Happy New Year!

Benediction during First Vespers

The Pope has sung Te Deum for 2009 and prayed the first vespers of the New Year, so it's Catholic 2010, no matter what time it is. No English version of his homily yet (all of Rome's on vacation), but here's an account. Or read it in Italian. In light of the extremely gloomy retrospectives of the year and the decade to be found everywhere, I found this to be a palate cleanser (Bear in mind that while the pope spoke in Italian, I read it in Pidgeono.)

With the Incarnation of the Son of God, eternity enters time and human history becomes opened to the absolute fulfillment of God. Time is "touched" as it were by Christ, the Son of God and Mary, and from Him has received a new and surprising significance: it has become the time of grace and salvation.

Archbishop Martinez makes the point in Secrets of the Interior Life that there's no sense kvetching about whether you're having a good day or a bad one, because there's only ever one kind of day: a perfect one, the one the God who loves you sent you, the one you need for reasons which may be beyond your capacity to fathom. The same is surely true of the past year and the past decade.

Which hasn't been so bad: there have been wars and rumors of wars and scandals and corruption, but there was also the incredible fellow-feeling in the aftermath of 9/11; and Bush atop the rubble with his arm around the fire chief; and the toppling of Saddam's statue in Bagdad square; and "Ladies and Gentlemen, we got 'im!" There was JP the Great's funeral; there is Benedict, the pope of Christian unity (which sometimes seems so close you can taste it); there have also been 50 million people given a chance at liberty if they want it, and Afghan girls back in school; and 10 million people saved from malaria in Africa; and a steady stream of converts from Islam occasioned by Iraqi & Afghan contact with Americans and our allies; we mapped the human genome; we landed Mars rover; we got paralyzed people to walk, relieved Parkinson's and grew new bladders and livers with adult stem cells; we have won the battle against embryonic stem cell use in practice if not in law; a guy landed a commercial jetliner on the Hudson river last January and not one person fell in the river and died of hypothermia. Even the political battles that depress and exhaust me may be good. In politics, even battles you lose can advance your cause, because every debate is a national conversation; at least we're fighting over things that matter.

Well...I don't want to wax either philosophic or Pollyanna. I merely register my distaste for the glooooooom everywhere. Getting back to Benedict:

It's precisely from this perspective that we should consider the closing year and the one about to start, placing the various events of our lives --important or little, simple or unfathomable, joyful or sad-- under the sign of salvation, and accepting the call God extends to us towards a goal that leads beyond time itself: eternity.

May the Almighty forgive what we did wrong in 2009, make up for all we did poorly or left undone, and help us to use 2010 well. Time is filled with grace and salvation.

RT of The Year

Much retweeted: 

The people calling for Rush Limbaugh to die are the same people who ask to control your healthcare.

Pardon My Book-keeping

Move it along, now, you know the drill. This is just a bit of personal record-keeping, back-dated and buried to minimize the self-indulgence of it. Not a good year, reading-wise. Went back to work and got too tired to read. Do cookbooks count? I feel the need to pad my list.

Books Read, 2009

Scripture:
Genesis,
Psalms,
4 Gospels,
Pauline epistles

Ratzingers:
Caritas in Veritate
Spe Salvi

Devotional & Professional:
Back to Virtue
Called to Life
Descending Fire
Five Dysfunctions of A Team
Flight of Faith
Interior Freedom
Spiritual Theology
Time for God
The Sanctifier
Thoughts of the Cure D'Ars
Virtue Driven Life


Book Club
Blood Brothers
Come, Be My Light
Count of Monte Cristo
Emma
Hannah Coulter
Northanger Abbey
The Story of the Von Trapp Family Singers
Til We Have Faces
Twilight

Just Felt Like It
Cheney
Exiles
Frankenstein III: Dead & Alive
Jeeves in the Morning
Mr. Murder
No One Sees God
Robinson Crusoe
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves
The Difference God Makes
The Great Divorce
The Living Wood
Three Men In A Boat
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Waiting for Snow in Havana

With The Kids
Black Beauty
Lunch Money
The Princess & the Goblin
The Princess & the Curdie
(Then Mr. W. started Tom Swifts w/ 'em)

No, It's Not Hot In Here

Science Daily: No Rise of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Fraction in Past 160 Years, Research Finds

6th Day of Christmas

Caravaggio, Nativity with Ss. Francis & Lawrence 

Huron Carol

’Twas in the moon of wintertime,
When all the birds had fled,
That mighty Gitchi Manitou
Sent angel choirs instead;
Before their light the stars grew dim,
And wondering hunters heard the hymn:

Jesus your King is born,
Jesus is born,
In excelsis gloria.

Within a lodge of broken bark
The tender babe was found,
A ragged robe of rabbit skin
Enwrapped His beauty round;
But as the hunter braves drew nigh,
The angel song rang loud and high:

Jesus your King is born,
Jesus is born,
In excelsis gloria.

The earliest moon of wintertime
Is not so round and fair
As was the ring of glory on
The helpless Infant there.
The chiefs from far before Him knelt
With gifts of fox and beaver pelt.

Jesus your King is born,
Jesus is born,
In excelsis gloria.

O children of the forest free,
O seed of Manitou,
The holy Child of earth and Heav’n
Is born today for you.
Come kneel before the radiant Boy,

Who brings you beauty, peace and joy.

Jesus your King is born,
Jesus is born,
In excelsis gloria.

The Seinfeld President

Shelby Steele on America's continuing race problem. RTWT, but this is acutely observed:

Reagan reached the White House through a great deal of what is called "individuating"—that is he took principled positions throughout his long career that jeopardized his popularity, and in so doing he came to know who he was as a man and what he truly believed. He became Ronald Reagan through dissent, not conformity. And when he was finally elected president, it was because America at last wanted the vision that he had evolved over a lifetime of challenging conventional wisdom. By the time Reagan became president, he had fought his way to a remarkable certainty about who he was, what he believed, and where he wanted to lead the nation.
Mr. Obama's ascendancy to the presidency could not have been more different. There seems to have been very little individuation, no real argument with conventional wisdom, and no willingness to jeopardize popularity for principle. To the contrary, he has come forward in American politics by emptying himself of strong convictions, by rejecting principled stands as "ideological," and by promising to deliver us from the "tired" culture-war debates of the past. He aspires to be "post-ideological," "post-racial" and "post-partisan," which is to say that he defines himself by a series of "nots"—thus implying that being nothing is better than being something. He tries to make a politics out of emptiness itself.

Curtsy: American Digest's Sidelines

5th Day of Christmas

Piero della Francesca, Nativity, c. 1470 

Christians, Awake And Greet The Happy Morn

Christians, awake, salute the happy morn

Whereon the Saviour of the world was born

Rise to adore the mystery of love

Which hosts of angels chanted from above

With them the joyful tidings first begun

Of God incarnate and the Virgin's Son

Then to the watchful shepherds it was told

Who heard the angelic herald's voice: "Behold,

I bring good tidings of a Saviour's birth

To you and all the nations upon earth

This day hath God fulfilled His promised word;

This day is born a Saviour, Christ the Lord."

He spake, and straightaway the celestial choir

In hymns of joy, unknown before, conspire

The praises of redeeming love they sang

And heaven's whole orb with alleluias rang

God's highest glory was their anthem still

Peace upon earth and unto men goodwill

To Bethlehem straight the shepherds ran

To see the wonder God had wrought for man

And found, with Joseph and the blessed Maid

Her Son, the Saviour, in a manger laid

Amazed, the wondrous story they proclaim

The earliest heralds of the Saviour's name

Let us, like these good shepherds, them employ

Our grateful voices to proclaim the joy

Trace we the Babe, who hath retrieved our loss

From His poor manger to His bitter cross

Treading His steps, assisted by His grace

Till man's first heavenly state again takes place

Then may we hope, the angelic thrones among

To sing, redeemed, a glad triumphal song

He that was born upon this joyful day

Around us all His glory shall display

Saved by His love, incessant we shall sing

Of angels and of angel-men the King

Chesterton Against the Puritans

Christ Himself was a Christmas present. The note of material Christmas presents is struck even before He is born in the first movements of the sages and the star. The Three Kings came to Bethlehem bringing gold and frankincense and myrrh. If they had only brought Truth and Purity and Love there would have been no Christian art and no Christian Civilization.

No Christians On Airplanes

Not really --not yet-- but that's Michael Chertoff's solution to our airplane security problems: those nude scanner thingies, now with nothing left to the imagination thanks to technological improvements. ninme and vanderleun are discussing that.

It's just another instance of what Hitch rightly notes is our bizarre need to collectively punish the innocent rather than singling out the guilty.

It's getting to the point where the twin news stories more or less write themselves. No sooner is the fanatical and homicidal Muslim arrested than it turns out that he (it won't be long until it is also she) has been known to the authorities for a long time. But somehow the watch list, the tipoff, the many worried reports from colleagues and relatives, the placing of the name on a "central repository of information" don't prevent the suspect from boarding a plane, changing planes, or bringing whatever he cares to bring onto a plane. This is now a tradition that stretches back to several of the murderers who boarded civilian aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001, having called attention to themselves by either a) being on watch lists already or b) weird behavior at heartland American flight schools. They didn't even bother to change their names.

So we do nothing at all about the few bad guys, but we punish the multitudinous innocent with impunity:

flick your eye across the page, or down it, and you will instantly see a different imperative for the innocent. "New Restrictions Quickly Added for Travelers," reads the inevitable headline just below the report on the notoriety of Abdulmutallab, whose own father had been sufficiently alarmed to report his son to the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, some time ago.

Just a little more, since he expresses my own sense of outrage so well:

In my boyhood, there were signs on English buses that declared, in bold letters, "No Spitting." At a tender age, I was able to work out that most people don't need to be told this, while those who do feel a desire to expectorate on public transport will require more discouragement than a mere sign. But I'd be wasting my time pointing this out to our majestic and sleepless protectors, who now boldly propose to prevent airline passengers from getting out of their seats for the last hour of any flight. Abdulmutallab made his bid in the last hour of his flight, after all. Yes, that ought to do it. It's also incredibly, nay, almost diabolically clever of our guardians to let it be known what the precise time limit will be. Oh, and by the way, any passenger courageous or resourceful enough to stand up and fight back will also have broken the brave new law.

Hitch points out rather amusingly how utterly stupid our precautions are, besides being intrusive. ("Did you pack your own bags and have them under your own control at all times?" Wouldn't a terrorist have to answer yes to those questions?)

But let's forget the government's determination to crush the airline industry (some wag at the Corner, I think, said that this is the inevitable result of the government owning the auto industry). How about just the complete stupidity of treating this Nigerian fellow as a criminal rather than a terrorist? My spy in New York writes me this morning:

Forget the thousand ineptitutes that let him board the plane.But first thing out, he gets a lawyer who won't "allow" him to answer questions or give DNA. Arrrrggggh. He should have been questioned by the CIA while he was still smoldering, no need for "torture" above what he did to himself ("You want morphine? Who are your contacts?)but this lame excuse for a government gets him a lawyer who's also demanding he get skin grafts. These idiots are literally going to be the death of us.

But our nekkid body scans will last forever.

4th Day of Christmas

Anonymous 18th c. Birth of Christ

Joy to the World!

Joy to the world, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.

3rd Day of Christmas

Flight into Egypt, Melchior Broederlam, c. 1395 

Nativity, A Christmas Poem, John Donne

Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,
Now leaves His well-belov'd imprisonment,
There He hath made Himself to His intent
Weak enough, now into the world to come;
But O, for thee, for Him, hath the inn no room?
Yet lay Him in this stall, and from the Orient,
Stars and wise men will travel to prevent
The effect of Herod's jealous general doom.
Seest thou, my soul, with thy faith's eyes, how He
Which fills all place, yet none holds Him, doth lie?
Was not His pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pitied by thee?
Kiss Him, and with Him into Egypt go,
With His kind mother, who partakes thy woe.

God, Country, The Redskins

Not necessarily in that order.

Seen in the grocery store parking lot last week.

Six Redskin flags and pennants and a huge decal on the rear window. Attached to the top of one of the 'Skins flags: a teeny-tiny American flag. Those two little decals on the left rear window? Knights of Columbus and American Legion insignia, respectively. Our Lady of Guadalupe (not visible in this shot) swinging from the rear view mirror.

Catholic Patriotic Skins fans, unite!

Made Me Feel Much Better

Dave Barry's Year in Review, 2009.

2nd Day of Christmas

Giotto

Good Christian Men, Rejoice!

Good Christian men rejoice
With heart and soul and voice!
Give ye heed to what we say
News! News!
Jesus Christ is born today!
Ox and ass before Him bow
And He is in the manger now
Christ is born today!
Christ is born today!

Good Christian men, rejoice
With heart and soul and voice
Now ye hear of endless bliss
Joy! Joy!
Jesus Christ was born for this
He hath ope'd the heav'nly door
And man is blessed evermore
Christ was born for this
Christ was born for this

Good Christian men, rejoice
With heart and soul and voice
Now ye need not fear the grave:
Peace! Peace!
Jesus Christ was born to save
Calls you one and calls you all
To gain His everlasting hall
Christ was born to save
Christ was born to save

First Day of Christmas

Anonymous, Middle Ages

Minstrels, Wordsworth


The minstrels played their Christmas tune
To-night beneath my cottage-eaves;
While, smitten by a lofty moon,
The encircling laurels, thick with leaves,
Gave back a rich and dazzling sheen,
That overpowered their natural green.


Through hill and valley every breeze
Had sunk to rest with folded wings:
Keen was the air, but could not freeze,
Nor check, the music of the strings;
So stout and hardy were the band
That scraped the chords with strenuous hand.


And who but listened?--till was paid
Respect to every inmate's claim,
The greeting given, the music played
In honour of each household name,
Duly pronounced with lusty call,
And "Merry Christmas" wished to all. 

Update: From B16's Urbi et Orbi message:

God loves to light little lights, so as then to illuminate vast spaces. 

Merry Christmas!

Indian Madonna 

From Marmion, A Christmas Poem, Sir Walter Scott

Heap on more wood! – the wind is chill;
But let it whistle as it will,
We’ll keep our Christmas merry still.
Each age has deem’d the new-born year
The fittest time for festal cheer:

...

And well our Christian sires of old
Loved when the year its course had roll’d,
And brought blithe Christmas back again,
With all his hospitable train.
Domestic and religious rite
Gave honour to the holy night;
On Christmas Eve the bells were rung;
On Christmas Eve the mass was sung:
That only night in all the year,
Saw the stoled priest the chalice rear.
The damsel donn’d her kirtle sheen;
The hall was dress’d with holly green;
Forth to the wood did merry-men go,
To gather in the mistletoe.

Then open’d wide the Baron’s hall
To vassal, tenant, serf and all;
Power laid his rod of rule aside
And Ceremony doff’d his pride.
The heir, with roses in his shoes,
That night might village partner choose;
The Lord, underogating, share
The vulgar game of ‘post and pair’.
All hail’d, with uncontroll’d delight,
And general voice, the happy night,
That to the cottage, as the crown,
Brought tidings of salvation down. 

O Holy Night!

Nativity at Night, Geertgen tot Sing Jans, c. 1490 

Once, In Royal David's City

Once, in Royal David's city

Stood a lowly cattle shed,

Where a mother laid her baby

In a manger for his bed.

Mary was that mother mild

Jesus Christ, her little child.

He came down to earth from heaven,

Who is God and Lord of all,

And his shelter was a stable,

And his cradle was a stall.

With the poor, and mean, and lowly,

Lived on earth our Savior holy.

For He is our childhood's pattern;

Day by day like us he grew.

He was little, weak and helpless,

Tear and smile, like us, he knew;

And He cares when we are sad,

And he shares when we are glad.

And our eyes at last shall see Him,

Through his own redeeming love;

For that Child so dear and gentle,

Is our Lord in heaven above.

And he leads his children on

To the place where he has gone.

Reagan's Christmas Message

Joy to the World

Headed down to Franciscan Monastery for a pre-Christmas shrivening. Nothing lightens the heart and the mood like sacramental confession.

Confession is Confession and grace is grace, but some priests unquestionably have a gift for it. This afternoon my "favorite" Franciscan was in the box. Call no man happy before he dies, but he has the marks of holiness: joy and utter simplicity. No matter how down you are about what you tell him, no matter how "stuck" in the same stubborn fault, he manages to do three things: take your sin seriously; lighten your heart by reminding you that grace is stronger and helping you laugh at yourself (everyone comes out of his box laughing, and you can hear them laughing while they're in, too, though of course you can't hear what's being said); and make you feel that he accompanies you in your struggles.

He's modest, too. Today I tried to thank him for helping me through a rough year, and he wouldn't take the praise. "Thank the Almighty," he said in an aw, shucks tone, "and pray for the priest."

I don't know this man at all; he's not my spiritual director or even my regular confessor. I've barely seen him, since we usually meet across a screen, and only on the occasions when our schedules happen to intersect. But I love him! He is a sign in the world of God's goodness and of why we rejoice to have a Savior.

One Step Closer To A Bush/Cheney Arrest

Signing away our sovereignty, Obama signed an executive order last week granting interpol immunity from American law. More here.

Plus, the administration just released 12 gitmo detainees to Yemen, cooperator with al-Qaeda.

Quite intentionally, the Obama administration is making so many radical moves on so many different fronts simultaneously that it's difficult to stay on top of them all, much less give them the attention they deserve. But while we argue health care and Iran policy and a civilian trial for KSM and the decision to transfer enemy combatants to a U.S. prison, it's important to notice how dangerously irresponsible the administration's obsession to close Gitmo has become, and how tawdry the Justice Department is allowing itself to appear.

Great. Why not just release them in Afghanistan?

Hmmm.

Image shamelessly pinched from here

Rumors regarding the Queen & the Pope's impending visit to England at the link above. Can't put much stock in them; however, I love that photo of the queen!

I Am Just...Chopping Onions

Days after losing his limbs in an Easter Sunday roadside bomb attack, 22-year-old infantryman Brendan Marrocco told his medical team at Walter Reed Army Medical Center he had one goal: to walk under his own power by the time his combat infantry brigade returned from Iraq.

No one expected him to survive, actually, so badly mangled was he, but he got himself up and walking. Then a bunch of charities got him and his family to Honolulu for his unit's return, which you can read about.

The Christmas Tsunami

Sigh,  Check this out. It's too depressing to explain. Though Jennifer Rubin does, here.

A case in point is the apparent effort by Senate Democrats to prevent future Congresses from pulling the plug on the noxious death panels … er … the Medicare Advisory Board, without a super-duper majority vote. Sen. Jim DeMint has pointed out that through a mere rule change, the Senate Democrats are trying to impose a 67-vote requirement, which will be nearly impossible to achieve, of course, to knock out the panels in a future Congress. So if for example the controversial mammogram guideline is enacted by the Medicare Advisory Board along with other “effectiveness” measures, there will be little a future Congress can do about it.

Suffice it to say it's damning evidence of the truth of Mark Steyn's contention that the Democrats understand very well they face a wipe-out next election cycle, but don't care, because they will have achieved their strategic aim of turning the US into a European-style socialist state. They are gambling that the rubicon can't be un-crossed.

Charles Kesler says it can, however, but it will take determined resistance of the kind I don't see the GOP capable of at present. Most of the GOP wants to try the fix-it later strategy, which Kesler rightly sees is mere raising of the white flag:

To acquiesce in the new program in hopes of improving it later on would be a pipedream. If entitlement programs could be easily fixed, the U.S. would not after decades of warnings be facing the impending bankruptcy of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. If government bureaucracies could handily be streamlined, the Post Office would not be...the Post Office.

Better plan:

refusing to accept the new measure as legitimate, or in other words, beginning to work as soon as it is passed for its repeal. There is nothing un-American or undemocratic or even unrealistic about this. The same legislature that enacts a bill has the right and power to repeal it. It happens all the time. More generally, battles to reverse public policy considered unfair, unwise, and unconstitutional are a storied part of American history, ranging from Thomas Jefferson's denunciations of the Alien and Sedition Acts, to Andrew Jackson's war against the Second Bank of the United States, to the repeal of the 18th Amendment, when a thirsty country changed its mind about banning sales of alcoholic beverages. More recently, the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988 lasted until 1989, when Congress, under pressure from senior citizens, removed it from the books.

Bill Kristol offers the slightest glimmer of hope that the whole vote could still fail.

Maybe Sen. DeMint will prove the Harry Reid's various deals aren't legal; even if he doesn't, I say "bring it on," because that means the whole thing is subject to overturn in the Supreme Court.

Otherwise, rest up this Christmas. Come January: the fight. Harry Reid's going to try to make the United States commit suicide on Christmas Eve, but as President Washington said the other day:

We must never despair; our situation has been compromising before, and it changed for the better; so I trust it will again. If difficulties arise, we must put forth new exertion and proportion our efforts to the exigencies of the times.

The Obama administration is going to be the high-water mark of progressivism in this country, not the end of its liberty.

Update: regarding the Steyn thesis, Mr. W. observes that the reason the GOP hasn't done anything "strategic" as Steyn says, is because until now the fight has been to prevent passage of the bill: this fight carried on by a very weak (numerically) party. The moment the bill passes, then the fight becomes repeal.

Furthermore, no repeal is going to be possible without electoral victory --because Obama is not going to sign a bill for repeal, and it would take a supermajority to override a veto. So these things are not either/or matters.
Update 2: Hadley Arkes is hopeful. God bless Tony Blankley for his realistic optimism: "Yet, Freedom!". 

Wodehouse On Healthcare

So I am listening to my dose of Jeeveswhile doing the Christmas kitchen prep (mmm, chocolate-tangerine semifreddo,) and felt I must transcribe for you an exchange between Bertie Wooster and his uncle-by-marriage, Lord Percy, about an American businessman who is "skittish as a fawn." Imagine Percy's voice as that which would emanate from a stout British man with impressive muttonchop sideburns.

Percy: Odd this neurotic tendency of the American businessman. Can you account for it? No? I can. Too much coffee.
Bertie:Coffee?
Percy: That, or the New Deal.
Over in America it seems, life for the businessman is one long series of large cups of coffee, punctuated with shocks from the New Deal. He drinks a quart of coffee and along comes a nasty surprise from the New Deal. To put himself together, he drinks another quart of coffee, and along comes another nasty surprise from the New Deal. He staggers off, calling feebly for more coffee, and…
Well, you can see what I mean. Vicious circle. No nervous system could stand it.

Of course, that was then; now we have a coffee house on every corner and the New Deal seems like a capital gains tax cut in comparison with this health care deal. So clearly every entrepreneur in America's about to have a world-class nervous breakdown.