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