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.