican College has clearly and with deliberation abandoned the Catholic identity and heritage which generations of selfless Dominican Sisters, dedicated lay faculty and faith-filled alumni have made countless sacrifices to establish.'' As to the college's claim that it had merely rented an amphitheater to an outside organization, Archbishop Quinn's vicar said: ''There are certain core values that a Catholic college needs to stand by. That does not mean that there should not be a free exchange of ideas, but there are certain ideas that are repugnant, such as racism, misogyny, and of course, abortion.'' Sadly, it appears that Archbishop Quinn has changed his mind about what counts as a core value.
Posted By Jim Belna | 2009-05-14 18:38:51.0

Notre Dame & Obama

"Students at Notre Dame have been thrust to the front of a culture war that we didn't ask for," Angulo said. "It mars it in the sense that it's not about our graduation ceremony anymore. It's a political battle. We worked four years really hard to graduate with a degree."

Obama Cinco de Cuatro

Obama’s many gaffes including his reference to “Cinco de Cuatro”

Thomas Sowell on Obama

For a man whose whole life has been based on style rather than substance, on rhetoric rather than reality,

Lord Baltimore

In 1633, as the earliest colonists were about to set sail for “Mary Land”, Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, instructed “his said Governor and Commissioners” that while sailing and upon arrival at their destination “they instruct all the Roman Catholics to be silent on all occasions of discourse concerning matters of religion...”

Thomas on chastity in the young

Another possible reason for young adults’ leaving could be derived from the teachings of St. Thomas: generally speaking, as a group, they are often unchaste. Unchastity weakens the mind, and loosens the young person’s hold on divine revealed truths. (ST II.IIae 152 art. 3 and 4).

Kmiec

"The modern church has defined itself not in terms of the conversion of the heart, but in terms of its political victories," he said. This puts the church in an awkward position to ask for exemptions from generally applicable laws, he said.

Kmiec said there should be a presumption against giving institutional exemptions to laws, but a great sensitivity to granting individual exemptions.
[At the Fordham discussion about conscience clauses].

Slap

He has, in the local vernacular "a face you'd never tire of slapping".

Eagleton on culture

Most aesthetic concepts are pieces of displaced theology, and the work of art, seen as mysterious, self-dependent, and self-moving, is an image of God for an agnostic age.

Eagleton

One couldn’t imagine the Queen’s chaplain asking you if you have been washed in the blood of the Lamb. As the Englishman remarked, it’s when religion starts to interfere with your everyday life that it’s time to give it up.

Dawkins & Eagleton

He might also have avoided being the second most frequently mentioned individual in his book – if you count God as an individual.

Marx

Here, then, is your pie in the sky and opium of the people. It was, of course, Marx who coined that last phrase; but Marx, who in the same passage describes religion as the ‘heart of a heartless world, the soul of soulless conditions’,

Dawkins and Canterbury

Dawkins sees Christianity in terms of a narrowly legalistic notion of atonement – of a brutally vindictive God sacrificing his own child in recompense for being offended – and describes the belief as vicious and obnoxious. It’s a safe bet that the Archbishop of Canterbury couldn’t agree more. [Eagleton]

Fish on academic freedom

The special protection afforded to professors leaves them free “to articulate and critique more knowledgeable and complex assertions … in ways not possible on street corners or on television.” Now I have my elitist moments, but this is a bit much. Only professors, we’re being told, do real thinking; other people accept whatever they hear on TV and retail popular (but uninformed) wisdom on street corners. Thus while there is no reason to extend special protections in the work-place to non-academic speech — which is worthless — there is a good reason to extend them to the incomparably finer utterances of the professorial class.

Bush and the NYTimes

the machinations of the Bush administration (always the default villain for Times readers) [S.Fish]

More Fish

“The good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, I do…. Who shall deliver me?” (Romans, 7: 19,24). The anguish of this question and the incredibly nuanced and elegant writings of those who have tried to answer it are what the three atheists miss; and it is by missing so much that they are able to produce such a jolly debunking of a way of thinking they do not begin to understand.

Fish on proving God

O.L. (in a comment on June 11), identifies the “religion is man-made claim” as the “strongest foundation of atheism” because “it undermines the divinity of god.” No, it undermines the divinity of man, which is, after all, the entire point of religion: man is not divine, but mortal (capable of death), and he is dependent upon a creator who by definition cannot be contained within human categories of perception and description. “How unsearchable are his Judgments and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counselor” (Romans, 11:33-34). It is no wonder, then, that the attempts to contain him – in scriptures, in ceremonies, in prayer – are flawed, incomplete and forever inadequate. Rather than telling against divinity, the radical imperfection, even corruption, of religious texts and traditions can be read as a proof of divinity, or at least of the extent to which divinity exceeds human measure.

If divinity, by definition, exceeds human measure, the demand that the existence of God be proven makes no sense because the machinery of proof, whatever it was, could not extend itself far enough to apprehend him.

Hauerwas

"Stanley Hauerwas likes to say: ‘The only requirement for being a member of a religious study department is that you not believe in God.”

Bunyan by Fish

But in a short while Christian comes to see that while his new friend has all the answers to any question of doctrine – he boasts “I will talk of things heavenly or things earthly; things moral or things evangelical; things sacred or things profane, things past or things to come” – none of his answers has made its way from his lips to his heart. That is, they come from a rote erudition and not from an inward conviction.

Eagleton

"Eagleton likes this turn of speech, and he has recourse to it often when making the same point: “[B]elieving that religion is a botched attempt to explain the world . . . is like seeing ballet as a botched attempt to run for a bus.”

Broad minded

"Most of our so-called 'broad-minded' individuals seem to dwindle in depth as they gain in breadth."
--- Rabbi Shraga Silverstein

Saints

"The way of the world is, to praise dead saints, and persecute living ones."

Bp. Wilton Gregory

Recently Bishop Wilton Gregory, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, sent a letter informing the accused priests of his diocese that they were not welcome at diocesan liturgies. The bishop wrote, "I have decided to exclude all priests on Administrative Leave[1] from all future diocesan sponsored events. This includes our annual Convocation, Clergy Assembly Days, retreats, ordinations, Holy Week Ceremonies, and Jubilee Celebrations." The bishop should be so firm with pro-choice "Catholic" politicians who continue to act contrary to the faith and show no remorse for their actions or amendment to change!

Ann Coulter

"You know what really irritates me about liberals? (Besides the fact that they're spineless little girls in pretty dresses who can't play rough because it musses up their hair...)"

Sanger

Margaret Sanger hated abortion and called abortionists "blood sucking men with M.D. after their names."

Clarence Thomas

In any event, Justice Thomas seemed a little sensitive to the sort of second-guessing that comes with the territory for those who sit on the Supreme Court.

“This job is easy for people who’ve never done it,” he said later. “What I have found in this job is they know more about it than I do, especially if they have the title ‘law professor.’ ”

Health insurance

Facts: The policy problem of the health uninsured isn't as large as election-year opportunists made it. Census reports that 254,000,000 (85% of all Americans) Americans have health insurance coverage. The number without insurance improved to 45.7 million people, or 15% of the population, from 47 million in 2006. About 54% of uninsured are aged 18 to 34, and many of them voluntarily choose to forgo health coverage.

Voters and gamers

Seventy-five percent of American "gamers" -- people who play video games -- are older than 18 and nevertheless are allowed to vote.

Progressive Protestants

A brilliant, old priest who assisted me in returning to my faith a few decades ago…told me that in his seminary studies they had a term for those individuals who agreed with 75-90% of what the Church teaches. In anticipation, I expected to learn some obscure term, probably in Greek or Latin, when he followed by saying, “Yeah, we call ‘em Protestants!”

Seat belts

After mandatory seat-belt laws were introduced in the United Kingdom, traffic fatalities surprisingly increased: “In the 23 months that followed the introduction of the U.K. seat-belt law, the number of deaths among pedestrians, cyclists, and unbelted rear seat passengers rose by 8%, 13% and 25% respectively,” due to faster and riskier driving.

Science instead of morality

The West is addicted to technology as a substitute for free will and moral effort. If you eat too much, you get gastric banding surgery. If you're depressed, you take Prozac. If you're a smoker, you wear nicotine patches.

Vocation

Neuhaus recounts a story, told by the renegade preacher Will ­Campbell, about a Southern Baptist pastor named Thad Garner. Despite his affable smile and trips to the Holy Land, he was not a model pastor. He privately admitted that he thought his whole ministry was a sham. Why, then, asked Campbell, do you go on with it? “Because I was called, you damn fool!” retorted his tormented friend.

Dulles theologian

Dulles had about the same time, in his capacity as president of the Catholic Theological Society of America, made a memorable address on why many, if not most, academic Catholic theologians were no longer doing Catholic theology as he understood that task.

St. Francis

"Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace!
Where there is hatred let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy"
~Saint Francis of Assisi

Sidney Hook

"Tolerance always has limits — it cannot tolerate what is itself actively intolerant."

— Sidney Hook

AIDS in Uganda

Dr. Ciantia emphasized.

The opposition to these lessons “is really ideological,” he charged, pointing out that “we are facing smoking and alcoholism with strong primary behavior campaign[s] and seriously limiting personal choices (for a public and personal health benefit). But sexual behavior cannot be touched! This is real Western taboo.”

AIDS in Uganda

In 1991, Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni rejected “condom social marketing” and instead emphasized a behavioral change approach at an AIDS conference in Florence, Italy. He said, “…I have been emphasizing a return to our time-tested cultural practices, which emphasized fidelity and condemnation of pre-marital or extra-marital sex. Young people must be taught the virtues of abstinence, self control and postponement of pleasure and sometimes sacrifice...”

Hillary Clinton & M. Sanger

Now, I have to tell you that it was a great privilege when I was told that I would receive this award. I admire Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision. Another of my great friends, Ellen Chesler, is here, who wrote a magnificent biography of Margaret Sanger called "Woman of Valor". And when I think about what she did all those years ago in Brooklyn, taking on archetypes, taking on attitudes and accusations flowing from all directions, I am really in awe of her.

Saul Alinsky & Lucifer

Remember that Saul? He dedicated his "Rules for Radicals" this way: “Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer".

Political gaffes

A gaffe in Washington is when a politician accidentally tells the truth.

Michael Novak

Michael Novak writes,

"To my knowledge, there is only one point at which, in all conscience, I hold a view at variance with that of the teaching authority of the church: the condemnation of artificial contraceptives." (Confession of a Catholic, p. 118)

Card Ratzinger

Of Italy, he comments with that same seriousness: "political systems collapse, and then nothing really changes".

Garry Wills

Professor Garry Wills. A 1957 graduate of the midwestern Jesuit school, St. Louis College, Professor Wills has been littering the American publishing scene with half-cooked opinions for several decades. He tells us that "the Gospels are not a historical record". (Cf. 1 Corinthians 15 on this theory). He refers to the trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin as "fictive". What he probably means (the fuzziness of his prose makes it difficult to determine) is that the trial was a kangaroo court, with no standing in Jewish law: a "trial" that would be condemned by Jews.

Arrupe

Father Pedro Arrupe, warned his Jesuit fathers against a "too rigid concept of truth where personal opinions are sometimes confused with Divine Revelation".

Huxley

("Atheism is, logically speaking, as absurd as polytheism")

Mad. Allbright

What Mrs. Albright calls: "The goodness of American power".

St. Charles Borromeo

When Saint Charles Borromeo began to reform the diocese of Milan, the inmates of a particular monastery actually hired an assassin who shot at the bishop during Vespers.

Labels

Every label is a libel.

Mary McC & F O'Connor

Flannery O’Connor. She was at a cocktail party talking with fellow writer Mary McCarthy, who had left the Church. McCarthy, though no longer Catholic, said she still thought the Eucharist was a pretty good symbol of God’s presence. O’Connor replied: “Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.”

Mother Teresa

She once joked that she’d rather bathe a leper than meet the press.

Orwell

George Orwell: “Very few people, apart from Catholics themselves, seem to have grasped that the Church is to be taken seriously.”

Susan Sontag

The first comes from Susan Sontag. In one of her last talks she said: “The writer’s first job is not to have opinions but to tell the truth … and [to] refuse to be an accomplice of lies and misinformation.”

Income

Income is something you can't live without or within.

Fr. Lorenzoni

Tom McCarthy's poignant and thought-provoking reflections on obituaries(10/14) made me smile a couple of times. Harvard's obits triplet - (cl)cum laude, (mcl)magna cum laude, and (scl)summa cum laude - brought to mind Dartmouth's delightful fourth graduates category: (cpd)cum pelli dentium, by the skin of their teeth. I recalled with a smile also another San Francisco Chronicle Sunday column on obituaries by the late Herb Caen. He had written that a proper lady has her name in the paper three times during her life, when she is born, when she marries, and when she dies.

That triggered my quick note which he promptly shared with his readers: "You reminded me, Herb, of my Italian friends who go to church three times during their life, when they're hatched, when they're matched, and when they're dispatched; each time they get sprinkled, with water, with rice and with dirt; and two times out of three they're carried in." And that, pace Tom McCarthy, is also part of our "unvarnished craft of living."
By Fr. Larry N. Lorenzoni, SDB on October 17, 2002 at 11:33 PM

AIDS & Condoms

Researchers at the Harvard AIDS Prevention Research Project recently reminded us that in every African country in which HIV infections have declined, this decline has been associated with a decrease in multiple partners and often premarital sex as well. This is not true of use of condoms.

According to the Journal of International Development, that "the promotion of condoms at an early stage proved to be counter-productive in Botswana , whereas the lack of condom promotion during the 1980s and early 1990s contributed to the relative success of behaviour change strategies in Uganda" . Two leading experts (neither in principle opposed to condom usage) had this to say, writing in the journal Science, of the extraordinary changes in Uganda: “the government communicated a clear warning and prevention recommendation: AIDS or ‘slim’ was fatal and required immediate population responses based on…faithfulness to one partner. Condoms were a minor component of the original strategy.”

The Church does not tell people that there is no hope when it comes to sex, that they are sexual automatons incapable of resisting sexual pressure and promiscuity. The sight of cynical westerners handing out rubber compassion to prostitutes, including child prostitutes, is only one way in which certain aid agencies perpetuate the very evils that rob so many Africans of help and hope.

Economists

An economist is someone who doesn't know what he's talking about - and makes you feel it's your fault.

Lie detectors

"It had been a long day in traffic court, and the judge was listening to the final case on the docket.
The police officer stated that he had observed the defendant traveling significantly above the posted speed limit. In response, the defendant went on and on about the road conditions, the amount of traffic and his innocence.
Then, certain he had won his case, he melodramatically proclaimed, "Why, your Honor, I'll even take a lie detector test."
"Son," the judge wearily replied, "I am the lie detector." —

Church & beauty

Among the company's foreclosed-upon clients is Juanita Bynum, a former hairdresser and popular Pentecostal preacher. In 2006, she got a loan from the evangelical lender to buy a $4.5 million lakeview property in Waycross, Ga. She planned to use it for her ministry headquarters and to open a spa for beauty treatments and spiritual guidance.

Ed Koch

"If you agree with me seventy percent of the time, vote for me," Mayor Koch used to say. "If you agree with me one hundred percent of the time, see your shrink."

B. Russell

As the great liberal intellectual Bertrand Russell explained while scoffing at the idea that he would give his money to charity: "I'm afraid you've got it wrong. (We) are socialists. We don't pretend to be Christians."

Georgian poets

Aldington could write with an acid pen. The Georgian poets, who (Pound had decided) were the Imagists' sworn enemies, he devastated with the accusation of a little trip for a little weekend to a little cottage where they wrote a little poem on a little theme.

Global warming

In Washington, DC, what was supposed to be a massive rally against global warming was upstaged by the heaviest snowfall of the season, which all but shut down the capital.

Two faced

"Today is March 5. It's 'Multiple Personality Day.' Wonder if there will be a special observance in Washington for two-faced politicians?"

Jebbies, again

Running interference at Küng's elbow, Father Paul Locatelli, SJ, president of Santa Clara University, hurried questioners away with the remark, "There's an excellent explanation in the current Newsweek." He was referring to an interview (3/27) with bioethicist John Paris, SJ, of Boston College, who said, "... one is not obliged to use disproportionately burdensome measures to sustain life. Fifteen years of maintaining a woman [on a feeding tube] I'd say is disproportionately burdensome."

Charity

Ursuline Sr. Christine Pratt, director of the Toledo, Ohio, Catholic Charities Department of Parish Ministries and Social Concerns, said that even before the recession the Toledo diocese had been forced to cut back on Catholic Charities staff and programs. She said the current staff of 30 is one-third what it was six years ago.

When the local United Way stopped funding counseling, the diocese was forced to drop all its counseling staff and services because it had no alternative funding source, she said.

She described part of her job as being a resource for parishes, helping them to do what the diocese cannot. "We need now to encourage our parishes, to really be neighbors, to watch out for one another," she said.

{Not to give to the poor?]

Government charity

Tiziana Dearing, president of Catholic Charities of the Boston archdiocese -- which last fiscal year relied on government contracts for 52 percent of its $42 million budget -- said that the "volatility" and "unpredictability" of state budget decisions have made it almost impossible for her agency to develop a stable budget for the coming year.

Lovelock on nuclear power

"The whole universe runs on nuclear energy, so why not us?" argues the environmental scientist James Lovelock.

Barren wombs

The time will come when men will say 'Blessed are the barren and wombs that never bore and breasts that never nursed' [Luke23:26-32]

Macaulay on the Church

In conclusion, it might be well to recall the words written more than a hundred years ago by Lord Macaulay, who was a Protestant. They were written to be the introduction to the English translation of von Ranke's History of the Popes. He said:

"There is not and never was on earth a work of human policy so well-deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human civilisation. No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the time when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are of yesterday when compared with the line of Supreme Pontiffs…. The republic of Venice was modern when compared with the papacy. The republic of Venice is gone; the papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigor. The Catholic Church is still sending to the farthest ends of the world missionaries as zealous as those which landed in Kent with Augustine, still confronting hostile kings with the same spirit with which she confronted Attila.… She saw the commencement of all the governments and all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all."

Card. Pole on the papacy

He turned to his secretary and said, "Scripture tells us you must not uncover your father's nakedness." It was a dramatic moment and it's one we who are devoted to the See of Peter should remember. We must not "uncover our father's nakedness."

Bp. Bruskewitz on bishops

When Henry VIII arranged to have himself declared the head of the Church, all of the bishops of England except one agreed with him. It was only St. John Fisher who disagreed and suffered martyrdom because of it. I always use this example as a caution for episcopal conferences when we have votes. Cardinal St. John Fisher was the heroic one who stood against the tide, and at the time he was reproached for that -- "How dare you stand against the views of all your brother bishops who acquiesce in the statute of Parliament?" And he said, "For every bishop you show me now I can show you hundreds of thousands throughout history who stand and agree with me." There's a certain sense in which episcopal consensus means not only those who are here now, but also those who have gone before us -- quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est.

Bp. Bruskewitz

I do not want to comment on the Common Ground Project, but you can take this remark to apply if you wish: I find it extremely difficult to understand how one can have dialogue between the fire and the fire department.

Bp. Bruskewitz

I do not want to comment on the Common Ground Project, but you can take this remark to apply if you wish: I find it extremely difficult to understand how one can have dialogue between the fire and the fire department.

Bingo & Bp. Bruskewitz

I might add that certain scholars are neo-gnostics. They feel that they have some secrets that the rest of us who play bingo and pray the rosary don't know about.

Jesuits

Fr. Kolvenbach said that a French Jesuit, Fr. Jean-Yves Calvez, is “working on proposals for a new papal encyclical on problems of marginalization, unemployment, and social rejection.” But the proposed new encyclical will not deal only with the problems being experienced by the Jesuits. [Fr. Neuhaus 2/98]

Plastic Jesus

I don’t care if it rains or freezes
long as I’ve got my Plastic Jesus
Glued to the dashboard of my car,
You can buy Him phosphorescent
Glows in the dark, He’s Pink and Pleasant,
Take Him with you when you’re travelling far.

I don’t care if it’s dark or scary,
Long as I have magnetic Mary,
Ridin’ on the dashboard of my car,
I feel I’m protected amply,
I’ve got the whole damn Holy Family,
Riding on the dashboard of my car.

You can buy a Sweet Madonna
Dressed in rhinestones sitting on a
Pedestal of abalone shell,
Goin’ ninety, I’m not wary
‘Cause I’ve got my Virgin Mary,
Guaranteeing I won’t go to Hell.

My Lord of Canterbury on "gay marriage"

"In his 1989 essay The Body’s Grace, Dr Williams argued that the Church’s acceptance of contraception meant that it acknowledged the validity of nonprocreative sex. This could be taken as a green light for gay sex".

Will Rogers

"There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you."
~Will Rogers

Brides

"The fault-finder will complain that the bride is too pretty."
-- Jewish saying

Wales

"That's a chain of office you're wearing? .....Sir Richard is appointed Attorney General for Wales. For Wales? Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world....but for Wales?"

Lutheranism & the budget

All sixty-five bishops of ELCA Lutheranism signed a plea for what they called a “moral” federal budget. Forum Letter overheard this at a pastors’ gathering: “I find it remarkable that the conference of bishops aren’t of one mind on sexuality, they aren’t of one mind on abortion, they aren’t of one mind on ordination. But they are completely of one mind on federal student loans.” To which another pastor replied, “Well, they all have kids in college.” Think low.

Palmerston on change

British prime minister Lord Palmerston is reported to have said, “Change, change, change! All this talk about change! Aren’t things bad enough already?”

Bonhoefer on abortion

Bonhoeffer, who was executed by the regime in April of 1945, spoke of four divine “mandates” in the ordering of human life: family, labor, government, and Church. The following passage from his Ethics occurs in a discussion of the family:

Marriage involves acknowledgment of the right of life that is to come into being, a right which is not subject to the disposal of the married couple. Unless this right is acknowledged as a matter of principle, marriage ceases to be marriage and becomes a mere liaison. Acknowledgment of this right means making way for the free creative power of God which can cause new life to proceed from this marriage according to His will. Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder. A great many different motives may lead to an action of this kind; indeed in cases where it is an act of despair, performed in circumstances of extreme human or economic destitution and misery, the guilt may often lie rather with the community than with the individual. Precisely in this connection money may conceal many a wanton deed, while the poor man’s more reluctant lapse may far more easily be disclosed. All these considerations must no doubt have a quite decisive influence on our personal and pastoral attitude towards the person concerned, but they cannot in any way alter the fact of murder.

Maureen Dowd

Maureen Dowd, thinking herself quite incapable of racism, effectively calls Justice Thomas a nigger who—given his fundamental inferiority—should show “gratitude” to his white betters. In her rage, this ever so hip baby boomer liberal invokes white supremacy itself to annihilate Thomas—in reaction to her sense of being annihilated by him. So mired in white blindness, so lost in the liberal orthodoxy that counts mere dissociation from racism as virtue, and so addicted to the easy moral esteem that comes to her from dissociation, Dowd plays the oldest race cards of all-I’m white and you’re black, so shut up and be grateful for my magnanimity. It is as though in fighting for her human visibility she is really fighting for her superiority—a superiority that Thomas annihilated and that she now wants back.

Newman in the APOLOGIA

"To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers or truths, the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes, the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race, so fearfully yet exactly described in the Apostle’s words, ’having no hope and without God in the world,’-all this is a vision to dizzy and appall; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond human solution".

Ethics and civility

reducing Judaism to ethics, e.g., Hermann Cohen and Emmanuel Levinas. I have referred to ethics as the Judaism of the assimilated and have noted that neither Cohen nor Levinas has much to say about the akeida, the binding of Isaac.

Hofstadter

"It was, indeed, Hofstadter’s rejection of sentimentality that made him, and other 50’s intellectuals like him, outsiders in their own political community. If 50’s liberalism prided itself on its sense of irony, theirs was an irony within an irony, too fragile by far to contend with the newly radicalized forces that were pushing liberalism leftward and for whom both irony and moderation constituted forms of betrayal".

MacIntyre on the university

"From a Catholic point of view, the contemporary secular university is not at fault because it is not Catholic. It is at fault insofar as it is not a university." So says the distinguished philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre of Notre Dame, writing in Commonweal. Catholic universities, he writes, are uncritically aspiring to imitate their secular betters. "So we find Notre Dame glancing nervously at Duke, only to catch Duke in the act of glancing nervously at Princeton." What is wrong with universities more generally, he says, is their fragmentation into disciplines, subdisciplines, and subsubdisciplines, with nobody attending to knowledge of the human condition as a whole. Academic success depends upon identification with one of the fragments. "That identification is secured by two successive apprenticeships, one aimed at the PhD, and a second aimed at achieving tenure. During both what is rewarded is the successful completion of those short-term tasks approved by their seniors. So respect for the prejudices of those seniors is inculcated, while long-term adventurous risk-taking and unfashionable projects tend to go unrewarded, and are therefore increasingly rarely undertaken. In this way many academics are conditioned to become respectful guardians of the disciplinary status quo, sometimes disguising this from themselves by an enthusiasm for those interdisciplinary projects that present no threat to that status quo." Nobody is responsible for making the connections between all the parts of university education. MacIntyre writes: "Ours is a culture in which there is the sharpest of contrasts between the rigor and integrity with which issues of detail are discussed within each specialized discipline and the self-indulgent shoddiness of so much of public debate on large and general issues of great import (compare Lawrence Summers on economics with Lawrence Summers on gender issues, Cardinal Schnborn on theology with Cardinal Schnborn on evolution)." As it happens, I think Cardinal Schnborn demonstrates a good deal of rigor and integrity in his approach to evolution, and I’m not sure what rigor and integrity means with respect to "gender issues." In the curriculum that MacIntyre has in mind, theology is key. "The adoption of such a curriculum would serve both universities and the wider society well. But it would be of particular significance for a Catholic university and for the Catholic community. Newman argued that it is theology that is the integrative and unifying discipline needed by any university, secular, Protestant, or Catholic. And it is in the light afforded by the Catholic faith and more especially by Catholic doctrines concerning human nature and the human condition that theologians have a unique contribution to make in addressing the questions that ought to be central to an otherwise secular curriculum. It is not just that Catholic theology has its own distinctive answers to those questions, but that we can learn from it a way of addressing those questions, not just as theoretical inquiries, but as questions with practical import for our lives, asked by those who are open to God’s self-revelation. Theology can become an education in how to ask such questions." He is doubtful, however, that today’s theology departments are up to the job, since they suffer from the same specialization and fragmentation that afflict other departments. Some will object that MacIntyre’s vision shortchanges specialized training for research. To that concern, he responds: "The curriculum I am proposing, including theology, could perhaps be taught in three well-structured and strenuous years. A fourth year would thereby become available for research or professional training. We do not have to sacrifice training in research in order to provide our students with a liberal education, just as we do not have to fragment and deform so much of our students’ education, as we do now." MacIntyre’s critique of contemporary university education, while making no claims to be original, is convincing. The doleful fact, however, is that universities locked into the status quo are institutionally thriving and able to command ever higher fees for the certifications on offer. In discussions of these matters, Newman’s The Idea of a University is regularly invoked, only to be set aside with the sigh, "Wouldn’t that be nice?" Of course, there are many smaller colleges and universities, Catholic and other, that do make the connections that MacIntyre says is the university’s job. They are commonly called "alternative" schools, and will likely remain alternatives to the established research universities that seem to have little incentive to change the institutionalized entrenchment of their accustomed and comfortable ways. [COMMONWEAL 20 Oct 2006]

Christian Century

Some complain that the editorial mind of the Century is suffering from terminal niceness.

Charity

People in the rich county of San Francisco give but a small fraction of the time and money given by the relatively poor people of South Dakota.

Secty for Culture

One prominent artist, the realist painter John French Sloan, replied scornfully: "Sure, it would be fine to have a Ministry of the Fine Arts in this country. Then we'd know where the enemy is."

Teddy on abortion

Ted Kennedy, then as now the lion of progressive Democrats in the Senate, wrote to a constituent in 1971 that "the legalization of abortion on demand is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human life. . . . When history looks back on this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about human beings enough to halt the practice of war, to provide a decent living for every family and to fulfill its responsibility to its children from the very moment of conception." Even in 1976, three years after Roe v. Wade, Kennedy insisted that "abortion is morally wrong. It is not a legitimate or acceptable response to any problem of society. And if our country wishes to remain true to its basic moral strength, then unwanted as well as wanted children must be unfailingly protected."

new liturgy

Catholics, who are forced to listen to the clunky New American Bible at Mass, get to work off in advance some of the punitive aspects of purgatory.

America - a Christian nation?

America obviously is, historically and sociologically, a Christian nation at least in a sense similar to its being an English-speaking nation. Not everybody speaks English, and relatively few speak it very well,

St. Louis U

I expect one would with some difficulty try to explain to Ignatius Loyola how it came about all these years later that the Masons accused one of his universities of being Catholic and the university prevailed in denying it.

Jonathan Rosenblum

But smart technocrats are notoriously thick when it comes to apprehending the force of religion, either for good or bad, because it so rarely plays a role in their own lives. Those who entreat Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist, for instance, fail to comprehend that they are asking Hamas to dissolve itself and to renounce its fundamental religious belief that all land which was ever under Moslem sovereignty must remain so forever.

St Francis preaching

Preach at all times and if necessary use words

George Will

George Will’s quip comes to mind: football combines the two worst features of America—violence interspersed with committee meetings.

Lawyers' fees

One law firm that recently collapsed, Heller Ehrman, was hurt in part because a number of cases had settled.

Voltaire & Rousseau

After reading Rousseau's Discourse on the Origins of Inequality in 1755, Voltaire wrote to him, "I have received, Monsieur, your new book against the human race.... It makes one desire to go down on all fours." Five years later, Rousseau wrote to Voltaire. "Monsieur,...I hate you

Dulles

As a matter of further fact, Dulles had about the same time, in his capacity as president of the Catholic Theological Society of America, made a memorable address on why many, if not most, academic Catholic theologians were no longer doing Catholic theology as he understood that task.

B Russell

As Bertrand Russel said "People are not born stupid, but ignorant;
it is education that makes them stupid."

GM Hopkins tr, of Adoro te devote

What God’s Son has told me, take for truth I do;
Truth Himself speaks truly or there’s nothing true.

aquinas

St. Thomas confronts other creeds of good and evil, without at all denying evil, with a theory of two levels of good. The supernatural order is the supreme good, as for any Eastern mystic; but the natural order is good; as solidly good as it is for any man in the street. That is what "settles the Manichees."

Aquinas

The Blessed Virgin appeared to Aquinas, comforting him with the welcome news that he would never be a Bishop.

Stem cell [non-benefits]

California stem-cell initiative: no cures, few jobs
Approved by voters in 2004, California’s $3 billion embryonic stem-cell initiative has produced no cures and few jobs. Proponents had predicted the initiative would create 10,000 new jobs in its first five years; the largest company in the state that engages in such research, however, has 140 employees. . . .

Sanger

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, certainly was:

"[Our objective is] unlimited sexual gratification without the burden of unwanted children..."

"We are paying for, and even submitting to, the dictates of an ever-increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all."

Huxley & Soapy Sam

There is no record of it in the proceedings of the society that held the debate, and Darwin’s friend Joseph Hooker who informed him about the debate said that Huxley made no rejoinder to Wilberforce’s arguments.

Jewish Hail Mary

When the converso bishop of Burgos, Alonso de Cartagena, prayed the Hail Mary, he would say with pride, "Holy Mary, Mother of God and my blood relative, pray for us sinners"

Jews in Spain

Indeed, Spain was the most diverse and tolerant place in medieval Europe. England expelled all of its Jews in 1290. France did the same in 1306. Yet in Spain Jews thrived at every level of society.

Emancipation Proclamation

The hypocrisy of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation came in for heavy criticism. His Secretary of State William Seward said, "We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free." The New York World wrote, "He has proclaimed emancipation only where he has notoriously no power to execute it.

O W Holmes, jr.

Of Holmes, TR said, "Out of a banana I could carve a firmer backbone."

Typos

“I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deson’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig.”

John Cogley

Before he died in 1976, Cogley [editor of Commonweal] joined the Episcopal Church, believing that there he could live a lower-case catholicism free of the cumbersome burden of authority.

Love

Love, of which the great mystics made a most divine and even terrible secret, has become a most dreary and vulgar platitude.

Collecting

eBay turns collecting into shopping.

Ah politicians

President-elect Barack Obama's choice to run the Treasury Department and lead the economic rescue effort disclosed publicly Tuesday that he failed to pay $34,000 in taxes from 2001 to 2004, a last-minute complication in an otherwise smooth path to confirmation.

Timothy Geithner

The homosexual "bishop"

As for himself, Robinson said he doesn't yet know what he'll say, but he knows he won't use a Bible.

"While that is a holy and sacred text to me, it is not for many Americans," Robinson said. "I will be careful not to be especially Christian in my prayer. This is a prayer for the whole nation."

Lawyers

99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

Old Left

The old Lefties in my Local were family guys with plenty of kids. they actually liked children more than cats, dogs and vegetables!

Grammar lesson

Chicago Public School English Class...

Teacher - What comes at the end of a sentence ?

Student - You make an appeal

Money

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the
people he gave it to.

Tribal life

There's long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.

I don't follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.

Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Lawyers

“Lawyers should never marry other lawyers. This is called inbreeding, from which comes idiot children and more lawyers.”

New Year

Enver Hoxha's New Year's message to the Albanian people in 1967. "This year will be harder than last year. It will, however, be easier than next year."

Israel

If the Hamas put down its arms, there would be no more war. If Israel put down her arms, there would be no more Israel.

Max Planck

“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”

Actual work

"Normally what I would do is post a résumé on CareerBuilder or Craigslist and I would have recruiters calling me left and right," he said. "These days finding a job is actual work. It's a full-time job."

John Chrysostom on bishops

The floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops.

…St. John Chrysostom

Paranoia

Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't really out to get
you. It is a tough world.

Lincoln

"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

-- Abraham Lincoln

Algren

Nelson Algren once said that every movement begins as a cause, becomes a business and ends up as a racket.

War

George Orwell once quipped, "The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it."