Can You Get To Heaven Without Being Sweet?

Yes, as the life of St. Jerome amply illustrates. (Although I'm counting on grand achievements such as Bible translation not being necessary either.) Here's an article about him that's a little out of the ordinary, highlighting him as an early champion of the dignity of women. Severely criticized for teaching the Bible to them, Jerome had a pithy reply:

Finally, Jerome said that these women were more assiduous for study than most men in his day: “Did men occupy themselves with the sacred Scriptures and demand as many questions as women do,” he would teach them. But then, as is often the case now, the men were not as interested in religion. Therefore, since these women so ardently thirsted for the Truth, it was their right to learn and his duty to teach.

His feast is equally a good excuse to offer a selection from The Love Letters of Phyllis McGinley:

"The Thunderer"
God's angry man, His crochety scholar,
Was Saint Jerome,
The great name-caller,
Who cared not a dime
For the laws of libel
And in his spare time
Translated the Bible.
Quick to disparage
All joys but learning,
Jerome thought marriage
Better than burning;
But didn't like woman's
Painted cheeks;
Didn't like Romans,
Didn't like Greeks,
Hated Pagans
For their Pagan ways,
Yet doted on Cicero all his days.

A born reformer, cross and gifted,
He scolded mankind
Sterner than Swift did;
Worked to save
The world from the heathen;
Fled to a cave
For peace to breathe in,
Promptly wherewith
For miles around
He filled the air with
Fury and sound.
In a mighty prose,
For Almighty ends,
He thrust at his foes,
Quarreled with his friends,
And served his Master,
Though with complaint.
He wasn't a plaster sort of saint.

But he swelled men's minds
With a Christian leaven.
It takes all kinds
To make a Heaven.

Potpourri of Popery --Feast of the Archangels Edition

Call me nuts, but the Vatican's press release about Cardinal Lajolo's intervention at the UN yesterday seems like tough talk to me.

"the Holy See regards the promotion of human rights as one of the United Nations' primary forms of service to the world". In this context, he recalled the three most important fundamental rights: the right to life, the right to religious freedom and the right to freedom of thought and expression, "including freedom to hold opinions without interference and to exchange ideas and information and the consequent freedom of the press".
"We must acknowledge, however, that not all fundamental rights - and in particular the three which I have mentioned - are adequately protected in every nation, and, in not a few, they are openly denied, even among States sitting on the Human Rights Council", he continued.

Here's the entire text. It bears further study. In a certain sense it's a challenge to everyone's politics. I don't think you can read this, for example,

none of the outcomes that some governments put forward as a reason for the continuation of hostilities in Lebanon has in fact been achieved

as anything other than a rebuke to The U.S. On the other hand, I don't recall ever seeing a Vatican political document that spent so little time on the question of disparity between wealthy and poor nations and so much time on the causes of the disparity --on the part of the governments of poor nations, including members of the Human Rights Council. The thrust of the remarks is a response to terrorism. . . . Read it in tandem with Archbishop Tomasi's address on the role of the media (also given at the UN).

Here's the text of Wednesday's audience --B-16 returns to the apostles, with St. Thomas up (find the full text at Zenit). Everyone always remembers "doubting" Thomas, and the Holy Father addresses that, but I like the fact he also remembers Thomas as the one who said let's follow Christ to Jerusalem to die with him.

Christopher Hitchens' head must be spinning: his two favorite people met yesterday.

And you should read Card. Pell's address to the National Catholic Education Conference in Sydney. The press has carried it as a lament of how little the young 'uns know, but it is so much richer than that. (The link's not working all of a sudden; hope they'll fix it. UPDATE: They did.)

Finally: the Archangels. "El" meaning "God" in Hebrew, and thus: Michael --God's strength; Gabriel --God's voice; and Raphael --God's healing. I'm going to assume everyone knows the text of the Hail, Mary, which is Gabriel's greeting, and you probably even know "St. Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle..." Lesser known, but a favorite of mine, and said to be good for those looking for spouses, is the prayer to Raphael:

O Raphael, lead us towards those we are waiting for, those who are waiting for us. Raphael, Angel of Happy Meetings, lead us by the hand towards those we are looking for.

May all our movements, all their movements, be guided by your Light and transfigured by your joy.

Angel guide of Tobias, lay the request we now address to you at the feet of Him on whose unveiled Face you are privileged to gaze. Lonely and tired, crushed by the separations and sorrows of earth, we feel the need of calling to you and of pleading for the protection of your wings, that we may not be as strangers in the Province of Joy, all ignorant ofthe concerns of our country.

Remember the weak, you who are strong--you whose home lies beyond the region of thunder, in a land that is always peaceful, always serene, and bright with the resplendent glory of God.Amen.

Yes, But The Park Ranger Will Fine Him For It

First Reagan proved right about trees emitting more greenhouse gases than cars & industry. Now the damned animals are fouling our water supply. Or, possibly, we have ridiculous standards.

That leaves scientists and environmentalists struggling with a more fundamental question: How clean should we expect nature to be? In certain cases, they say, the water standards themselves might be flawed, if they appear to forbid something as natural as wild animals leaving their dung in the woods.

So there's a new answer to the rhetorical question about a bear in the woods.

Al-Qaeda Falls Short Of Recruitment Goals

Bet you won't read that headline on coverage of the new al-Qaeda Iraq video begging for new recruits, but it's true --in spite of aggressive recruitment tactics, including the message: we're all dead or desperate --join us!

It was unclear why al-Masri would advertise the loss of the group's foreign fighters, but martyrdom is revered among Islamic fundamentalists, and could be used as a recruiting tool. The Arabic word he used, "muhajer," indicated he was speaking about foreigners who joined the insurgency in Iraq, not coalition troops.
"The blood has been spilled in Iraq of more than 4,000 foreigners who came to fight," al-Masri purportedly said on the 20-minute tape.

If cave-dwelling and death don't appeal, don't forget you can bring your home chemistry set! There are special incentives for "scientists" who want to help out.

"We are in dire need of you... The field of jihad (holy war) can satisfy your scientific ambitions, and the large American bases (in Iraq) are good places to test your unconventional weapons, whether biological or dirty, as they call them."

Put your barter skills to use, too --to help the blind Sheik.

I appeal to every holy warrior in the land of Iraq to exert all efforts in this holy month so that God may enable us to capture some of the Western dogs to swap them with our sheik and get him out of his dark prison.

Just to sweeten the pot, we promise not to kill any Muslims for the month of Ramadan:

We will not attack you as long as you declare your true repentance in front of your tribe and relatives," he said. "The amnesty ends by the end of this holy month.

This all sounds too good to be true, no? I look forward to the investigations into fraudulent recruitment tactics we'll be treated to this month on the networks. Curtsy: lgf.

The No-Dirty-Old-Men Act

The House has passed legislation making it illegal to knock up a minor and then take her across state lines to hide the evidence from her parents, and dares the Senate to do the same. I support the move. But why anyone would bother when he can buy "Plan B" over the counter and give it to her to accomplish the same is beyond me.

Just keep repeating it until you believe it: we do it for the children. And the women. The women and the children.

"Dear Americans..."

The President of Iraq wrote us a letter last week. Did you receive your copy yet?

The Islamo-Artist Conspiracy

First there was Deutsch Oper caving to threats not even made. Now Belgian artists are speaking out against the anti-Islamofascist political party. Explaining why people dare not vote against the Islamists, one painter says:

In the worst case you will get organised resistance, perhaps even rather violent reactions. I suspect many shop keepers will have their windows smashed. People do not seem to be aware, but a vote for the Vlaams Belang may have serious consequences. They should realize this before they take a final decision in the voting booth.

This is, as Tim Blair reports, further evidence of the artisto-Islamic plot to kill us all. This is a clarifying moment is it not? Who has more courage --the elderly Pope or a thousand petulant middle aged self-styled "artists"? Who actually has something to say in the face of Islamic extremism?

No Speaka Milingo

Archbishop Milingo, having illicitly ordained four bishops, excommunicated himself by that very action, as the Vatican made clear yesterday. Milingo says he "repudiates" the excommunication, which, as a reader of Open Book writes, is a bit like

the time I repudiated the 'D" I got in Physics."

Have you been following this strange case ? In 2001 Archbishop Milingo married a Korean bride in one of Rev. Moon's mass-wedding ceremonies. Then, after meetings with the Vatican, he put aside his bride, apologized, and was reconciled with the Church. Earlier this year he turned up with his Moon-bride again and made common cause with self-styled "Bishop" Stallings, who himself is not only a schismatic, but a decidedly odd duck --and let me just say, not anyone's poster child for marriage. When the Moonies get ahold of you, they really get ahold of you apparently.

We Really Don't Understand Them

Fouad Ajami argues in Opinion Journal that the West still has no idea how to read the terrorist mind (it being pointless to "understand" their "anger," since it's mostly feigned for the sake of a naked will to power). You have to read the whole thing to get it --it winds its way all over the place-- but I'll give you his sound-bite asides regarding the value of the NIE document.

Few will read this report; fewer still will ask why a virtually incomprehensible Arab-Islamic world that has eluded us for so long now yields its secrets to a congressional committee.

And a bit later:

It is odd, and ironic, that the intelligence agencies that had been mocked by liberal opinion for their reporting on Iraq before the war have now acquired an aura of infallibility.

I might add no one seems to have noticed the report came out before Zarqawi was killed --big difference. But do go read it yourself; it's not about the NIE, but about how people in the region think and how they read us. Curtsy to NLT.

Good King Wenceslas

Come back, I'm not (unlike some merchants I could mention) starting the Christmas carols yet. It's his feast day today and Catholic Exchange has a nice little article up. The carol doesn't at all give you a feel for the life of court intrigue he endured, only to be hacked to bits by his little brother.

French Perfidy & The Myth Of Islamic Tolerance

We believe the latter because of the former according to this. As reported here previously: the constants in life are not death and taxes, but conquering Islam and the perfidy of the French.

He Read My Mind

"Deja Vu" from The Ryskind Sketchbook

Me Too, Also

The latest George Allen flap (which I don't for a moment believe --the guy's been a Congressman, Governor and Senator and this just happens to come up now --40 days away from an election?) causes me to reflect: I grew up in a middle class black neighborhood. We were the only white family, but for one or two extremely elderly widows who were never seen. All my neighborhood friends greeted one another with, "'Sup, N----," so that's how my brother and I greeted everyone too. We had no idea there was a problem until one day at the pool --in an entirely different neighborhood-- my brother (about 7 years old) started tossing that term around freely. Whoops.

Wild In Waziristan

Welcome, NLT readers, and thanks to Mr. K. for the link.

Tony Blankley picks up this morning on a truly alarming report in the Weekly Standard suggesting that by giving the Waziristan region of Pakistan over to the Taliban, Pres. Musharraf has undone the entire war on terror in one fell swoop. Read the articles and see what you think, but both Bush (see 3rd Q.) and Karzai (see last Q) are taking the Musharraf line about the agreement being not with the Taliban but with "tribal leaders." I don't think it is remotely possible that Musharraf could simply fool Bush & Karzai, so there must be some reason they are taking this position.


Maybe Blankley and the Standard are right and it's a sign of doom, but I have a gut feeling the true meaning of the withdrawal of the Paki army from the region is that no one will be around to complain when the US moves in on Osama. You'll see in the Bush/Musharraf transcript link that their remarks come precisely in the context of a question about whether the US could now go into Pakistan to get Osama --and both Bush and Musharraf are cagey about their answer. I read this as Musharraf saying: Never will we allow the US to violate our territorial integrity! (Not that we'll have any troops around to notice.)

UPDATE: It's not just pie-in-the-sky on my part. al-Q thinks it's weak on the Afghan/Pakistan border.

UPDATE 2: This morning's WaTi (APreport) seems to confirm the gloomy view, reporting "Taliban strikes on U.S. troops triple after truce," but halfway through the piece you find there's another explanation:

The U.S. officer acknowledged that the truce, championed by Gen. Musharraf, is not the only factor behind Taliban attacks in Afghanistan's eastern Paktika, Khost and Paktia provinces. The Army's 10th Mountain Division has been pressing its own offensive, Operation Mountain Fury, sparking firefights and bombings that otherwise might not have occurred, the officer said.

RTWT --supposedly Mullah Omar himself approves the "deal" --which gives the Taliban safe haven in the short run, but confirms to me we have a pretty good idea where he & Osama are for the long run. In similar not-as-gloomy-as-you-think reporting, coverage of a "tense" White House dinner with Musharraf and Karzai starts hopeless and ends on a note of accord.


Here's WaPo coverage of the pact and its effect. And AP is reporting that a leaked (MI6, not us for once) document says Pakistan's intelligence service supports al-Qaeda and calls on Musharraf to disband it. Umm, not too sure what's secret about that, but it does bolster the notion that it's a net gain for us if these guys are not around the Afghan/Paki border anymore.

Chavez-Zawahiri In '08!

Zawahiri will announce his candidacy shortly. Among the presumed talking points (this book is supposedly finally coming out, so perhaps the upcoming appearance is the publicity tour):

Bush bad.
Evil Pope imposing his views on others.
US is Great Satan because it didn't sign Kyoto.
Global Warming'll getcha if ya don't. watch. out.

Speaking of the confluence of Democratic and Wahabist talking points, did you know The JEWS are responsible for the obesity epidimic? They got us addicted to sodas! An Iranian documentary reports:

Take, for example, the Pepsi drink. Do you know what Pepsi stands for? 'Pay Each Penny Save Israel.'

(That's nothin'. Secretly you're drinking Kyka-Cola, which you don't even wanna know how they make, but it has to do with Purim rites. And then there's Mountain Jew, and Pepperstein's mother is so happy he became a Dr.) Honestly, if John Kerry were to denounce Fruit Loops, they'd show up in an al-Qaeda video and oh, how I wish for this to happen.

Que Chistoso!

Posted at Salon (via instapundit), this Venezuelan cartoon:

Chavez: You're the devil, you smell of sulfur, you're a drunk, you're a demon, you're genocidal Mr. Devil, you're an assasin Mr. Devil, you're...
Bush: Whatever you say, Boy, fill 'er up.

Dim & Dhimmer

Here's a story that wasn't what I assumed from the headline. The snippet on the radio said a German opera company was cancelling a performance of Mozart because of threats associated with a scene in which the head of Mohammed is brought onstage. I assumed there had been Muslim threats. No. It's the police who warned the artists, and then they panicked themselves into cancellation:

The Deutsche Oper in Berlin said it had pulled "Idomeneo" from its fall schedule after the police warned that the staging of the opera could pose an "incalculable risk" to the performers and the audience.

Also, please note that Mohammed's head isn't the only one gone missing:

The disputed scene is not part of Mozart's 225-year-old opera, but was added as a sort of coda by the director, Hans Neuenfels. In it, the king of Crete, Idomeneo, carries the heads of Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha and Poseidon, god of the sea, onto the stage, placing each on a stool.

Got that? First, some dim modernists thought it would be "bold" to improve upon Mozart by adding a scene in which a bunch of religious figures are killed off. (So much for artistic integrity, right?) Now, adding dhimmitude to stupidity, they've thought about it and have decided maybe they're not so courageous after all . . .Muslims might get mad. To hell with the Christians, Buddhists and sons of Zeus, however, they can all stuff it as per usual --we only respect people who might possibly behead us. I can think of no greater illustration of the irrelevance of modern art. Missing the point all the way around.

A Conversation Taking Place Across America

Not by the official cartoonist of Wheat & Weeds, but from him.

I Love It When Bush Gets Testy

I meant to point this out way back when Bush spoke with Matt Lauer on the Today show. I didn't see the appearance, but heard clips on talk radio, and the President was terrific --and seemed to me to be audibly annoyed with Lauer's line of questioning. That same week, he gave a presser in which he was "on" --and again it seemed to me that he had just about had it with the stupid games the press play --and the more he gave vent to his anger (without losing control of himself), the more articulate and forceful he seemed. Now read his joint statement and presser with President Karzai today and see if you don't think the same. It's worth reading the entire thing just because it's quite moving, by the way (read what Karzai says about visiting Walter Reed), but I'll just snip a few things to illustrate my point (first articulated here) that what snarls Bush's syntax is trying to be polite to fools.

First up, here's his response to a question about the NIE report which supposedly "proves" terrorism is on the rise since we attacked Iraq.

You know, to suggest that if we weren't in Iraq, we would see a rosier scenario with fewer extremists joining the radical movement requires us to ignore 20 years of experience. We weren't in Iraq when we got attacked on September the 11th. We weren't in Iraq, and thousands of fighters were trained in terror camps inside your country, Mr. President. We weren't in Iraq when they first attacked the World Trade Center in 1993. We weren't in Iraq when they bombed the Cole. We weren't in Iraq when they blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. My judgment is, if we weren't in Iraq, they'd find some other excuse, because they have ambitions. They kill in order to achieve their objectives.

You know, in the past, Osama bin Laden used Somalia as an excuse for people to join his jihadist movement. In the past, they used the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was a convenient way to try to recruit people to their jihadist movement. They've used all kinds of excuses. This government is going to do whatever it takes to protect this homeland. We're not going to let their excuses stop us from staying on the offense.

I happened to hear that part and he seemed to me to be roiling. Again, totally in control of himself, but cheezed off. He continues:

you know what's interesting about the NIE -- it was an intelligence report done last April. As I understand, the conclusions -- the evidence on the conclusions reached was stopped being gathered on February -- at the end of February. And here we are, coming down the stretch in an election campaign, and it's on the front page of your newspapers. Isn't that interesting? Somebody has taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes.

And then some little chick reporter asks about the document and if declassifying it isn't itself political and he pounces:

Because I want you to read the documents so you don't speculate about what it says. You asked me a question based upon what you thought was in the document, or at least somebody told you was in the document. And so I think, Jennifer, you'll be able to ask a more profound question when you get to look at it yourself -- (laughter) -- as opposed to relying upon gossip and somebody who may or may not have seen the document trying to classify the war in Iraq one way or the other.

Oo, burn. And then just for fun Karzai starts in on the original questioner, too:

Ma'am ... terrorism was hurting us way before Iraq or September 11th. The President mentioned some examples of it. These extremist forces were killing people in Afghanistan and around for years, closing schools, burning mosques, killing children, uprooting vineyards, with vine trees, grapes hanging on them, forcing populations to poverty and misery.
They came to America on September 11th, but they were attacking you before September 11th in other parts of the world. We are a witness in Afghanistan to what they are and how they can hurt. You are a witness in New York. Do you forget people jumping off the 80th floor or 70th floor when the planes hit them? Can you imagine what it will be for a man or a woman to jump off that high? Who did that?And where are they now? And how do we fight them, how do we get rid of them, other than going after them? Should we wait for them to come and kill us again?

Just In Time For Laundry Night

How to fold a shirt in Japan

First-Name Basis

Mr. W. sent me this story in the NYT to ask why we're constantly being told that Iraq is a distraction from the real war on terror and then in the next breath given the al-Qaeda casualty list in Iraq. Good point, but what caught my attention is the dropping of the "al" in front of "Qaeda" in the headline. Look who's all chummy and one-name only all of a sudden. I'm telling you, it all makes sense.

Rachel Carson & Osama

Rumors that Osama bin Laden may be deathly ill with typhus (or perhaps already enjoying his 72 virgins) have been met with skepticism, but let's not forget the reason they're even remotely plausible: because a 30-year-DDT ban has kept typhus and malaria alive. Stephen Milloy asks, considering the toll of the decision to ban DDT

in human lives (tens of millions dead, mostly pregnant women and children under age 5), illness (billions sickened) and poverty (more than $1 trillion in lost GDP in sub-Saharan Africa alone)

When will the banners be called to account?

Business are often held liable and forced to pay monetary damages for defective products and false statements. Why shouldn't the National Audubon Society, Environmental Defense, Sierra Club and other anti-DDT activist groups be held liable for the harm caused by their recklessly defective activism?

He reminds us that it was pseudo-science that brought us the DDT ban, starting with Rachel Carson's false Silent Spring and ending with an ideology-controlled EPA.

It was, of course, then-Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William Ruckelshaus who actually banned DDT after ignoring an EPA administrative law judge's ruling that there was no evidence indicating DDT posed any sort of threat to human health or the environment. Mr. Ruckelshaus never attended any of the agency's DDT hearings. He didn't read the hearing transcripts and refused to explain his decision.

None of this is surprising given that, in a May 22, 1971, speech before the Wisconsin Audubon Society, Mr. Ruckelshaus said EPA procedures had been streamlined so DDT could be banned. Mr. Ruckelshaus was also a member of, and wrote fundraising letters for, the EDF.

By the way, Milloy notes, with the exception of the late Miss Carson, the same groups who rushed to judgment against DDT are all now sounding the global warming alarm. So if Osama does indeed have typhus, maybe he'll die en route to the hospital in his government-mandated, low-emission hybrid car.

This Time Let's All Read It, Shall We?

Here's the text of B-16's address to Muslim envoys in Rome today. According to this story, his remarks were warmly received and I note that al-Jazeera carried them live. The Pope of Rome just delivered the entire Muslim world a lecture on respect for human dignity and rights. Beat that.

Russian To Have Kids

You don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Never You Mind

Just a bit of bidness. Technorati Profile

The Pope's New Bodyguards

Heh.

Sieze The Dei

The Pope's inviting Muslims to his vacation home for a chat.

By the way, just so press malfeasance in this matter is abundantly clear, in the Pope's original remarks, he introduced the offending line from the Byzantine emperor not with the words "somewhat brusquely" as the provisional translation had it. But

Thanks to the Internet, however, you can view Pope Benedict delivering the speech in German. Fast forward to 2:48, and you'll hear Benedict pronouncing the words, "in erstaunlich schroffer, uns überraschend schroffer Form ganz einfach." These are the very words that, according to the professor I cite above, are correctly translated as, "with an astonishing brusqueness, for us an astounding brusqueness, bluntly."

So if anyone had bothered to listen to his speech. . . .sigh.
By the way, I was curious if Iraq the Model might have something to say, and indeed he has two interesting posts on the topic --from in-country as they say. His own take on the Pope's remarks. And his claim that Muslim clerics are Begging For More Anger.

They want to add another big scene to the countless previous ones—angry mobs burning flags and pledging to destroy the "infidels".Actually their latest calls for MORE ANGER are becoming pretty much like begging.Iran thinks the Muslim people fell short of doing their duty and Qaradawi calls Muslims to have a "day of fury".All these are theatrical acts directed by governments and corrupt clerics seeking controlled anger among the mobs to use in intimidating the west and discouraging it from applying more pressure on, or calling for changing, these tyrannical regimes.

Just To Keep The Conspiracy Theorists Busy

I'm convinced that's why Karl Rove says this kind of thing. (Send me your speculations.)

Steele Away Home

Yesterday a friend sent me the news that Michael Steele is ahead (by one) in the MD Senate Race. Today's WaTi reports

Prominent black Democrats yesterday bucked their party to support Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele -- the Republican nominee in Maryland's U.S. Senate race.

These include Kweisi Mfume's son. Steele is an orthodox Catholic and a Conservative. This is by far the most interesting race in the country.

Democrats Acting Like Americans

Charlie Rangel (link is to video):

You don't come into my country, you don't come into my congressional district, and you don't condemn my president. If there is any criticism of President Bush, it should be restricted to Americans, whether they voted for him or not. I just want to make it abundantly clear to Hugo Chavez or any other president, don't come to the United States and think because we have problems with our president that any foreigner can come to our country and not think that Americans do not feel offended when you offend our Chief of State.

Nancy Pelosi:

Hugo Chavez fancies himself a modern day Simon Bolivar but all he is an everyday thug.

Amen! Curtsy: No Left Turns

"Radical Muslims"

From The Ryskind Sketchbook

Cardinal Pell And...Kissinger?

Names I wouldn't normally put together, but we're in strange times. Among the secular authors, Tony Blankley offers the pithiest summary of what the Pope was trying to achieve (I would say there are signs he will achieve it):

In other words, he is inviting Islam to explain whether their God is like ours -- inherently understandable by reason (and thus, is their God opposed to violence, as ours is?) .
He was also, I strongly suspect, speaking to his own flock, both to return to proper Christianity and to consider the nature of Islam. And, I suspect, the pope did not inadvertently quote the now inflammatory passage. If he had not included that quote, the world would not now be debating his lecture. While the pope surely did not want to see violence, he just as surely wanted to engage the world in this vital search for clarity.

Blankley's thesis is:

There is a historically fairly predictable pattern to the unfolding strategies and views of great wars. They often start with a morally ambiguous view of the enemy, a more limited conception of the war's magnitude and a restrained application of violent tactics. Eventually, moral clarity is obtained, war objectives expand -- often to grandiosity -- and tactics become ferocious.

And he thinks the Pope's speech marks the beginning of clarity --his evidence being that Henry Kissinger, the eminence gris of Realpolitik is talking like this:

we are witnessing a carefully conceived assault, not isolated terrorist attacks, on the international system of respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity. The creation of organizations such as Hezbollah and al-Qaida symbolizes the fact that transnational loyalties are replacing national ones. The driving force behind this challenge is the jihadist conviction that it is the existing order that is illegitimate."

(See Abomb and Chavez' UN speeches for illustration. )He went on to warn:

"The debate sparked by the Iraq war over American rashness vs. European escapism is dwarfed by what the world now faces ... the common danger of a wider war merging into a war of civilizations against the backdrop of a nuclear-armed Middle East.

Hmm. For myself, I get nervous if I end up on the same side as Kissinger, but isn't this in essence what Cardinal Pell was saying obliquely in the ominously titled "Talk While We Can"?

Western democracies are at war with Islamic terrorists. Security agencies, including Australia's, are working regularly to thwart terrorist attacks. These Islamic terrorists want a clash of civilisations, they want the West to overreact, to make mistakes and so bring this Armageddon closer.
I do not believe that such a clash is inevitable, but with every massive and successful terrorist attack on the West we lurch closer to such a catastrophe. American anger if there was a succession of September 11-style events in the US does not bear contemplating.

In other words, Pell fears America could become like France and take a mess with us and we nuke you attitude. Yeah, I fear that too... and the moreso if the Dems take office, because they lack the will to take the fight to the enemy on conventional terms now . . .but not the rage to make us all go boom later.

Someone Tell Hugo Chavez

That Talk Like A Pirate Day was yesterday.

The devil came here yesterday," Chavez said, referring to Bush's address on Tuesday and making the sign of the cross. "He came here talking as if he were the owner of the world

Actually, I think his address to the UN this morning was just a helpful translation of Abombnjihad's speech into Spanish.

NBC Censors Veggie Tales

This is ridiculous on two counts. First there's the hypocrisy:

The networks have spent millions insisting that we have a V-chip in our TV sets. Change the channel. Block it out. But when it comes to religious programming -- programming that doesn't even mention Jesus Christ -- just watch the hypocrisy. Instead of telling viewers to just change the channel if they don't like it, or put in a V-chip for Bible verses, they demand to producers that all that outdated old-time religion has to be shredded before broadcast.

My question is, why buy the rights to Veggie Tales at all if you don't want Biblical allusions on tv? That's what the Veggie Tales are: cartoon versions of Old Testament stories, basically. Had any of the network shirts ever seen a Veggie Tale?

More Of What He Wants

As noted here, the Pope's remarks seem to be having an effect:

In Pakistan Catholic and Muslim scholars and clerics met to study the Pope’s Regensburg speech which caused Muslims to protest. The meeting, which took place at the Bishop’s residence, is the initiative of the local bishop, Mgr Joseph Coutts, and Fr Aftab James Paul, director of Interfaith Dialogue and Ecumenism for the diocese of Faisalabad. A committee was formed that includes Bishop Coutts himself, two Catholic priests, four ulemas and another Muslim, Pir Muhammad Ibrahim.

And the Syrian Grand Mufti says:

The disapproval of Pope Benedict XVI and his bitterness after the recent reactions are more than an ‘apology’ for us and a great sign of respect towards the Islamic world.” El Hassoun called on “all to respect this great personality, Pope Benedict XVI.”

Curtsy to Open Book. And, by the way, the Pope had more to say on the topic at this morning's audience. First he reminisced about what it meant to him to be back in the University environment (where he has always wanted to be). Then:

As a topic, I chose the relationship between faith and reason. To introduce the audience to the drama and actuality of the topic, I cited some words of a Christian-Islamic dialogue from the XIV century, with which the Christian interlocutor, the Byzantine Emperor, Manuel II Paleologos – in a way that is incomprehensible and brusque for us – presented to the Islamic interlocutor the problem of the relationship between religion and violence. This quotation, unfortunately, lent itself to possible misunderstanding.

For the careful reader, however, it emerges clearly that I did not want to make my own in any way the negative words pronounced by the medieval emperor in this dialogue and their controversial content did not express my personal conviction. My intention was rather different: starting out from that Manuel II said later in a positive way, using a very beautiful word, about how reason should guide in the transmission of faith, I wished to explain that not religion and violence, but religion and reason, go together. The theme of my conference – in response to the University mission – was the relationship between faith and reason: I wanted to invite the Christian faith to dialogue with the modern world and all religions. I hope that on several occasions of my visit – for example, in Munich, when I underlined how important it is to respect what is sacred to others – my profound respect for world religions and for Muslims, who ‘worship the one God’ and with whom we ‘promote peace, liberty, social justice and moral values for the benefit of all humanity’ (Nostra Aetate, 3), is clear.”

Which seems to me to strike the perfect note. He is not provoking for provocation's sake, nor intending any harm. . .and yet, contrary to some critics who think the Pope has backed off, he is still pushing:

“I trust that after the initial reaction, my words at the University of Regensburg can constitute an impulse and encouragement toward positive, even self-critical dialogue both among religions and between modern reason and Christian faith.”

Compare And Contrast

Lileks (and for heaven's sake read his whole post):

two important speeches were made at the UN: one was a sack of lies dumped out by a religious simpleton bent on heralding the apocalypse, and the other was by the President of Iran

Bush's speech before the UN yesterday. Abombnjihad's speech before same. I like the part where he prays for us all to receive the grace of fighting on behalf of the 12th imam.

Kerry's Faith Journey

I guess you could say he was for the Catholic Church before he was against it. And now he's for it and against it. There's a lengthy section on abortion, during which he reveals he has no intention of doing anything about it, but nevertheless calls for its end.

I lay out these four great challenges -- fighting poverty and disease, taking care of the earth, reducing abortions, and fighting only just wars -- as godly tasks on which we can transcend the culture wars and reach common ground.

First Hilary. Then Obama. The NOW crowd must be quaking, because abortion rights has been overthrows as the Dems' lockstep cause. Now it's gay rights.

Dialogue That Really Is

This WaTi article is mostly silly --suggesting that John Paul II "blended" religions, whereas "tough-talking" Benedict doesn't even grant that Muslims worship the same God as Christians. JP II did no such thing, and of course we worship the same God (there being only one) --the Pope's point is that we conceive Him very differently. Which John Paul II certainly also knew (and said, if anyone cared to research or read, sigh). But there is this line from John Allen at the end that's on target:

"He feels that if we have dialogue, we need to talk about things," Mr. Allen said of the pope, "and not just be nice to each other. When he said on Sunday that he wants a 'frank and sincere dialogue,' he meant that we have to put actual issues on the table.

Thank you! Usually people who use the word "dialogue" mean "not talking about anything." The Pope uses the word as it was intended. Which reminds me of Tom Lehrer's line when confronted with people always talking about "communication." Roughly:

If people cannot communicate, the very least they can do is shut up.

If We're Losing, Here's Why

From a new book about Iraq comes this excerpt about the guy put in charge of Iraq's health care system:

He liked to talk about the number of hospitals that had reopened since the war and the pay raises that had been given to doctors instead of the still-decrepit conditions inside the hospitals or the fact that many physicians were leaving for safer, better paying jobs outside Iraq. He approached problems the way a health care administrator in America would: He focused on preventive measures to reduce the need for hospital treatment.

So he focused on what, naturally? Hygiene? Fatal maladies?

He urged the Health Ministry to mount an anti-smoking campaign, and he assigned an American from the CPA team -- who turned out to be a closet smoker himself -- to lead the public education effort. Several members of Haveman's staff noted wryly that Iraqis faced far greater dangers in their daily lives than tobacco.

Words fail. The blogger who posted this comments:

The convention center in the Green Zone (where the new Iraqi parliament meets) is one of the ugliest buildings I've ever seen, a massive concrete structure that looks like a fortress. For years after the invasion, the building was a no-smoking zone. Uptight Americans would reprimand everyone who lit up, including Iraqi political leaders. A group of Iraqi politicians and aides would gather and look guiltily around until they hit a crucial number -- maybe 15 or so -- then everyone would light up at once. It was a weird sight. And then some American would tell them to put it out. Now, this is in the building that is the center of the new Iraqi government and the politicians were told by low-level hacks to not smoke. And, of course, the smoking area outside occasionally got hit by mortars.
I am happy to report though, that the new government has now installed ashtrays in the convention center and parliamentarians can now smoke in peace, and maybe try to grapple with some real issues.

Like the poor, the health fascists are always with us. Think of the good will that could have been bought if some Americans went out and smoked with them. That's where the bonds of affection and trust are built. I bet some of you can guess who sent me this.

UPDATE: I went to google something to add a similar incident to this post --and it turns out I'd already written it.

No More Wimpy Christians

Fr. Neuhaus has excellent thoughts on Benedict & Islam, including proof that Cardinal Ratzinger has made the same point many times. You should RTWT, but I want to point out something he quotes from the NY Sun, comparing Benedict & Islam to JPthe Great & Communism:

The current pope, like his predecessor, is fighting a two-front war. He must take on radicals outside his faith while also convincing his co-religionists of the seriousness of the fight. In this sense, Benedict’s decision to quote the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus is an apt one. Manuel was the penultimate eastern emperor, who presided over a drastically diminished realm in the face of the mounting threat of Islamic conquest. Manuel was also one of the many emperors who were unsuccessful in persuading western Christians to aid the failing empire. The pressing question is not only whether Islam will take up Benedict’s challenge but whether well-meaning Christians, who have sometimes wanted to feel removed from the battle, draw strength from the pope’s leadership.

That strikes me as right and particularly well-said.

Ye Weak Of Faith, Don't Read This

Today's the feast of St. Januarius (Gennaro if you prefer), and Shouts in The Piazza explains the wonders associated with this saint. Weird.

Stealth Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher came for the 9/11 commemoration someone told me last night. Why wasn't I informed?

No Muslims Were Involved In These Riots

Hungary: the Socialist PM was caught on tape saying "we lied morning, noon and night." 10,000 people demonstrated. No one died, but there was car-be-que.

Thailand: Whoops! actually the new ruler is Muslim, although the imposition of shar'i'a doesn't seem to be his concern. But to be strictly accurate, we must say one Muslim was involved in these riots.

Defeatism Is Unwarranted

Mac Owens says we're not losing.

The Difference Between US & Sweden

Here unemployment is considered a bad thing.

Magnus Rosander, a 44-year-old computer engineer who said he had a nervous breakdown after losing his job four years ago and had not worked since, said he had voted for the Social Democrats and was worried about what would happen under the Moderates.
“I’m dependent on social welfare,” Mr. Rosander said outside a subway station in central Stockholm. “If Fredrik Reinfeldt wins, we will get less money and he will force me to work....

Congratulations to the new Swedish government. Curtsy: Powerline.

"Benedict The Brave"

WSJ gets it.

No Surprise, Surprise

The Conservative blogosphere is rejoicing because Bush's poll numbers are up (woohoo! only mostly hated!). I understand it's good news for Republican candidates, but I must say I find the obsession with his numbers amusing. He told us his numbers would go down, remember? November 4, 2004:

I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.

A certain wing of the GOP doesn't like Rummy's restructuring of the military, but it was a 2000 campaign promise.

Redesign of military with emphasis on supermodern hardware, flexible tactics, speed, less international deployment, fewer troops. This includes developing a system to defend against ballistic missile attacks, despite strong objections both domestically and internationally.

Well, OK, 9/11 ruined the less deployment idea, but the rest stands. I recall being impressed with the proposal the first time I clicked onto the campaign website (swallowing what was at the time for me a bitter pill that he was going to be the Party’s nominee. See, I can admit when I’m wrong.)

And we've covered the fact that he told us how he'd fight the war on terror previously. For better or for worse, on judges, education, tax cuts, the military, AIDS, the deficit and anything else you could mention, what he's done (or attempted) is precisely what he said he would.

The Pope Seems To Be Getting What He Wanted

I'm impressed. More "moderate Muslims" have come out of the woodwork in the past 48 hours than in the previous 5 years. Could the press just not find them previously, or are we witnessing the opening of the first chink of debate in the apparently monolithic wall of Islam? Open book has collected dozens of links here and here. I liked this from the rector of a mosque in Marseilles: He's the Pope.

What do they want him to do? Why would he preach Islam over Christianity?" "Benedict XVI," he said, "stands up for who he is. Now why can't Muslims say, '"All right, and this is who we are,' but there's no need to go into all the polemics."

"Besides, I don't see why they should be taking it out on the Pope when they should have it out among themselves, among those who have discredited Islam. No, I don't see why I should be angry at the Pope."

Of course al-Qaeda in Iraq, in a spirit of dialogue, begs to differ (curtsy: Tim Blair):

We say to the servant of the cross (the Pope): wait for defeat ... We say to infidels and tyrants: wait for what will afflict you. "We continue our jihad. We will not stop until the banner of unicity flies throughout the world," said the statement attributed to the Mujahideen consultative council.
"We will smash the cross ... (you will have no choice but) Islam or death," the statement added, citing a hadith (saying of the Prophet Mohammed) promising Muslims they would "conquer Rome ... as they conquered Constantinople."

I picked up only a smattering of Arabic while in the Holy Land, but I think that means: "The Pope is utterly correct."

Rebuked By Her Example

The elderly Italian nun shot in the back in Somalia, where she spent her life caring for the poor, died crying out

I forgive, I forgive

to her attackers. This account questions whether the attack was provoked by the Pope's words --she already had a bodyguard and joked there was a bullet engraved with her name somewhere. Her death may have had nothing to do with the Pope, might have been a boilerplate murder of a Christian in an Islamic country. The press has no idea what it is talking about --a fact worth remembering in every story every day. The press foments unrest.

But either way, Sr. Leonella, pray for us.

Khatami Rebukes NYT

Via Asia News:

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said the full text of the Pope speech in Regensburg should be read before making any comments on its contents.

The Formerly Gray Lady Won't Like That. Neither Will The Beeb or AFP. Also, The President of Indonesia called for a halt to the violent protests:

Like Iran’s Khatami, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has also been more balanced in his reaction. Speaking from Havana (Cuba) where he is attending a summit of non-aligned countries, he said that “Indonesian Muslims should have wisdom, patience, and self-restraint to address this sensitive issue. . . We need them so that harmony among people is not at stake.”

UPDATE: Indian Muslims "welcome with joy" the Pope's clarification. And in this story from yesterday, which mostly highlights people rejecting the Papal apology, Britain's Ramahdan Foundation nonetheless accepts it.

"We welcome his apology, and we hope now we can work together and build bridges. At the same time, we would condemn all forms of violent demonstration," Muhammad Umar, chairman of Britain's Ramadhan Foundation, a youth organization, told Sky News.

It's U.S. Constitution Day

We'll be celebrating here --you wear a necktie so I'll know you. I expect to see more at No Left Turns & The Remedy later today, when I'll be trying to meet a column deadline (and feeling so stressed out and overwhelmed), so find their links at right and click over. In the meanwhile, if you find yourself insufficiently grateful for our Constitution, compare it to this one --which the new Caliph will impose when he comes to power. Curtsy to ninme's friend, the P-G.

Burying The Lede

Big Lizards notes that a recent AP story about Iraqi security forces building trenches around Bagdad waits 'til graf 22 to give us the big news.

Both the Bush administration and military have said sectarian killings and violence are surging around Iraq and in the capital, although the military has said the attacks are limited to parts of Baghdad not yet included in the security operation.
A reduction in violence Friday was directly attributed to a vehicle ban went into effect around Baghdad to prevent suicide car bombers and others attacking worshippers during prayers.

God forbid we know our tactics are working. BL confirmed the point in a Centcom Release (follow his link):

This approach appears to be working in the focus areas, where violence is down, [Army spokesman Maj. Gen. William] Caldwell said.However, he acknowledged that violence in other parts of Baghdad experienced a “spike” yesterday and noted that terrorist death squads “are clearly targeting civilians outside the focus areas.”

Translation: the enemy is desperately working only in the spots we haven't gotten to yet.
You may also be interested in BL's collection of comments from moderated Muslim groups defending the Pope or at least calling for an end to violence.

Maybe Atmospheric Testosterone Comes Through That Ozone Hole

The Howard Government shows us all how it's done --and note the position of the man who delivered this message to a group of 100 imams who teach in Australia's mosques: "multicultural spokesman."

We live in a world of terrorism where evil acts are being regularly perpetrated in the name of your faith," Mr Robb said at the Sydney conference.

"And because it is your faith that is being invoked as justification for these evil acts, it is your problem.

"You can't wish it away, or ignore it, just because it has been caused by others. "Instead, speak up and condemn terrorism, defend your role in the way of life that we all share here in Australia."

He's helping them defend themselves, you'll note --kind of like the Pope was. He went on:

Mr Robb said unless Muslims took responsibility for their destiny and tackled the causes of terrorism, Australia would become divided. Mr Robb, the parliamentary secretary for immigration and multicultural affairs, said it was important for migrants to learn English. "I see as critical the need for imams to have effective English language skills -- it is a self-evident truth that a shared language is one of the foundations of national cohesion," he said.

Now see, was that so hard? Curtsy: Instapundit.

The Reformation Is Over

For days I was planning a post on the odd and intriguing story of Br. Roger of Taize's coming into full communion with Rome. I was going to connect it to this story from last year, about a book by Protestant author Mark Noll which argues that all the reasons for Protest might be over (I haven't read it yet; I think that's what it argues). But then all over the net I saw Muslim radicals bombing or threatening not just the Pope, not just Catholics, but any old Christians --shooting an elderly nun in the back in Somalia, threatening the Pope outside Westminster Cathedral, firebombing Orthodox and Anglican Churches in the Holy Land --and I realized our dream has come true: now all Christians are united under the Pope!

Dumb & Dumber

There are those who riot first, ask questions later. And there's the New York Times, which summarizes the Pope's address at Regensburg thus:

The speech was largely a scholarly address criticizing the West for submitting itself too much to reason. . . .

Too much, too little --whatever. Way to get it exactly backwards, guys.

UPDATE: Hehe. Tim Blair reports:

UPDATE. The Sword of Islam wants an apology, too:

We want to make it clear that if the pope does not appear on TV and apologize for his comments, we will blow up all of Gaza’s churches.

UPDATE II. The—ahem—Islamic Salafist Boy Scout Battalion joins the list of apology-demanders:

This group threatens to kill all Christians in Iraq if the Pope does not apologize in three days in front of the whole world to Mohammed.

UPDATE III. The New York Times:

He needs to offer a deep and persuasive apology, demonstrating that words can also heal.

It’s unclear how many people the Times will kill if their demand isn’t met.

Good Man

What was it ninme once said about "taking one for Western civilization" (in the context of our grim demographics)? John Podhoretz literally did. After 9/11, he proposed.

I took Ayala aback with the ferocity of my determination. At every turn I brought up what it would mean to be married. I was so determined that I proposed to her at 9 in the morning sitting in the living room of my Brooklyn Heights apartment, through whose window we had seen the black gash of the sky above Ground Zero every night since 9/11. She accepted - and then informed me we had to come up with a more romantic engagement story to tell her family and friends.
I'm telling the story now for the first time because I think it is romantic. I fell in love more deeply with Ayala and had to marry her because I had witnessed the worst and needed the best. Something deep and elemental within me needed to supersede the evil of 9/11 with the purest affirmation of existence - unconditional hope for the future and new life in the form of children whose presence on this earth would be the most crushing blow a middle-aged man like me could deliver to the cult of death that sought to tear out America's heart.

Marriage and child-rearing as rebellion. I like it.

VDH Mourns Fallaci

As is often the case,VDH says what I want to say. Of Oriana Fallaci:

few Christians in positions of influence and respect have publicly defended their faith and the civilization that birthed it. Candor, after all, can get one killed, exiled, or ostracized—whether a Danish cartoonist, a Dutch filmmaker, a Wall Street Journal reporter, or a British-Indian novelist. So here, ill and in her seventies, returned Ms. Fallaci one last time to take up the hammer and tongs against radical Islam—a diminutive woman of the Left and self-proclaimed atheist who wrote more bravely on behalf of her civilization than have most who are hale, males, conservatives, or Christians

And he ties this to the Pope's Regensburg lecture:

what are we to make of poor Benedict XVI, the scholastic, who, in a disastrous display of public sensitivity, makes the telling point, that Christianity, in its long evolution to the present, has learned to forsake violence, and to defend its faith through appeals to reason—and thus can offer its own experience in the current crisis of Islam.

Exactly. Exactly.

If a sentence, indeed a mere phrase can be taken out of context, twisted, manipulated to show an absence of deference to Islam, furor ensues, death threats follow, assassins load their belts—even as the New York Times or the Guardian issues its sanctimonious apologies in the hope that the crocodile will eat them last.

Which is pathetic because in fact it will eat them first. But VDH has a few things to say to our own as well, in which I join him:

I have given up on most of the neoconservatives, many of whom, following the perceived pulse of the battlefield, have either renounced their decade-long, pre-September11 rants to remove Saddam (despite the 140,000 brave souls still on the field of battle who took them at their word), or turned on the President on grounds that he is not waging the perfect fight and thus is not pursuing the good war.

We abound in big talkers, but not in prudent men. "If only W. were eloquent we say," forgetting that Eloquence Itself, Winston Churchill, spent most of his political life as a failure and a mocked figure. People listened to him only when they had to.

So we really are left with very little in these pivotal times—the will of George Bush, of course, the Old Breed unchanged since Okinawa and the Bulge that still anchors the US military, the courage and skill of a very few brave writers like a Hitchens, Krauthammer, and the tireless and brilliant Mark Steyn, but very, very few others. No, this is an age in which we in the West make smug snuff movies about killing an American President, while the Taliban and the Islamists boast of assassinating the Pope.

Well. I agree with that, but there is such a thing as Providence. I wrote to an old prof. of mine recently that reading the lives of the saints with the kids has shown me that besides death and taxes, the constants in life are conquering Islam and the perfidy of the French. He replied

Death and taxes are caused by conquering Islam and the perfidy of the French.

The West should not have won the Battle of Lepanto. It should not have won the battle of Vienna. Often the heretics in the Church (Arians, Albigensians) have outnumbered the orthodox-- yet here we are. It's easy to forget in a crisis that yes, we're in danger of being swept away --but we're equally on the cusp of a glorious --perhaps unlooked for-- victory. (The Anchoress gets it.)


It has often struck me that --their different philosophical roots notwithstanding-- aggressive secularism and radical Islam are flip sides of the same coin. Secularism leaves a vacuum that any wacky theory will rush to fill; Wahabism is the strongest wacky theory going. But equally, at the level of practice, both secularism and radical Islam represent efforts to cope with the power of sexuality --particularly feminine sexuality. Secularism makes a god of it; Islam irrationally fears it and seeks to control it. It seems providential, therefore, to me, that John Paul the Great left us a theology of the body that addresses both. And equally providential that we have in Benedict an apostle of Reason. And we have the Queen of the Rosary on our side --the victorious Lady of Lepanto and Vienna. (A little noticed fact of John Paul's letter on the rosary was its invocation of Leo XIII's 1883 Encyclical on the rosary, which catalogues Mary's intercession on behalf of the Church against Muslim encroachment. Perhaps that's an indication what John Paul had on his mind when he urged us all to take up the rosary anew.)


Nietszche said it takes 10 (whoops! 100 --toldja I'm no good at Math) great men to change a culture. We have had John Paul and Reagan and Teresa of Calcutta. Now we have Benedict, Bush.... Maybe we know some of their names already.

Good Point

From a comment at Shouts in the Piazza:

Every one of those Monday Morning Quarterbacks who bitch about Pius XII not publicly making statements against Nazism during WW2 should take a good look at what happens to Christians (and as you bring out, not just Roman Catholics)when the Pope makes a public statement that annoys a group with a propensity to violence. And while we're at it, what's going on in our world... A group of muslims kill a nun, and it's the pope's fault? A group of terrorists kill 3,000 people on 9/11 and it's Bush's (or, Clinton's) fault?

Yes, and this also illustrates my point about it being problematic to translate papal political pronouncements into foreign policy.

In Person Apology

Prior to the Angelus this morning, The Pope read the following paragraph:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The Pastoral Visit which I recently made to Bavaria was a deep spiritual experience, bringing together personal memories linked to places well known to me and pastoral initiatives towards an effective proclamation of the Gospel for today. I thank God for the interior joy which he made possible, and I am also grateful to all those who worked hard for the success of this Pastoral Visit. As is the custom, I will speak more of this during next Wednesday’s General Audience. At this time, I wish also to add that I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims. These in fact were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought. Yesterday, the Cardinal Secretary of State published a statement in this regard in which he explained the true meaning of my words. I hope that this serves to appease hearts and to clarify the true meaning of my address, which in its totality was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect.

As you would all know had you bothered to read it instead of relying on malignant journalism. (He's too charitable to add that.)

The Angelus message itself isn't translated at this writing -- a short reflection on the connection between the Triumph of the Cross and Our Lady of Sorrows. Brief but lovely --if you read Italian, scroll down and savor.

Fatwa Against The Pope

Everything that has been or could possibly be said about the Pope's Regensburg address is collected here. Pray for his safety, especially during his upcoming trip to Turkey. In addition to other statements of rage, a Somali cleric preached:

We urge you Muslims wherever you are to hunt down the Pope for his barbaric statements as you have pursued Salman Rushdie, the enemy of Allah who offended our religion," he said in Friday evening prayers.
"Whoever offends our Prophet Mohammed should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim," Malin, a prominent cleric in the Somali capital, told worshippers at a mosque in southern Mogadishu.

Where is the Sura that says, "Do not read what the other has said before concluding he has insulted you?" I wonder. Nevertheless, I note that Salman Rushdie is still alive. Perhaps Benedict like Rushdie before him will have to seek refuge in Christopher Hitchens' apartment, bringing about the conversion only he doesn't know is inevitable.


As I said in a previous post, I have a sneaking feeling this incident will be one of those clarifying moments of history. Fr. Schall agrees, and I highly recommend you read his comments on the subject in full.

The scope of this lecture is simply breathtaking, but also intelligible to the ordinary mind. In watching my computer and listening to various colleagues the day after this address was given, I felt a kind of hush in the air. Something important had happened, something more than the ordinary went on in Regensburg, something that was addressed to the heart of modernism but also to Islam, our current enigma. When I read the lecture, I understood why.

He sets the scene, as it were:

Benedict, make no doubt, is the clearest and most incisive mind in the public order in the world today. This fact will not make everyone happy and will make not a few furious. Not everyone, as we are warned in our scriptures, is willing to accept the truth. We should not be naïve about this, nor should we despair of the truth because it is refused. It is a seed that will grow in good ground.

Lord, let that not be a prophesy of Benedict's martyrdom to Truth!

It is not without profound interest that the pope chose precisely a university in which to deliver this lecture. It is not an encyclical. It is not a "doctrinal" statement. It is not a homily. It is a lecture to a university faculty and to its students -- and not just to those in Regensburg sitting before him. In this sense it strikes at the very heart of the intellectual acaedia, to the intellectual sloth, of our time, to the refusal to think about the important things with the tools that we have been given.

A girlfriend's mother used to tell her growing up, "Use your head. It's not a decoration." At any rate:

with this lecture we are in heady academic surroundings. All is genteel. All is formal. All is, yes, "intellectual." But it is here where the real battles lie hidden. What we see in Regensburg are, after Deus Caritas Est, the second shots of the new pope at the heart of what is wrong in our world and its mind. These "shots," however, are designed to do what all good intellectual battle does, namely, to make it possible for us to see again what is true and to live it. The Regensburg Address, I suspect, will go down as one of those seminal and incisive analyses that tell us who we are and where we are. It will remind us of what we are by teaching us again to think about the God that the skeptics, the dons, the theological faculties, including Muslim faculties, have too often obscured for us. Civilization depends also on thinking rightly about God and man -- all civilization, not just European or Muslim. Such is the reach of this lecture.

Testing Again

aaargh.

Why They Pay Him The Big Rupees

An Indian Bishop (actually, the President of the Indian Bishops’ Conference) has a great response to the Papal Upheaval. (Curtsy: open book).

These protests by our Muslim brothers, which started yesterday after Friday prayers, are misplaced as the Pope has not commented on Islam; he only quoted a Byzantine emperor and another great Persian scholar. I have read the text of Benedict XVI, it is an eight-page speech and what has sparked all this is just one quotation extrapolated from the context.
The crowds that have taken to the streets of India are probably reacting to articles in local newspapers about the speech of the pope, where some of his phrases have been quoted out of context.
This is also symbolic of the situation today: without even contextually situating the text, or dwelling on its meaning, some people have taken the quotation as a cue to take to the streets in protests.
This is the time for all Christians to be patient and pray for those who do not understand. The situation which comes at this point in time is also a great gift for the church - for us to engage in serious and lasting dialogue with our brothers and sisters of different faiths. A true culture of tolerance is possible only in a dialogue of religious identities.
The Holy Father was quoting from history and he was trying to show us a way through faith and reason in today’s terrorist ridden society. These reactions are indicative of what the Pope was trying to emphasize – only reason andenlightenment through faith bring about mutual respect and peace.
I am not saddened by these protests: we have to face them with Christian courage and prayer because truth needs no defence. [snip]

Follow the link to the full statement. Remember the Lebanese bishop urging his people to stand their ground with courage? We ought to listen to the bishop who actually live cheek by jowl with Islam a little more carefully --there's a robustness to their Christianity. Meanwhile, the apology has not yet taken hold.

Prudence: A Coda

To add one more thought to a rambling conversation I've been having with myself beginning here and continuing for several other posts, I think perhaps the least exercised or recognized virtue in our time is prudence. I call your attention again to something the Holy Father said in his spontaneous Q & A with priests this summer. In his discussion of what we might call "fear of commitment," he remarked: . . .

profundity and beauty lie precisely in decisiveness. Only in it can love mature in all its beauty.

He's talking about the virtue of prudence there --a virtue that entails not only choosing wisely what to do, but sticking to it once you've decided. Because of the supremacy of feelings in our culture, many of us think that each crisis or difficulty requires us completely to rethink our original decision. How many times do we run into a cross and start to think, "this must not have been God's will for me?" Not so. Of course it may be that you've been guilty of rash judgment and in that case maybe you should learn and re-group. And new information can require "course corrections" in carrying out the original plan. But if your decision was made honestly, with good judgment (and for Christians, in the light of prayer), and there are no new data to consider, you have no business rethinking the matter. Virtue requires you to overcome the obstacle, and the very understandable human tendency to shrink from difficulty --or to allow fate to choose for you by vacillating until events overtake you-- is to be resisted. As the Pope puts it:

Even in crisis, in enduring moments that seem unbearable, new doors are opened, and love takes on a new beauty. A beauty made up of nothing but harmony is not a real beauty. [...] Real beauty also needs contrast. Light and darkness complement each other.

One of the constants you hear or read from people who meet privately with the President is that he's sure of himself, comfortable in his own skin, or negatively --a la Peggy Noonan recently-- he "never says anything new" (curtsy to NLT). I maintain this is because the President has a high degree of this lost and unrecognized virtue. Our feelings-based culture wants to see him on t.v. all the time visibly agonizing over his decisions ("admitting mistakes") and "feeling our pain." Or we think he can suddenly come up with the exact right words to assuage all of our doubts about the correctness of his approach to the war on terror or our pain or exhaustion with its toll.


I admit I sometimes think I could make the case better than he does, but it's not true; I think this because I am a product of my culture, overly impressed by rhetoric and insufficiently capable of prudent action. Is it Thucydides who remarks that when Pericles speaks, men applaud, but when Demosthenes speaks, men march? (Where is VDH when you need him?) Rhetoric is important, but let's not pretend it's everything. At bottom, what more more can be said? The original decision to go into Iraq was a judgment call. The President we elected made the best call he could in light of the duties of his office and the facts available to him, and we're in it now. Historians can judge it later when results are known and all the hidden facts released, but there is no virtue inherent in agonizing per se. It would not be right for him to re-think the matter every second --that would be to take the lives at stake (ours and the Iraqis) extremely lightly (it's worth your life. . .no, wait, maybe it isn't. . .yes it is. . . .well, I'm not sure). That kind of agonizing is for the time of deliberation. Once you've set your course, it's a fault --a deformation of will that leaves you weak, unable to accomplish anything, anxious, sad, paralyzed --ultimately, not free.


If you think the President doesn't fully feel the weight of each death in Iraq, you should ask the military families he visits about that. But he equally understands that suffering and hardship are not signs you made a bad decision; you find them on every road. When you undertake something hard, there are only two things to keep repeating: the ultimate goal and the value of the effort and sacrifice to get there. He has been utterly upfront with us about that. There are no magic words to make a difficult war against a strange enemy easy and popular, and were the President eloquent as Churchill, he'd still be telling us about liberty and difficulty --just a little more nicely.


This is what human freedom is: to discern the good; through deliberation to choose the best means to achieve it; to pursue those means wholeheartedly. Providence decides the rest (even the wisest and most virtuous decisions don't always yield success). This is why I was struck by that comment from C.S. Lewis a few days ago:

What I cannot understand is [the] sort of semipacifism you get nowadays which gives people the idea that though you have to fight, you ought to do it with a long face and as if you were ashamed of it. It is that feeling that robs lots of magnificent young Christians in the Services of something they have a right to, something which is the natural accompaniment of courage--a kind of gaity and wholeheartedness.

Bush has that wholeheartedness and we judge him for it. We seem to think that being stressed out about our decision-making is in itself a sign of virtue or depth. That's why people think the President is shallow --he doesn't seem to be stressed out. But the Prudent man, the Courageous man, actually enjoys decision-making and action --he enjoys exercising his freedom, he can bear the sword of Damocles above him. And he's generally more humble than others in the sense that he knows he isn't guaranteed success and can learn from his mistakes without letting them paralyze him. Which leads me to another interesting quotation, in connection with the President's alleged arrogance. From G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy:

The old humility was a spur that prevented us from stopping; not a nail in our boot that prevented us from going on. For the old humility made us doubtful about our efforts, which might make us work harder. But the new humility made us doubtful about our aims, which makes us stop working altogether.

In all of this I am not for a moment suggesting the President is semi-divine, infallible, a genius, superhuman, or anything of the kind. I'm not even promising he's right. I do think he has a better handle on what it is to be a mature and free human being than anyone else in American public life. I am really tired of the midget men snipping at him.

Apology: Please Read What I Said Before Freaking Out

I knew we could count on the Vatican to be humble and gracious --but I also note in a certain sense it doesn't back down. Here's the complete text (the new Sec. of State's first day on the job was interesting, wasn't it?). RTWT.

Other items of interest on the topic of Vatican relations w/ Islam (these via Zenit, yesterday's daily dispatch):

• On Vatican Radio yesterday, Fr. Justo Lacunza, recent past rector of the Pontifical Institute of Arab & Islamic Studies, remarked of the Pope's comments:

  In this the Pope has done no more than take up again the sentiment and desire of millions of Muslims who in one way or another, say: 'Violence and Islam cannot be related,'

  I don't know to what degree we can attribute this attitude to the Pope, but it's interesting to think the Holy Father might consider himself to be speaking up on behalf of oppressed Muslims themselves. (I think of a Pakistani friend who lives here precisely because he didn't want to live among the fascists.)
• Also, the new Vatican Sec. for Relations With States grew up in Morocco and is a past nuncio to Sudan and Somalia.
• The papal itinerary for Turkey has been finalized. It includes a trip to the house whre some say Mary lived in the last years of her life, and he's lengthening his stay by a day to add a meeting with Catholic believers (can't believe they left that out at first!)

Bill Keller Must Be Muslim

Simplest explanations are the most probable, and what else could explain the NYT's joining the call for a papal apology for something he didn't say? And wouldn't that explain the rest of the NYT's doings in the past five years too? Amy Welborn takes them apart.

Because Jihad Means Interior Struggle

Two West Bank Churches Hit By Firebombs Over Pope's Comments, or, more accurately, over stupid headlines mis-characterizing Pope's comments.

I Do! I Do!

WHO backs DDT to rid malaria.

Holy Metaphors, Batman!

The NRO people seem like a smart bunch, but every so often they go off in a very stupid direction. The latest is they're (some of 'em) saying what frustrated Conservatives say Every. Freaking. Election. Since. The Dawn. Of Time.

Maybe it'll be good for us to lose the election badly so the Party hacks will learn their lesson and the Party will be small and pure.

I stipulate that the Republicans deserve to lose this election because they've gotten corrupt and lazy; this is because they face no serious opposition. A revival of the Democratic party would be a good thing, but I hardly think letting Nancy Pelosi into power is the ticket to salvation of either party.

In my lifetime there has never been a choice other than that between the Stupid party and the Evil party.

Dem proposal: Let's burn down the country.

Rep. counter-proposal: let's phase-in the burning over a 10-year period.

However:

1) The Republicans aren't going to lose

2) This is the attitude of people who don't understand politics. Parties are loose coalitions, not ideologically pure movements.

3) If this is their attitude, then I no longer understand what their beef with Rod Dreher was.

4) It's a particularly weird argument for a pro-lifer to make, since the Republican (Stupid) Party manages to interpret every loss as a sign "Religious Conservatives" are weighing it down. No amount of data showing just the reverse will persuade. And: you want Henry Waxman in charge of the Judiciary Committee? What about the babies?

5) Who says such a thing in the middle of a war he called for, knowing it could mean the impeachment of the President, the withdrawal of US forces in the Middle East-- with the concommitant effects on our allies and future national security-- is guilty of an unseriousness and moral corruption that offends me more deeply than letting Jack Abramoff take you to St. Andrew's. Remember what happened to the Iraqis when we encouraged them to revolt after the Gulf War --and then abandoned them? Bodies in shredders, my friend. You want to abandon people to slaughter for the sake of --maybe, someday, in the future, being able to cut the budget? I have rarely heard such an immoral proposition.

One of their readers puts it nicely:

I’m Bruce Wayne.You’re telling me I should WANT my parents to be murdered in front of my young eyes because THEN I’ll be motivated to eat my vegetables, lift weights, and grow up to cleanse Gotham City of all its evildoers.

[UPDATE: The more I think about this, the more steamed I get. All over the country there are interesting races --races w/ candidates to make Conservatives happy-- and the key to those elections lies in voter turnout. NRO has just announced to all Republicans: stay home. They have no right --and especially not in the name of Conservatives, who are in the trenches district by district. The original column was something better said after an actual defeat --find-the-silver-lining kind of thing, not 53 days away from an election. Think Michael Steele and Ken Blackwell are happy?]

I suppose it's just activist burn-out. I'm hoping after a nice nap they come to their senses.

More Reasons To Support The Danes.

If you live in Prince George's County, MD, you are perpetually annoyed that the only media attention you ever get involves crime --don't you people know how much good goes on here? Michael Barone shows we're the key to whether Michael Steele wins a Senate seat. And throws in some historical trivia to boot.

Prince George's County, by the way, is one of the few (perhaps the only) American counties named after a Dane. This was Prince George of Denmark, married to Princess Anne when her uncle, Charles II, was King of England.

Moreover:

Much of Prince George's County has been represented for many years by House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, who is one of the few American politicians of Danish descent (the late Lloyd Bentsen was another).

Well, those two are strikes against the motherland, actually. Curtsy: Powerline.

Imagine Taste In Music

I could not agree more strongly with this Mark Shea piece from National Catholic Register. He protests the Formerly Gray Lady's claim that John Lennon's "Imagine" is the "soundtrack of hope" after 9/11. Are you kidding me? It's not even a good song. None of the Beatles or ex-Beatles songs is deep, but some of them are catchy. This one is a tuneless bore.

in the world of rock, a ballad is often thought to be “deep” when it is really just “not blaring.” It’s a sort of Pavlovian acoustic response that conflates mere noise reduction with contemplation.That is why, I’m convinced, a song as stupid as “Imagine” by John Lennon can still be regarded by millions as both profound and moving to the degree that it is the No. 3 greatest song ever, according to Rolling Stone.

Finally someone has said it! (I feel liberated.) Did the NYT intend to be this offensive? Or does it not listen to lyrics?

How does it honor the firefighters who sacrificed their lives to mewl about “nothing to … die for”?

Let's leaf through the catalogue, shall we?

Everything the song advocates and hopes for as a supreme good was the fountainhead of all the horrors of the 20th century.

• “Imagine there are no countries.” Hitler dreamt of a world without borders.
• “Imagine there’s no heaven … no religion too.” Stalin and Mao sought to free us from religion and the burden of hoping for something more than this life.
• “Imagine no possessions.” Communism was all about freeing us from possessions (though multi-zillionaire Lennon seems to have honored this dream more in the breach than the observance).
• “Imagine all the people living for today.” You got it! A culture of brain-dead MTV-educated “fornicate-today-and-abort-tomorrow” zombies has
  accomplished the mission.

Yet people still talk as though “Imagine” is some sort of inspiring hymn. I cannot, for the life of me, see why.

So, Mark, is there any forum where it would make sense to play this song?

For me, it’s one of the agitprop songs they play over the concentration camp speakers non-stop in order to keep the inmates’ minds off both heaven and hope.

Gitmo, then? Maybe that would be a compromise Bush & McCain could accept.

At Least They Go Out Laughing

Tim Blair reports on Sponge Bullet Needle Pants -- devious new Jew weaponry.

Awwww.

I'm not just quoting her because she quotes me. I like this story from ninme's friend, Bubblehead.

So there I was -- on a TAD trip to Warsaw, Poland, back when I was at CENTCOM in early 2004. I had finished up work for the day, so the U.S. Army major I was working with and I went to do a little shopping for the home folk after changing into civvies. We walked into a department store, and split up after a while to look for stuff. I had a question, so I went up to the clerk and gave her my best "Dzien dobry"; in response, she said, "I can speak English". I was a little disappointed, because I'd been working hard on the five or six Polish phrases I'd learned from the liaison officers in Tampa, so I asked her how she knew I wasn't Polish. She explained: "I knew you were an American when I saw you walk into the store, and you were talking with a black man as an equal."

So, there are still some places outside the U.S. where people know that being an American is something special.

Pop Quiz

If Ted Kennedy, Al Franken, James Carville and Walter Cronkite have nice things to say about a staunch Conservative, what can you assume?

• A. He's dead.
• B. He supports gay rights
• C. They hope to use him as a cudgel against Christians.

Right. All of the above. Behold, the HBO biopic of Barry Goldwater.

Sure, he may have talked openly about defoliating North Vietnam with nuclear weapons, but he wasn't such a monster, goes the revisionist consensus. Look how he hated the religious right and privately loathed Richard Nixon.

Standing By Our Man

Curtsy to Open Book for these two links. First, scroll to post 4035 to find a translation of a statement from the Veep of the European Parliament.

"The monstruous attempt on the part of many Islamic leaders, even the so-called moderates, to distort the Pope's reaching out to all religions (through the lecture),in order to hit out at Christians and the West shows us the gravity of the danger we are facing," Mauro continues.

He underscores how "the islamo-nazi ideology that permeates the thought of fundamentalists represents the most dramatic distortion of the use of reason."

The statement continues: "They use God as a pretext to pursue a plan for power, and this is what the Pope has denounced, thereby defending freedom for all, especially for those Muslims who look to religion as an experience of the sense of life, and not as a shortcut to political power. "It is remarkable that so many names, too many, among those with political responsibility (in the Western world) are not coming to the defense of the words said by the Vicar of Christ! It is almost as if they are ashamed or are too cowardly to speak up in defense of reason and freedom."

And from Lord (former Archb) Carey:

"The Pope is a distinguished scholar and one unlikely to say offensive things. If he quoted something said 600 years ago we should not assume that this represents the Pope's beliefs about Islam today.
"But Muslims as well as Christians must learn to enter into dialogue without crying foul. "