Science

"beginning to bray scientifically" [Vansittart]

Bureaucracy

An inevitable consequence of capitalist enterprise is the creation of bourgeois youth demanding university education and employment in a bureaucracy.

Politicians

The never ending audacity of elected persons [Walt Whitman]

Darwin

"Patient as an observer, he is utterly imbecilic as a scientific reasoner" [O. Browning on Darwin]

Women priests

Women who wish to give their lives to the church are naturally reluctant to enter a profession in which there is no prospect of promotion. [J. Moorman]

Celibate clergy

The rule in the East that married men could not become bishops "has had the great disadvantage of blocking promotion in the Eastern church" [Walker Williston]

Pre-prints

The pre‑print is the principal means of communication. The published paper is a historical record. [J.A. Wheeler]

Jerome

Jerome was a saint in the highly technical sense of the word, being a literary genius of repellent disposition and venomous tongue. [R. West]

Augustine & Aquinas

All classicism [Aquinas] depends on a previous romanticism [Augustine]. [R. West]

Homosexuality

The real offense of homosexuality brings the confusion of passion into the domain where one ought to be able to practice calmly the art of friendship… [Rebecca West.Augustine 33

Homosexuality

The poisonous bite of a tarantula: homosexuality [Xenophon Memor p.22]

Huxley on Atheism

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

St. Medard

De par le roi, défense à Dieu
De faire miracles en ce lieu.
[The king to God:—To keep the peace,
Here miracles must henceforth cease.]

Constitution

2011 headline:
"Judge rules Constitution unconstitutional".

Mark Twain

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.”

“A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way”,

Climate

Meanwhile, champions of “climate ethics” and “environmental justice” in dozens of rich countries are all too happy to provide what Lord Monckton called “bailout bucks for bedwetting big businesses".

Listen

"It's why God gives us two ears and only one mouth. You just listen."

Leadership

They were, as one of them put it herself, “excellent sheep.” I had no doubt that they would continue to jump through hoops and ace tests and go on to Harvard Business School, or Michigan Law School, or Johns Hopkins Medical School, or Goldman Sachs, or McKinsey consulting, or whatever. And this approach would indeed take them far in life. They would come back for their 25th reunion as a partner at White & Case, or an attending physician at Mass General, or an assistant secretary in the Department of State. That is exactly what places like Yale mean when they talk about training leaders.

Voltaire on history

As Voltaire observed, history is a pack of lies agreed upon.

True poverty

In Africa she saw abject physical poverty, but it was nothing compared with the impoverishment she saw when she came home. "When I came back to the U.S., I saw our true poverty of the heart and of the mind. And I saw the loneliness," she says. "It really made me give my life to the church.

Social science

Social scientists seem to know more about the future than they know about the past.

Words

Se payer des mots

Calumny

There is a hideous vitality in calumny

Meaning

In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Problems and solutions

A number of years ago, I came across a phrase in the 'Mafalda' comic strip from Argentina that has often come back into my mind in these days: 'I've got it,' said that feisty and perceptive little girl, 'the world is full of problemologists, but short on solutionologists'.

Ecumenism

The Lord Jesus said of himself, in one of his remarks that we are inclined to censure: "I have come to bring division" (Luke 12:51).

Stupidity

This must be very clear: those who are made strong by the inspired word and live in the "fear of God" are not afraid of anything, except perhaps the stupidity toward which, Bonhoeffer said, we are defenseless.

Picasso's charity

In his book "Intellectuals," Paul Johnson quotes Pablo Picasso scoffing at the idea that he would give to the needy. "I'm afraid you've got it wrong," Picasso explains, "we are socialists. We don't pretend to be Christians."

Liberal money

Secular liberals, the second largest group coming in at 10 percent of the population, were the whitest and richest of the four groups. (Some of you may also know them as "insufferable blowhards.") These "bleeding-heart tightwads," as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof calls them, were the second stingiest, just behind secular conservatives, who are mostly young, poor, cranky white guys.

Despite their wealth and advantages, secular liberals give to charity at a rate of 9 percent less than all Americans and 19 percent less than religious conservatives. They were also "significantly less likely than the population average to return excess change mistakenly given to them by a cashier." (Count Nancy Pelosi's change carefully!)

Charitable giving

Syracuse University professor Arthur Brooks' study of charitable giving in America found that conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than liberals do, despite the fact that liberals have higher incomes than conservatives.

Terror in S. America

* 1992, the "Archives of Terror" (Archivos del
Terror) were found by a lawyer, Dr. Martín Almada,
and a human-rights activist and judge, Jose
Agustin Fernandez, in a police station in a suburb
of Asuncion (Lambare), capital of Paraguay.
Fernández was looking for files on a former
prisoner. Instead, he found archives describing
the fates of thousands of Latin Americans who had
been secretly kidnapped, tortured, and killed by
the security services of Argentina, Bolivia,
Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay

Berkeley's tree in the quad

Over a century later Berkeley's thought experiment was summarized in a limerick by Ronald Knox and an anonymous reply:

There was a young man who said "God
Must find it exceedingly odd
To think that the tree
Should continue to be
When there's no one about in the quad."

"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd;
I am always about in the quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by,

Yours faithfully, God."

Ah, science

One journal in medical research estimated that some 80% of published articles were later withdrawn, corrected, or contradicted by later articles.

Religions equal

Is one religion as good as another? Is one horse in the Derby as good as another?

Population "control" [reduction]

The U.S. government has long advocated population control internationally. While recent justifications of population control policy focus on environmental impact, in the 1970s the U.S. National Security Council's National Security Study Memorandum 200 backed population control for different reasons.

That memorandum advocated population control to prevent developing nations from becoming politically powerful, to protect U.S. access to other countries' natural resources, and to limit the number of young people who are more likely to challenge existing social and political norms and cause instability.

Modern nuns

USF president Fr. Stephen Privett, S.J., was quoted as saying in the university’s announcement. “The sisters are extraordinary persons of faith devoted to building a better world through prayer and hard work".

[No mention of religion and the salvation of souls].

Bob Feller 2

“Trying to sneak a fastball by Ted Williams was like trying to sneak a sunbeam by a rooster in the morning,” Feller said

Bob Feller

As Yankees pitcher Lefty Gomez was said to have remarked after three Feller pitches blew by him, “That last one sounded a little low.”

Politics

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies."

--- Groucho Marx

Bankers [new]

Bankster

Jebbies, again

The ACLU again urged the federal government to compel religious hospitals to provide “emergency abortions,” and Lisa Fullam, professor of moral theology at the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University, urged the hospital to defy the bishop.

Obama campaign

the Barak Obama campaign bus that was completing a U turn; one of many on its route .

Gen. Wesley Clark

Wesley Clark — known as “the perfumed general.”

Muslim misogyny

Islam is misogynistic, and misogyny engenders homosexuality, which is why a disproportionate number of Muslim men are gay,

Jebbies, again

“Of the 28 Jesuit-run institutions of higher learning, 100% have pro-homosexual clubs,” the statement continues. “Many of these, such as Georgetown University, Gonzaga University, and Loyola Marymount University, have university-funded ‘Diversity Centers’ or other LGBT organizations that host or participate in pro-homosexual conferences with local and nation-wide homosexual activist organizations such as GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network).”

USCCB, again

Mar Munoz-Visoso, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops,

Judaic software

We need more Jewish converts (the software runs best on the original hardware),

Catholic scented

Kennedy's extremist reading of the American Founding provided political cover for the next generation of Catholic-scented politician

Apostolic visitation

Well, no one will have to suppress any religious congregations today, they're dying out of their own accord. I'm not saying that to be pessimistic, but simply realistic. A winnowing process is unfolding right before our eyes. The progressivist, LCWR vision of religious life is collapsing right before us. It doesn't have the spiritual vitality to attract those whom God is still calling to religious life

JFK's private religion

Archbishop Chaput said Kennedy’s speech “left a lasting mark on American politics. It was sincere, compelling, articulate — and wrong.

Iraq

Barack Obama's answer, the AP reported, was that America "cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep US forces there."

Bumper sticker

"Jesus Loves You - Whether You Like It Or Not"

ACLU

"Anti-Christian Lawyers Union"

Head of the Church

Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, the head of the German Catholic church.

[There is no "head" of the German, or any other, Catholic Church. The Holy Father is head of the Church. What is meant is likely the president of the German Bishops' Association, or what ever it is called].

Mother Theresa

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; build anyway.

~ Mother Theresa

.

Revolutionaries

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative
the day after the revolution.-- Hannah Arendt

Twain on the Phillipines

Assessing the United States’s 1899 adventure in the Philippines, he fulminates: “We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make these people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. . . . I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land".

Bernie Sanders

"How do I know Bernie Sanders is filibustering, he never shuts up anyway." That's a good point. He never shuts up.

Adolf Busch

"If you hang Hitler in the middle, with Goering on the left and Goebbels on the right, I'll return to Germany," he replied.

Our masters

Hanley: Yes, it is surely noteworthy that public health authorities have, on the one hand, taken aggressive, even authoritarian action by banning certain foods or mandating city-wide bans on smoking, which many feel are excessive restrictions.

The fact that they are mostly silent about sexual behavior -- which accounts for a host of other major epidemics in addition to AIDS -- indicates quite clearly that other things take precedence over their regard for the optimal health of the population.

When the good of health conflicts with the now decades-old project of absolute sexual freedom, we have seen quite clearly that there really is no contest. In fact, to suggest that people should limit their sexual behavior is to cross the cultural Rubicon; even officials to whom the public health is entrusted dare not contradict the prevailing ideological orthodoxy of modern western culture.

Education - the non-value of

Even within high HIV prevalence countries such as Kenya or Tanzania, it surprises many people to learn that AIDS rates tend to be higher among the well off than among the poorer classes; perhaps even more surprisingly, AIDS rates tend to be higher among the more educated than among the less educated.

Gov. Daniels

Inheriting a $600 million deficit, Daniels transformed it into a $370 million surplus within one year, without raising taxes. "You'd be amazed how much government you'll never miss,"

Elizabeth Edwards

She came over, sat down next to me, reached inside her purse for her wallet, opened it and said, “These are my children.” Pictures of four beautiful kids, one of whom I knew was dead. But Elizabeth never talked about Wade that way. She had four children, not three. It was just that one of them was gone.

Presidency

Pshaw, responded Hillary, the president is really a "chief executive officer" who must be "able to manage and run the bureaucracy."

The Real Absence

if Westminster Abbey is simply a stage, a shrine to the Real Absence on which any romance may be produced.”

Anglo-Catholics

Some Anglo-Catholics are charismatic and Evangelical in message while Catholic in style, while others are so high church as to make traditionalist Latin Mass Catholics look like folk-mass aficionados.

Mr. Gates on charity

Mr. Gates said in an interview this week. "Sometimes the wife and the husband have never really talked through their priorities on the charity stuff."

Second base

You might as well cavil at Dizzy Dean's classic description of how Phil Rizzuto slud into second base.

Casey Stengel

Mr. Stengel was there to clarify baseball's exemption from the anti-trust laws, and before he was through, he'd clarified the subject beyond all understanding.

Puritans

Garrison Keillor notes, Calvinist Puritans came to this country seeking the freedom to be harsher with themselves than English law allowed.

The Magic Circle

Worlock had been one of the first of the English bishops to promote a new liberal vision for the Church.

The vision appropriated the structures, cultural loyalties, and financial contributions of the old, inward-looking, triumphalist “ghetto” Church to build a new, outward-facing Catholicism that focused on social climbing and liberal politics. Ultimately, Worlock’s vision aimed for the broader acceptance of Catholicism by the secular elite.

Social justice

The phrase "social justice," when invoked by members of the Catholic left, is a euphemism for the agenda of the Democratic Party. "Social justice" refers not to objective principles of justice but to specific policies of Democrats on health care, labor, welfare, and other matters.

Reagan on peace

A people free to choose will always choose peace.

-Ronald Reagan

U.S.industry

Do you know what our biggest export is today? Waste paper.

Barzun

Jacques Barzun, said, “Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred.”

9/11

At Camp David in 2000, Israeli negotiators raised the possibility of a civilian airplane being diverted to a suicide attack as a reason in favor of Israeli control of a unified airspace over the West Bank. American mediators ridiculed the overactive imaginations of the Israelis — at least until 9/11.

UN peacekeepers

Abba Eban's quip that U.N. peacekeepers are like an umbrella that closes whenever it rains.

Jews

"The Jews, to their everlasting credit, had already defined as key to right belief an obedient loving response to the merciful goodness of God ­ and they did so without the support of the Incarnation and Atonement to steady them". [Aidan Nichols]

Auden's 1 Sep 1939

"The whole poem, I realized, was infected with an incurable dishonesty -- and must be scrapped."

Cromwell

Here is the close of Oliver Cromwell’s speech dissolving the Long Parliament in 1653:

"It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors".

Writing your congress "person"

Greg Crosby, former creative head for Walt Disney publications, has written thousands of comics, hundreds of children's books, dozens of essays, and a letter to his congressman.

The sizzle

the legendary marketing genius, Elmer Wheeler, who instructed restaurateurs: "Don't sell the steak, sell the sizzle!"

Einstein & abortion

The year 1931 also saw the birth of the Committee of Self-Incrimination Against §218, which encouraged celebrities to come out and admit to having had, or having aided in, an abortion. Among those who came out was Albert Einstein.

Anglican empire

Let the Worldwide Anglican Communion go the way of the British Empire, of which it is but the spiritual ghost.

Liberal church

forgotten the radical implications of accepting Christ as whom he says he is.

First, such an acceptance rescues Christianity from becoming what the German philosopher Rüdiger Safranski calls “a cold religious project”: a “mix of social ethics, institutional power thinking, psychotherapy, techniques of meditation, museum curation, cultural project management, and social work.” That’s a concise description of the “liberal Christianity” that’s helped empty Western Europe’s churches, particularly in Benedict’s German homeland.

Art today

the artsy croissant crowd

Hatch &c

For many Catholics the Church now exists only to “hatch, match, and dispatch”

Missals

the current lame-duck Missal, which dates from the Age of Aquarius,

Liberals

Liberalism eats its young.