Sunday, August 31, 2008

Aña Bailie

My daughter, Aña, a paramedic who will be married next month to a fantastic young man, Mike Orsi, is on her way to Louisiana to help with the hurricane rescue and relief effort. Keep her in your prayers. Here are some visual aids.

Mike & Aña

Dad & Aña

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Point of Order, Madame Speaker . . .

I'm sorry, Madame Speaker, but your repeated reference to the fact that you have five children -- clearly meant to telegraph to attentive Catholics your fidelity to Church teaching -- is entirely irrelevant to the discussion of the Church's teaching on the sanctity of life.

The question is not about the mothering of five children but about the murdering of fifty million of them. Your role in the former is no justification for your role in the latter.

Thanks, however, for clarifying how woefully and blissfully ignorant you are of the last 2000 years of Catholic moral theology on this matter. It helps the rest of us understand, and it gives a glimmer of hope that, once apprised of this tradition, you might become a champion of all those children who will otherwise suffer the violence of the abortionist's cold instruments.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

For a very short but very incisive moral guide to voting: the Kansas Bishop's "Moral Principles for Catholic Voters."

Go HERE

One needn't be a Catholic to appreciate the clarity, charity, and moral seriousness of this wonderful reflection.


Wednesday, August 20, 2008

"Above my pay grade . . ."

I have on more than one occasion found myself using the phrase "above my pay grade" -- mostly in deference to the teachings of the Church and my entirely appropriate humility vis-a-vis the theological tradition over which the Church's Magisterium stands guard. But, alas, thanks to Barack Obama's response to a straightforward question about the moral status of the child in the womb, the phrase "above my pay grade" will now live in infamy for years to come. It may be a generation before the moral duplicity now attached to that phrase finally wears off and some future rhetorician can use it without embarrassment.

I apologize for the photograph that follows. But perhaps if Barack Obama took a long look at it, the moral status of the child in the womb would become something on which he might venture an opinion even at his current pay grade.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Catholic Voters Guide

Just prior to my trip to Oxford and Cambridge, I spoke at a catechetical conference sponsored by the four Catholic dioceses of Kansas. I was very impressed with the bishops I met there, and today I have discovered one of the fruits of their labors. It is a very brief but very substantial Catholic voters guide, which I heartily recommend, not just to Catholics but to anyone concerned with casting a vote in a morally intelligent way.

Go here.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

London Heathrow

A picture is worth a thousand words.
Let those with eyes to see see.


Friday, August 01, 2008

Theologia a Cruce

Henri de Lubac:
If theology, according to a much-used equivalent expression perpetuated by St. Thomas at the beginning of the Summa, is the science of the Scriptures, then in truth it may be said that the whole of theology is Theologia Crucis [Theology of the Cross], that is Theologia a Cruce [Theology from the Cross]. For it is the Cross which disperses the cloud which until then was hiding the truth.
(Posting from Oxford)