From "Sacred" to "Self-Evident" to "Subjective"

When Philip Rieff referred to the "sacred order," it was not in the strictly anthropological sense with which René Girard used, for instance, to term, "the primitive sacred." That difference is made clear in a reference Rieff makes to the founding document of American democracy.

Jefferson's declaration of dependence was transformed into Franklin's declaration of independence. Perhaps it was the sentiment of the vacuity at the limits and dark heart of what Benjamin Franklin called "Providence" that led him to persuade Jefferson to change the opening line of the Declaration of Independence to read, instead of "we hold these truths to be sacred," the canonical and more ambiguously philosophical "we hold these truths to be self-evident," which is far from the case. Franklin was a profoundly shrewd operator. If those truths Americans are to hold are understood to be absolutely directive -- that is, sacred -- then every human being is absolutely dependent on them. . . . Thus began the process of inversion ... the transformation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness into the pursuit of freedom to transgress and the happiness of transgression.

For a 1986 update on the "process of inversion," Rieff refers to the key sentence from the dissenting opinion in the Supreme Court case, Bowers v. Hardwick.

A Supreme Court ruling states: "The most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men" is "the right to be left alone." The right to be left alone here is an utterly blind version of the rebellion against sacred orders; Justice Blackmun, Brennan, Marshall, and Stevens have not the slightest idea of what they are saying.

Will Justice Stevens be replaced by someone with a better understanding of the cultural and historical consequences of defining freedom as the right to be left alone?

Leadership

News of moral principle from LifeSiteNews:

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island, April 9, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island has denounced the Catholic Health Association for supporting the abortion-laden federal health care reform law, and has asked that a local hospital be removed from membership in the group, reported ETWN Friday.

CHA, a for-profit trade association personally wooed by President Obama to support his health care overhaul, garnered heavy criticism from U.S. bishops for supporting the massive bill despite its lack of a ban on federal abortion funding – effectively making it the most pro-abortion piece of legislation since Roe v. Wade.

The CHA, which stands to profit from health care reform, in July 2009 had already pledged a large sum of money to the Obama administration to help ease passage of the overhaul, well before the final draft of the bill materialized.

Tobin told CHA director Sr. Carol Keehan in a March 29 letter that he was “very disappointed that the Catholic Health Association, under your leadership, publicly endorsed the recent health care legislation that was passed and signed into law.”

“This action was taken despite the fact that the legislation will very possibly provide additional public funding for abortion and threaten the freedom of conscience of Catholic individuals and institutions,” wrote the outspokenly pro-life bishop.

LOVE LIFE

Coadjutor Archbishop Jose H. Gomez

How's this for candor?

ISLAM IN ITALY
Fulfilling the Prophecy

Like Iran's Ahmadinejad, the Muslims in Europe feel no need to be coy about their intentions.

Nanny State Department

Mark Steyn:

Hillary Clinton, America’s secretary of state, was in Canada last week. She criticized Ottawa for not inviting aboriginal groups to a meeting on the Arctic, and for not including the facilitation of abortion in the Canadian government’s “maternal health” initiative to developing countries. These might seem curious priorities for the global superpower at a time of war, but, with such a full plate over at the State Department, it’s no wonder that peripheral matters like Iranian nuclear deadlines seem to fall by the wayside.

The whole article is here.

The Pompom Media reaches for a Torch

Easter in the eyes of the state-run media.

Click the link, said the MSNBC Facebook site, "to see pictures of Easter observances and celebrations from around the world." And just below that message is this image:

Fair and Balanced
What nuance! What moral clarity! What journalistic courage!
What a contribution to public understanding!

Hat Tip: Newsbusters

Happy Easter

I remain outside the walls of the Cyber-City in rural Wyoming leading a Holy Week retreat at Wyoming Catholic College.

I wish all a most blessed Holy Week and Joyful Easter.

Winding up at Wyoming Catholic College

I have been leading a retreat at Wyoming Catholic College. This is my second visit to the college, which is in its third year. The founders -- Bishop David Ricken, now bishop of Green Bay, Wisconsin; Fr. Bob Cook; and Dr. Bob Carlson -- are old friends, and the college is an amazing place. The students are bright and full of energy, enthusiasm, and a radiant and contagious faith. I leave inspired by the experiences I've had here.

From here I go to California for a week and then back home. I will post when there is something I think worthy of mention and assuming there's time for be to do so.

From the Eye of the Storm

The March 30th edition of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel carried an op-ed piece by the Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki that is worth sharing. 

Dear Friends,

This Lent throughout the archdiocese, we celebrated a Season of Mercy, acknowledging our sinfulness and our need to reconcile with our God. This Season of Mercy is a stark recognition of the presence of sin in our world, in our Church, amongst our people, and, yes, within priests and bishops. That sin has never been more present to us as a Church than through the sin and crime of clergy sexual abuse.

As a bishop, a priest, and as a man of faith, I apologize to anyone who has been a victim of clergy sexual abuse. This crime, this sin, this horror, should never occur, especially by a priest. Those who committed these crimes and those, including some bishops, who didn’t do everything in their power to stop it, go against everything the Church and the priesthood represent. For those actions, I offer my sincere apology.

So many people have suffered – first and foremost victims and their families. Because of the actions of the few priests who committed these crimes, all of us continue to suffer today.

This past week our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI has come under criticism for the way he has handled past cases of clergy sexual abuse of minors, including a case here involving Lawrence Murphy. The allegations against him, as well as the facts supporting him, are widely available.

The Holy Father does not need me to defend him or his decisions. I believe, and history will confirm that his actions in responding to this crisis, swiftly and decisively and his compassionate response to victims/surviovrs, speak for themselves. The Holy Father has been firm in his commitment to combat clergy sexual abuse; root it out of the Church; reach out to those who have been harmed; and hold perpetrators accountable. He has been a leader, meeting with victims/survivors and chastising bishops for their lack of judgment and leadership.

Mistakes were made in the Lawrence Murphy case. The mistakes were not made in Rome in the 1996, 1997 and 1998. The mistakes were made here, in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, in the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s, by the Church, by civil authorities, by Church officials, and by bishops. And for that, I beg your forgiveness in the name of the Church and in the name of this Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

Because of those who have come forward -- those who have been harmed in a most egregious way; those who have been relentless in their criticism of the Church; those who have pushed and prodded – some say even forced -- the Church to change; those brave victims-survivors who have had the courage to come forward and publicly tell their story even after decades of feeling ignored -- because of their persistence and perseverance, we know the Church HAS changed.

We owe these victims/survivors our deep gratitude and we acknowledge our own actions have not always expressed that gratitude adequately.

We know that today the policies and procedures in place in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and across the United States, ensures to the best of our God-given ability, that no priest with a substantiated allegation of sexual abuse of a minor can ever serve as a priest again in our Church.

Still, we know it is not words, but actions that will demonstrate our resolve. And, in some ways, regardless of what I say, tonight or any other time, our critics will say it is not enough. But that cannot and will not prevent me from making every possible effort at moving forward toward healing and resolution with those who have been harmed, and, determined, to make sure nothing like this can ever happen again.

To you gathered here tonight – our pastors, priests, deacons and lay ecclesial ministers – through your vigilance at our parishes and schools, we now have in place the mechanisms to effectively combat the scourge of child sexual abuse. Through the formation and training of our safe environment initiative, we know that you, in your parishes, schools and institutions, have put in place the necessary safeguards and practices to ensure our children are protected. Thank you. Remain vigilant.

Even though some do not want to hear it or accept it as truth, mistakes were made by law enforcement, medical professionals -- even reporters who helped bring initial stories to light and grappled with how to deal with perpetrators. We have ALL learned so much.

We cannot deny the past, but because of all of it, during these past years we have become a more prudent Church. We have taken significant steps to purge this abuse from our Church and even from the larger society. We hope and pray our actions have become a model for what TO do after decades of what NOT to do.

We are a Sacramental Church. Tonight, in this holiest of weeks, we consecrated the holy oil of the sick. This oil will be used this next year for anointing and healing throughout our archdiocese. Healing we all need.

So, tonight, my dear brothers and sisters, as we renew our commitment to love and serve Jesus Christ and his Church, may we also pledge that that very renewal start from within. Our hope is in Jesus Christ, given to us through his death and resurrection.

May God bless you.

HT: CatholicCulture.org

Good Friday

Thanks to my friends at Three Massketeers, here is a Good Friday meditation:

Off the Grid . . .

For the remainder of Holy Week I will be outside the walls of the Cyber-City in rural Wyoming leading a Holy Week retreat at Wyoming Catholic College.

I wish all a most blessed Holy Week and Joyful Easter.

Back to the Trojan Horse "Czars"

As incredible as it seems, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chief Diversity Officer Mark Lloyd spoke admiringly -- ON CAMERA -- about Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez's "incredible ... democratic revolution," going on to praise Chavez for taking "very seriously the media in his country." Bear in mind this is an Federal Communications Commission appointee, in charge of "'diversity" of all things.

Last week Chavez demonstrated how seriously he takes the media by arresting more of his opponents in the press. Associated Press reported:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Friday defended the arrest of a major TV channel owner, calling him a criminal and denying the government is carrying out an assault on press freedom.

The back-to-back arrests this week of two government opponents - including the owner of Venezuela's only remaining anti-Chavez TV channel - have drawn accusations that Chavez is growing increasingly intolerant and authoritarian as his popular support has slipped.

Opposition leaders and human rights groups condemned Thursday's arrest of Globovision's owner Guillermo Zuloaga, who was detained at an airport and released hours later after a judge issued an order barring him from leaving the country.

Zuloaga is accused of spreading false information and insulting the president at an Inter American Press Association meeting in Aruba last weekend, Attorney General Luisa Ortega said.

But Mr. Obama has seen fit to appoint Mr. Lloyd to the FCC, the same Mr. Lloyd who had these words of praise for our hemisphere's most in-your-face, anti-American, pro-Iranian tyrant:



The list of monumental insults to the American voters grows by the day.

Source here.

Catholic Ballast for the Ship of State

The California philosopher Edward Feser has a fairly long blog post (here) in which he discusses, among other things, the casual use to which even Catholics have lately the words "right" and "rights." If the Eskimos have a dozen words for snow, we Catholics understand the words "right" and "rights" in many complex ways, and Feser admirably outlines them. But what I most wanted to pass along is Feser's very helpful collection of citations (from magisterial sources) of the Church's understanding of subsidiarity.

Not only have we lately been using the words "right" and "rights" rather sloppily, but we have often failed altogether to appreciate the anthropological and social principle of subsidiarity.

There has been a great deal of discussion about the Tea Party Movement, for example, most it by the mainstream media shamefully inaccurate. But the truth seems to be that it is a movement that could use some principled philosophical ballast, and nothing could better provide that, in my view, than the robust Catholic understanding of subsidiarity. Mr. Feser has given us a primer on that subject.

So, with a hat tip to Edward Feser, here are the citations on that subject that he has collected:

As history abundantly proves, it is true that on account of changed conditions many things which were done by small associations in former times cannot be done now save by large associations. Still, that most weighty principle, which cannot be set aside or changed, remains fixed and unshaken in social philosophy: Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them. (Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno 79)

Neither the State nor any society must ever substitute itself for the initiative and responsibility of individuals and of intermediate communities at the level on which they can function, nor must they take away the room necessary for their freedom. Hence the Church's social doctrine is opposed to all forms of collectivism. (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Libertatis Conscientia 73)

By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending. In fact, it would appear that needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them and who act as neighbours to those in need. (John Paul II, Centesimus Annus 48)

Experience shows that the denial of subsidiarity, or its limitation in the name of an alleged democratization or equality of all members of society, limits and sometimes even destroys the spirit of freedom and initiative… An absent or insufficient recognition of private initiative — in economic matters also — and the failure to recognize its public function, contribute to the undermining of the principle of subsidiarity, as monopolies do as well. (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church 187)

Various circumstances may make it advisable that the State step in to supply certain functions… In light of the principle of subsidiarity, however, this institutional substitution must not continue any longer than is absolutely necessary, since justification for such intervention is found only in the exceptional nature of the situation. (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church 188)

Since the principle of subsidiarity raises the question as to what is, after all, the institution at the center of the concentric circles of institutions that are progressively more remote from the person and therefore to be given power over the person with increasing degrees of hesitation?

The Church's answer to this question is, of course, the family, and, again, Mr. Feser has gathered a number of relevant texts:

Inasmuch as the domestic household is antecedent, as well in idea as in fact, to the gathering of men into a community, the family must necessarily have rights and duties which are prior to those of the community, and founded more immediately in nature. If the citizens, if the families on entering into association and fellowship, were to experience hindrance in a commonwealth instead of help, and were to find their rights attacked instead of being upheld, society would rightly be an object of detestation rather than of desire. (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum 13)

The Church considers the family as the first natural society, with underived rights that are proper to it, and places it at the centre of social life. (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church 211)

A society built on a family scale is the best guarantee against drifting off course into individualism or collectivism, because within the family the person is always at the centre of attention as an end and never as a means. (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church 213)

The priority of the family over society and over the State must be affirmed… The family, then, does not exist for society or the State, but society and the State exist for the family. Every social model that intends to serve the good of man must not overlook the centrality and social responsibility of the family. In their relationship to the family, society and the State are seriously obligated to observe the principle of subsidiarity. In virtue of this principle, public authorities may not take away from the family tasks which it can accomplish well by itself or in free association with other families. (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church 214)

In the debate that has only just begun about the nature of our common life together as heirs of both the Judeo-Christian tradition and the political genius of the Founding Fathers, much more use should be made of these two principles -- the family and subsidiarity -- which the Church has long regarded as anthropological bedrock.

Hat Tip as well to Carl Olson at Ignatius Insight.

For those in the SF Bay Area . . .

Good Friday 11th Annual Way of the Cross
From Coit Tower to the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi
and the steps of the Porziuncola Nuova
San Francisco, California
April 2, 2010, from 9:00 AM to 10:30 AM

The Christian Good News responds positively to man’s thirst for justice. What then is the justice of Christ? Above all, it is the justice that comes from grace, where it is not man who makes amends, heals himself and others. Conversion to Christ ultimately means this: to exit the illusion of self‐sufficiency in order to discover and accept one’s own need‐ the need of others and God, the need of His forgiveness and His friendship. -- Benedict XVI

This is the point: God was moved by our nothingness. Not only that. God was moved by our betrayal, by our crude, forgetful, and treacherous poverty, by our pettiness. Like a father and mother who cry with emotion, a cry that is totally determined by the desire for the child’s good, the child’s destiny. It’s compassion, pity, passion. He had pity on me. -- Luigi Giussani

Procession begins at Coit Tower and proceeds through the historic North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, concluding for the Final Station at Porziuncola Nuova , 624 Vallejo St, San Francisco, CA

For detailed information go here.

The Pompom Media's Papal Piñata

Pope Benedict XVI

I leave early this week for Wyoming, where I will be leading a Holy Week retreat at the Wyoming Catholic College. So, in the interest of time, I am putting what I regard as the proper perspective on the media's predictable attack on Benedict XVI into one long blogpost.

To say that I trust Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI more than I do the New York Times is a massive understatement. I have not kept up with the flurry of articles pouring out of the predictably hostile media about the Vatican and the sexual (mostly homosexual, let's not forget) abuse scandals. The pope who took decisive action early in his pontificate to prevent such abuse in the future by declaring that those suffering from persistent same-sex attraction were not to be considered candidates for the priesthood is hardly someone we might suspect of being an accessory to the abuses he has fought for decades to eliminate.

Be that as it may, below are a few things that should be placed on the record. Here, for example, is what Damian Thompson has to say about the topic in the London Telegraph:

There is still no good evidence that Pope Benedict XVI is seriously implicated in the atrocious child abuse scandals that are – rightly – blackening the reputation of the institutions of the Catholic Church. But still the attempts to join the dots continue. To put it bluntly, there is an increasingly frantic media campaign against the Pope in which headlines are being written first and then facts shaved to fit them.

It is also clear that many prominent liberal Catholics are turning a blind eye to this media vendetta because they don’t like Pope Benedict. They are happy for him to take the rap for diocesan cover-ups initiated, in some cases, by liberal prelates. Those relates are grateful for the opportunity to pass the buck to the one man who, though his record on this matter is certainly not beyond criticism, has done more than any other to rectify the Church’s lax procedures – Joseph Ratzinger.

And, writing as well for the London Telegraph, here is what Andrew Brown as to say:

I read the coverage of the Pope every day in the newspapers and listen to the BBC news and as a Catholic and a journalist I feel like crying out pathetically: “This is not fair!” And it isn’t fair, or reasonable. Intelligent journalists who are normally capable of mental subtlety and of coping with complexities have abandoned their critical faculties. There is an atmosphere of unreason.

I cannot help feeling that a lot of it is down to sheer, blind hatred. It amounts to the demonisation of a whole institution and its leader. We have come to a stage where nothing good whatever, no good faith can be assumed of anybody involved in the Church – however senior, however greatly respected, loved, admired, including the Pope.

Finally, here is Fr. Raymond de Souza setting the record straight in a letter to the New York Times:

The New York Times on March 25 accused Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, of intervening to prevent a priest, Father Lawrence Murphy, from facing penalties for cases of sexual abuse of minors.

The story is false. It is unsupported by its own documentation. Indeed, it gives every indication of being part of a coordinated campaign against Pope Benedict, rather than responsible journalism.

Before addressing the false substance of the story, the following circumstances are worthy of note:

 • The New York Times story had two sources. First, lawyers who currently have a civil suit pending against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. One of the lawyers, Jeffrey Anderson, also has cases in the United States Supreme Court pending against the Holy See. He has a direct financial interest in the matter being reported.

 • The second source was Archbishop Rembert Weakland, retired archbishop of Milwaukee. He is the most discredited and disgraced bishop in the United States, widely known for mishandling sexual-abuse cases during his tenure, and guilty of using $450,000 of archdiocesan funds to pay hush money to a former homosexual lover who was blackmailing him. Archbishop Weakland had responsibility for the Father Murphy case between 1977 and 1998, when Father Murphy died. He has long been embittered that his maladministration of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee earned him the disfavor of Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, long before it was revealed that he had used parishioners’ money to pay off his clandestine lover.  He is prima facie not a reliable source.

 • Laurie Goodstein, the author of the New York Times story, has a recent history with Archbishop Weakland.  Last year, upon the release of the disgraced archbishop’s autobiography, she wrote an unusually sympathetic story that buried all the most serious allegations against him (New York Times, May 14, 2009).

 • A demonstration took place in Rome on Friday, coinciding with the publication of the New York Times story. One might ask how American activists would happen to be in Rome distributing the very documents referred to that day in the New York Times. The appearance here is one of a coordinated campaign, rather than disinterested reporting.

It’s possible that bad sources could still provide the truth. But compromised sources scream out for greater scrutiny. Instead of greater scrutiny of the original story, however, news editors the world over simply parroted the New York Times piece. Which leads us the more fundamental problem: The story is not true, according to its own documentation.

The New York Times made available on its own website the supporting documentation for the story. In those documents, Cardinal Ratzinger himself does not take any of the decisions that allegedly frustrated the trial. Letters are addressed to him; responses come from his deputy. Even leaving that aside, though, the gravamen of the charge — that Cardinal Ratzinger’s office impeded some investigation — is proven utterly false.

The documents show that the canonical trial or penal process against Father Murphy was never stopped by anyone. In fact, it was only abandoned days before Father Murphy died. Cardinal Ratzinger never took a decision in the case, according to the documents. His deputy, Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, suggested, given that Father Murphy was in failing health and a canonical trial is a complicated matter, that more expeditious means be used to remove him from all ministry.

To repeat: The charge that Cardinal Ratzinger did anything wrong is unsupported by the documentation on which the story was based. He does not appear in the record as taking any decision. His office, in the person of his deputy, Archbishop Bertone, agreed that there should be full canonical trial. When it became apparent that Father Murphy was in failing health, Archbishop Bertone suggested more expeditious means of removing him from any ministry.

Furthermore, under canon law at the time, the principal responsibility for sexual-abuse cases lay with the local bishop. Archbishop Weakland had from 1977 onwards the responsibility of administering penalties to Father Murphy. He did nothing until 1996. It was at that point that Cardinal Ratzinger’s office became involved, and it subsequently did nothing to impede the local process.

The New York Times flatly got the story wrong, according to its own evidence. Readers may want to speculate on why.

Here is the relevant timeline, drawn from the documents the New York Times posted on its own website.

5 May 1974

Abuse by Father Lawrence Murphy is alleged by a former student at St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee. In fact, accusations against Father Murphy go back more than a decade.

12 September 1974

Father Murphy is granted an official “temporary sick leave” from St. John’s School for the Deaf. He leaves Milwaukee and moves to northern Wisconsin, in the Diocese of Superior, where he lives in a family home with his mother. He has no official assignment from this point until his death in 1998. He does not return to live in Milwaukee. No canonical penalties are pursued against him.

9 July 1980

Officials in the Diocese of Superior write to officials in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee about what ministry Father Murphy might undertake in Superior. Archbishop Rembert Weakland, archbishop of Milwaukee since 1977, has been consulted and says it would be unwise to have Father Murphy return to ministry with the deaf community. There is no indication that Archbishop Weakland foresees any other measures to be taken in the case.

17 July 1996

More than 20 years after the original abuse allegations, Archbishop Weakland writes to Cardinal Ratzinger, claiming that he has only just discovered that Father Murphy’s sexual abuse involved the sacrament of confession — a still more serious canonical crime. The allegations about the abuse of the sacrament of confession were in the original 1974 allegations. Weakland has been archbishop of Milwaukee by this point for 19 years.

It should be noted that for sexual-abuse charges, Archbishop Weakland could have proceeded against Father Murphy at any time. The matter of solicitation in the sacrament of confession required notifying Rome, but that too could have been done as early as the 1970s.

10 September 1996

Father Murphy is notified that a canonical trial will proceed against him. Until 2001, the local bishop had authority to proceed in such trials. The Archdiocese of Milwaukee is now beginning the trial. It is noteworthy that at this point, no reply has been received from Rome indicating that Archbishop Weakland knew he had that authority to proceed.

24 March 1997

Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, Cardinal Ratzinger’s deputy at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, advises a canonical trial against Father Murphy.

14 May 1997

Archbishop Weakland writes to Archbishop Bertone to say that the penal process against Father Murphy has been launched, and notes that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has advised him to proceed even though the statute of limitations has expired. In fact, there is no statute of limitations for solicitation in the sacrament of confession.

Throughout the rest of 1997 the preparatory phases of penal process or canonical trial is underway. On 5 January 1998 the Tribunal of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee says that an expedited trial should be concluded within a few months.

12 January 1998

Father Murphy, now less than eight months away from his death, appeals to Cardinal Ratzinger that, given his frail health, he be allowed to live out his days in peace.

6 April 1998

Archbishop Bertone, noting the frail health of Father Murphy and that there have been no new charges in almost 25 years, recommends using pastoral measures to ensure Father Murphy has no ministry, but without the full burden of a penal process. It is only a suggestion, as the local bishop retains control.

13 May 1998

The Bishop of Superior, where the process has been transferred to and where Father Murphy has lived since 1974, rejects the suggestion for pastoral measures. Formal pre-trial proceedings begin on 15 May 1998, continuing the process already begun with the notification that had been issued in September 1996.

30 May 1998

Archbishop Weakland, who is in Rome, meets with officials at the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, including Archbishop Bertone but not including Cardinal Ratzinger, to discuss the case. The penal process is ongoing. No decision taken to stop it, but given the difficulties of a trial after 25 years, other options are explored that would more quickly remove Father Murphy from ministry.

19 August 1998

Archbishop Weakland writes that he has halted the canonical trial and penal process against Father Murphy and has immediately begun the process to remove him from ministry — a quicker option.

21 August 1998

Father Murphy dies. His family defies the orders of Archbishop Weakland for a discreet funeral

HT: Creative Minority Report

Goldman uncensored . . .

David Goldman, senior editor at First Things, aka "Spengler" in his brilliant pieces for Asian Times, was apparently not in the mood for fence-sitting when he wrote his March 26 piece for his First Things blog:

For the first time in history the barbarians have breached the citadel; to have Barack Obama in the White House is the cultural equivalent of electing Madonna to the papacy. America, the source of a civil religion that held together the world’s only remaining superpower, is committed to its own self-demolition. Nihilists around the world are in a triumphant mood and believe that it is time to mop up the remnants of their enemies everywhere.

Goldman is a sophisticated man of extraordinary learning and strong opinions. Nor has he been uncritical of our president and recent developments, but these words suggest a man who has been rudely awakened to a situation even more alarming than previously imagined.

"The Enervating Comforts of the Welfare State"

The emphasis should be on the adjective: enervating. For the comforts will be short lived and mostly imagined, and they will be accompanied by a sudden, precipitous drop in international security as the world is overtaken by widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons with no institution willing or able to do anything to prevent it.

Rich Lowry of the National Review:

It’s appropriate that Netanyahu came to Washington for his ritual humiliation — don’t let the side door of the White House hit you on the way out — simultaneous with the passage of health-care reform. The Europeanization of American domestic policy will proceed in tandem with — and eventually compel — the Europeanization of American foreign policy.

Like the Europeans, Obama is adopting the Arab narrative of the Middle East, wherein Israeli perfidy is responsible for all that ails the region. . . .

The Europeans congratulate themselves on the realism of their “evenhandedness.” But it is the realpolitik of weakness. It heaps scorn on an embattled outpost of the West while appeasing the terror states and tin-pot dictators that assail it.

Of this sort of "evenhandedness" it could be said what has been aptly said of the Nietzschean idea of outgrowing the tedious, bourgeois distinction between good and evil. Namely: that all experiments in living beyond good and evil end up in evil.

Lowry concludes:

Our global influence will recede as we — like the Europeans — sink into the enervating comforts of the welfare state.

Welcome to the kind of hope and change that those even glancingly familiar Barack Obama's ideological history could have predicted in 2008, but from which the pom-pom media and most of the electorate decided to aver its eyes.

The European-styled socialism with which the health care campaigners seemed so enamored was possible because the U.S. provided and paid for the international security apparatus that allowed Europeans to divert defense spending to expensive entitlement programs. (Programs which had precisely the enervating effect on their recipients that Lowry mentions.)

But when we become Europeans there will be no one keeping the thugs from running amok, thereby allowing us to enjoy our enervating comforts. The inevitable result will be a world -- much like a drug-infested neighborhood the police lack the manpower to patrol -- in which the enemies of freedom and civilization, awash in Middle Eastern oil and besotted with rage, will begin to operate with impunity. 

Perhaps we voters should have taken a closer look last November.  To add that this administration has done everything in its power to expand abortion-on-demand might seem an afterthought, but, in fact, it is just another feature of the ideology that is being force-fed to the American people.

I take no satisfaction whatsoever in posting blog entries like this, as was true in the fall of 2008, when I made as strong a case as I could for the obvious fact that -- his occasional dissimulation notwithstanding -- Mr. Obama was a pro-abortion ideologue. Then as now, I feel that it would be irresponsible not to do what little one can to warn others that if we do not change course we will surely end up where we're headed. In that case, our children and their children will pay a very, very high price for the short-lived and largely imaginary "enervating comforts" by which we were seduced.

Don't miss this . . .

Source here

Universal Health Care

This is what "joining the rest of the industrial world" looks like at close range:



HT: Pajamas Media