Yeshua Is Risen!

Arabic flash mob coolness from Beirut:


The refrain is from the Divine Liturgy: Jesus is risen from the dead. By death he conquered death and to those in the grave he gave life.

Curtsy:Powerblog

Happy Still Easter! As long as we're in Lebanon, may as well read a quick reflection on the new Maronite patriarch there.

A Good Goering

Here's a bittersweet yet fascinating post about Albert Goering, Catholic, half-brother to the fiend, who spent his life resisting the Nazis and freeing Jews. After the war he never recovered from having that name, though.

Ryan For The Poor

Good for Ryan! He explains the key features of his Medicare reform -- and makes the point that it's Obamacare that comes on the backs of the poor and gives breaks to the rich.

#1: Under Ryan's plan, Medicare doesn't change at all for people 55 and above.
#2: Ryan's plan saves Medicare by means testing --which means fewer benefits for the wealthy who don't need them and MORE coverage targeted to the needy. Obama's plan keeps making payments to wealthy and poor alike, but reforms Medicare through IPAB (death panels): 13 unelected officials who make the medical decisions, rationing care and disproportionately affecting the elderly, the frail and the handicapped.
#3: Ryan doesn't "cut taxes for the wealthy" as the Dems are saying falsely. He simply extends the Bush tax cuts. Obama raises taxes.

So: which plan do you want? The one with tax hikes for everyone, rationed care for everyone, medical decisions in the hands of government --and not even elected government-- and the same benefits paid to millionaires as to the needy? [And the whole economy collapses within a decade, so no coverage for anyone, no matter how needy?]
Or the plan where nothing changes for 55 & above, and for the those 54 and under, payments to the wealthy are cut somewhat so as to better cover the poor and lower middle class, individual choice and freedom is preserved, and the system is saved long term for everyone?

Budgets are in some sense always moral documents, but this particular budget battle strikes me as a moral battle. Ryan's plan embodies solidarity, subsidiarity and preferential option for the poor and seems to have been designed with those principles of Catholic social thought in mind.

Cowards Or Tyrants?

The law firm of King & Spalding has taken the cowardly action of bowing to PC threats and withdrawing from the defense of DOMA. That's one way to look at it. Certainly the action is shameful.

Or did they just drive Paul Clement out? Hadley Arkes has been predicting for years that as gay rights laws passed, it would become impossible for anyone defending natural law and natural rights to work for a conventional law firm. From Clement's resignation letter:

"Efforts to delegitimize any representation for one side of a legal controversy are a profound threat to the rule of law," Clement continues.  "Much has been said about being on the wrong side of history.  But being on the right or wrong side on the merits is a question for clients.  When it comes to the lawyers, the surest way to be on the wrong side of history is to abandon a client in the face of hostile criticism."

Update: Volokh has a good post, w/ background. The law firm caved to pressure from HRC. Here's what the LA Times --which supports gay marriage-- said about that:

It’s perhaps understandable that leaders of an advocacy group like the Human Rights Campaign would be outraged at the idea of anyone defending a law that they so strongly believe is discriminatory. But the suggestion that it’s shameful for Clement or his firm to do so misunderstands the adversarial process. For one thing, with sharp-witted counsel on both sides making the strongest possible arguments, it is more likely that justice will be done. For another, a lawyer who defends an individual or a law, no matter how unpopular or distasteful, helps ensure that the outcome is viewed as fair. If DOMA is struck down, the fact that it was defended effectively will make the victory for its opponents more credible. . . .

If you want a settled question, you have to be perceived to have won fairly and on the merits, not just by tyranny of the majority. But of course HRC's position is: "Shut up!" 

He Is Risen!

The Disciples Peter and John Running to the Sepulcher on the Morning of the Resurrection, 

Eugene Burnand, c. 1898

Easter Communion*

Pure fasted faces draw unto this feast:
God comes all sweetness to your Lenten lips.
You striped in secret with breath-taking whips,
Those crooked rough-scored chequers may be pieced
To crosses meant for Jesu's; you whom the East
With draught of thin and pursuant cold so nips
Breathe Easter now; you serged fellowships,
You vigil-keepers with low flames decreased,

God shall o'er-brim the measures you have spent
With oil of gladness, for sackcloth and frieze
And the ever-fretting shirt of punishment
Give myrrhy-threaded golden folds of ease.
Your scarce-sheathed bones are weary of being bent:
Lo, God shall strengthen all the feeble knees. 

--Gerard Manley Hopkins

*He seems to have had rather a tougher Lent than I. Now I feel like a wimp. Though I'm sure I'm just as glad Lent is over.

Resurrexit!

Our parish's Easter Vigil was gorgeous, and what made it for me was watching the two littlest weeds really enter into it. They loved the blessing of the fire, the mysterious procession in darkness, the gradual spread of light from candle to candle.

When the Old Testament readings ended and the Church lights finally went on, the bells rang and a truly glorious Gloria was sung, their faces lit up.
Eldest Weed, who served the Mass, was so enchanted by the music that he's talking about attending two masses this morning (he serves one) just to hear the Hallelujah Chorus rumored to be on offering at the earlier Mass. And this from a young man who's terribly allergic to Easter lilies, so he starts suffering about half-way through. When the wee ones are engaged and you inspire cynical teens to come to more masses, I'd say your liturgy is successful.

Il Papa is wonderful in his homily for the occasion. I can't help but laugh at it, though. There was a minor kerfuffle in Catholic blog-land last week over the coincidence of Good Friday and Earth Day and one commentator's suggestion that you should immediately quit any parish where a pastor mentioned the latter. Lots of gnashing of teeth over whether that was the right reaction, but everyone agreed we shouldn't be thinking about the earth at that moment. It's therefore hilarious that the Pope preached about creation after everyone agreed it shouldn't be done! Not that I think he was in any way aware of the argument: he is just a freer mind than most --and what he says about creation transcends the small and sterile concept people were arguing about.

Here's the opening of his commentary on the first reading.

the creation story is itself a prophecy. It is not information about the external processes by which the cosmos and man himself came into being. The Fathers of the Church were well aware of this. They did not interpret the story as an account of the process of the origins of things, but rather as a pointer towards the essential, towards the true beginning and end of our being. 

It took modern, "scientific," man to think the account was intended literally, and that is to utterly miss the point.

Now, one might ask: is it really important to speak also of creation during the Easter Vigil? Could we not begin with the events in which God calls man, forms a people for himself and creates his history with men upon the earth? The answer has to be: no. To omit the creation would be to misunderstand the very history of God with men, to diminish it, to lose sight of its true order of greatness. The sweep of history established by God reaches back to the origins, back to creation. Our profession of faith begins with the words: “We believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth”. If we omit the beginning of the Credo, the whole history of salvation becomes too limited and too small. The Church is not some kind of association that concerns itself with man’s religious needs but is limited to that objective. No, she brings man into contact with God and thus with the source of all things. Therefore we relate to God as Creator, and so we have a responsibility for creation. Our responsibility extends as far as creation because it comes from the Creator. Only because God created everything can he give us life and direct our lives. Life in the Church’s faith involves more than a set of feelings and sentiments and perhaps moral obligations. It embraces man in his entirety, from his origins to his eternal destiny. Only because creation belongs to God can we place ourselves completely in his hands. And only because he is the Creator can he give us life for ever. Joy over creation, thanksgiving for creation and responsibility for it all belong together.

The account in John's prologue is more succinct, and it shows us that the world is governed by Reason, not chaos. This is the heart of the debate over evolution. It's not about processes, about which the Church has nothing to say: let Science draw its own conclusions. It's about whether or not we are free:

“In the beginning was the Word”. In effect, the creation account that we listened to earlier is characterized by the regularly recurring phrase: “And God said ...” The world is a product of the Word, of the Logos, as Saint John expresses it, using a key term from the Greek language. “Logos” means “reason”, “sense”, “word”. It is not reason pure and simple, but creative Reason, that speaks and communicates itself. It is Reason that both is and creates sense. The creation account tells us, then, that the world is a product of creative Reason. Hence it tells us that, far from there being an absence of reason and freedom at the origin of all things, the source of everything is creative Reason, love, and freedom. Here we are faced with the ultimate alternative that is at stake in the dispute between faith and unbelief: are irrationality, lack of freedom and pure chance the origin of everything, or are reason, freedom and love at the origin of being? Does the primacy belong to unreason or to reason? This is what everything hinges upon in the final analysis. As believers we answer, with the creation account and with Saint John, that in the beginning is reason. In the beginning is freedom. Hence it is good to be a human person.

There's the problem of sin, and therefore of destruction and death...and this is the glory of Christ. That there has been a restoration, and so we can say again with the Scriptures:

We celebrate the first day [the new Sabbath] because we know that the black line drawn across creation does not last for ever. We celebrate it because we know that those words from the end of the creation account have now been definitively fulfilled: “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen 1:31). Amen.

Happy Easter!

Socrates Is Not A Christ Figure

B-16 dedicated yesterday's Audience to tips for entering into the mysteries of the next few days. I was particularly struck by two observations. First: that the agony in the Garden is not Christ's private agony, but also his Priestly agony. It was personally terrible:

Then the Lord began to pray. The three apostles -- Peter, James and John -- slept, but then they woke up and heard the phrase of this prayer of the Lord: "Not my will but thine be done." What is this will of mine, what is this will of yours, of which the Lord speaks? My will is that I "should not die," that he be spared this chalice of suffering: It is the human will, of human nature, and Christ feels, with all the consciousness of his being, life, the abyss of death, the terror of nothingness, this menace of suffering.

And he more than us, who have this natural aversion to death, this natural fear of death, even more than us, he felt the abyss of evil. He also felt, with death, all the suffering of humanity. He felt that all this was the chalice he must drink, that he must make himself drink, accept the evil of the world, everything that is terrible, the aversion to God, the whole of sin. And we can understand that Jesus, with his human soul, was terrified before this reality, which he perceived in all its cruelty

But through it he also was crying our cries, our anguish:

these tears of Jesus, this prayer, these cries of Jesus, this anguish -- is not all this simply a concession to the weakness of the flesh, as could be said. But precisely in this way he realizes the task of High Priest, because the High Priest must lead the human being, with all his problems and sufferings, to the height of God. And the Letter to the Hebrews says: with all these cries, tears, sufferings, prayers, the Lord took our reality to God (cf. Hebrews 5:7ff). And it uses this Greek word "prosferein," which is the technical term for what the High Priest must do to offer, to raise his hand on high.

Second, you sometimes hear people speak of Socrates as a Christ-like figure. Not so says the Pope:

If we reflect on this drama of Gethsemane, we can also see the great contrast between Jesus, with his anguish, with his suffering, in comparison with the great philosopher Socrates, who remains peaceful, imperturbable in the face of death. And this seems to be the ideal. We can admire this philosopher, but Jesus' mission is another. His mission was not this total indifference and liberty; his mission was to bear in himself all the suffering, all the human drama. And because of this, precisely this humiliation of Gethsemane is essential for the mission of the Man-God. He bears in himself our suffering, our poverty and transforms them according to the will of God. And thus opens the doors of heaven...opened by his suffering and obedience.

Photo: The Pope blowing on an amphora of blessed oil at this morning's Chrism Mass (here's the homily for that, and links to all the Holy Week events. A blessed and holy Triduum to all!

Passover: There's One In Every Crowd

Not Kenyan, Somalian

Now we know the truth of Obama's origins. Shamelessly pinched from here.

"Please! Defend Your Freedom! Defend The Heaven You Are Living In!"

Wafa Sultan on Islam.

Don't take anything for granted. I don't. I enjoy every single moment of my American life.

Just walking down the street by myself without being accused of being a whore is a bliss for me.

Just chatting with my next-door male neighbor without being accused of adultery is a bliss for me.

Having a cup of coffee by myself is a bliss. Please, please don't anything for granted. Please defend this beautiful country.

Curtsy: Brutally Honest

Six Years Ago Today

Not that anyone cares but I, but in revisiting this I note that Pope-Elect Cardinal Ratzinger did not call himself "a humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord," as he is usually translated.

Always thought it seemed uncharacteristic of him to call himself "humble." The word he uses is "semplice": "simple." That sounds like him.

I know "humble" can mean "simple," but in contemporary parlance, it's not usual, and it...well, I repeat, it didn't sound like him, because he's too actually humble to call himself humble.

Obama's Mean Streak

Obama is not as nice as he looks, observes The Examiner.

Has no one ever listened to him? Did we not hear his speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination, the meanest speech of its kind ever delivered? And ditto his inaugural address? He routinely looks graceful and speaks disgracefully. 

Fidel Resigns

Fidel Castro is no longer head of the Communist Party in Cuba. Allegedly, "sweeping economic reforms" were passed yesterday, too, though they'll have to be put into effect before anyone knows what they are. Kind of like Obamacare in that respect.

The Most Shocking Thing Is This Happened In France

Four renegade Frenchmen have destroyed Andres Serrano's Piss Christ.

Feel no sorrow for the disappearance of that abomination, especially since the NEA is no doubt funding more of same as I type. Don't like seeing Christians behave like Muslims, though. Though on the third hand, as Instapundit remarks:

Well, when you cave so easily to Muslims’ complaints about blasphemy, you send a signal to everyone else about what kind of behavior is rewarded. May you have joy in the incentive structure you’ve created.

Indeed.


O/T but hilarious is the correction at the bottom of the story:

• This article was amended on 19 April 2011. The original referred to the Senator Jesse Helms as Jesse James. This has been corrected.

Because Over The Pond, all Americans are renegade cowboys.

RC2 Shrugged

In a feat I expected to be as much an act of love for my husband as sitting through Wagnerian opera, I accompanied Mr. Wheat to Atlas Shrugged, Part I.

I was expecting nothing. You know my views on Ayn Rand. I anticipated something truly dreadful: as camp as Patricia Neal & Gary Cooper in Fountainhead, plus the flaws of a low budget film.

Eh (I'm shrugging here), actually it's pretty fun. There are no household names, but all the actors are recognizable, respectable and competent: they look like they're having fun getting lead roles for once. Don't know where they found the gal to play Dagny Taggart, but she looks and acts exactly the way you picture her from the book: genius casting.

Yes, there is a certain amount of stilted economic theory masquerading as dialogue --which is true to the book. My favorite line was the following, which you have to imagine delivered in a chirpy tone, a la Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney saying they'll get a barn and turn it into a theater:

All this altruism. What's wrong with people these days?

Or when Rearden explains how the Great American Auto Company failed.

They stuck to the flat wage. They continued to pay people according to their need.

Oh, Lordy. Rand always sounds as if she's still back in Soviet Russia; Americans do not talk like that.

But if you can overlook that, they keep the action moving, and they really do a very nice job capturing what is positive in Rand: namely, the defense of the entrepreneur as an admirable figure. The moment when --against the efforts of meddling bureaucrats, union thugs, crony capitalists, phony science, corrupt media and an easily manipulated populace-- the hero and heroine ride their high-speed, light-weight rail at 250 mph across that bridge pictured up yonder is genuinely thrilling. 

We took Eldest Weed with us. He observed the President should love this film: it's about high speed rail!

Update: agree very much with this review ('cept for the liking the book part).

All of this could have moved turgidly along for the 102 minutes of screen time that Part 1 takes, and in the first few minutes, the introductory dialogue seems a little stilted and forced.  The film quickly finds its pace, though, and moves snappily along afterward.  While the plot has been updated to contemporary times, the style of the film hearkens back to Rand’s time.  Dialogue is kept spare and meaningful, and skips the present-day sensibilities of tossing in stock comic-relief characters to lighten the mood. Visually, the film is rich and inviting, and thematically uses both the skepticism of noirish intrigues and the CinemaScope optimism seen in the 1950s and early 1960s, such as in films like Giant, which also had its share of both.
[snip]Grant Bowler’s Henry Reardon is a masterpiece of underplayed power and nuance, easily the best performance in this installment, although newcomer Taylor Schilling does well as the central character in the film.
The best word to describe Atlas Shrugged Part 1 is … surprising.  It’s surprisingly well-paced, surprisingly intelligent, surprisingly well-acted, and surprisingly entertaining.  Perhaps most surprising of all, it has me thinking about re-reading the novel again.  I would highly recommend it to friends and their families.

On the family part: It's PG-13. I think young kids wouldn't follow it. For older kids: the main characters have an adulterous affair depicted in one tame love scene, and then referred to again and again: "You're a married man!" Not much cursing that I can recall, except for one prominent "BS."

Cuts Down The Lifetime Reading List Considerably

Middle Weed, 10, musing:

Mom? If the Eucharist is Christ's original sacrifice perpetuated in time, doesn't that mean every chalice is the Holy Grail?

Well. There's a whole genre of literature he can skip. 

Potpourri of Popery, Ad Multos Annos Edition

Happy 84th, Holy Father! The Pope spent the day working quietly according to the Vatican. Hopefully he also rested up, as tomorrow starts Holy Week. (Finally! Ready for this Lent to be over.)

Popery
His Holiness concluded his 2-year cycle of Audiences on the saints with this summary: we're all called to be saints. He says much of value and quotes Scripture, various saints and documents. Then he offers his own formulation:

perhaps we should say things in a still simpler way. What is the most essential? Essential is that no Sunday be left without an encounter with the Risen Christ in the Eucharist -- this is not a burden but light for the whole week. Never to begin or end a day without at least a brief contact with God. And, in the journey of our life, to follow "road signs" that God has communicated to us in the Decalogue read with Christ, which is simply the definition of charity in specific situations. I think this is the true simplicity and grandeur of the life of holiness: the encounter with the Risen One on Sunday; contact with God at the beginning and end of the day; in decisions, to follow the "road signs" that God has communicated to us, which are simply forms of charity.

He asks a question:

Can we, with our limitations, our weakness, reach so high?

And answers that it's not necessary to be a great saint, merely a saint:

many saints, not all, are true stars in the firmament of history. And I would like to add that for me not only the great saints that I love and know well are "road signs," but also the simple saints, that is, the good persons that I see in my life, who will never be canonized. They are ordinary people, to say it somehow, without a visible heroism, but in their everyday goodness I see the truth of the faith. This goodness, which they have matured in the faith of the Church, is for me a sure defense of Christianity and the sign of where the truth is.
In the communion with saints, canonized or not canonized, which the Church lives thanks to Christ in all her members, we enjoy their presence and company and cultivate the firm hope of being able to imitate their way and share one day the same blessed life, eternal life.

In other words, he's as much touched by good people all around him as by his mentor, St. Augustine. 

Dear friends, how great and beautiful and also simple, is the Christian vocation seen from this light!

He concludes:

I would like to invite you to open yourselves to the action of the Holy Spirit, who transforms our life, to be, we also, pieces of the great mosaic of holiness that God is creating in history, so that the Face of Christ will shine in the fullness of its brilliance. Let us not be afraid to look on high, to the height of God; let us not be afraid that God will ask too much of us, but let us be guided in all our daily actions by his Word, even if we feel that we are poor, inadequate, sinners: He will be the one to transform us according to his love.

At the beginning of the month, the Pope addressed a seminar on the "internal forum" with this presentation on the sacrament of Confession. It's a very lovely reflection on what the priest learns from Confession (and why, therefore, he should spend a lot of time --more than 40 minutes Saturday afternoons?-- in the box):

how much the priest can learn from exemplary penitents: through their spiritual life, the seriousness with which they carry out their examination of conscience, the transparency with which they admit their sins and their docility to the Church's teaching and to the confessor's instructions.
From the administration of the sacrament of Penance we may draw profound lessons of humility and faith! It is a very strong appeal to each priest for knowledge of his own identity. We will never be able to hear the confessions of our brothers and sisters solely by virtue of our humanity! If they approach us, it is only because we are priests, configured to Christ the Eternal High Priest, and enabled to act in his Name and in his Person, to make God who forgives, renews and transforms, truly present. The celebration of the sacrament of Penance has a pedagogical value for the priest, as regards his faith, as well as the truth and poverty of his person, and nourishes within him an awareness of the sacramental identity.

A month prior, he visited the major seminary in Rome and gave a guided lectio divina to the seminarians there. The whole thing is worth reading, but he cracks me up sometimes, he's so realistic and unsentimental --so simple, perhaps?-- about what the Church is. So he's teaching them about Christian unity and the body of Christ and community, and he makes the point that these things are easier said than lived:

Of course we want the personal relationship with God, but we often do not like the body. 

 Heh. Why do I find it so comforting that the Pope feels these burdens, too?

perhaps we frequently feel the problem, the difficulty of this community, starting from the actual community of the Seminary to the large community of the Church, with her institutions. We must also keep in mind that it is really lovely to be in a company, to journey on in a large company of all the centuries, to have friends in Heaven and on earth and to be aware of the beauty of this body, to be happy that the Lord has called us in a body and has given us friends in all the parts of the world.

In a meeting with parish priests from the Diocese of Rome, he offered another lectio divina. He takes one of Paul's farewell discourse as a starting point: a passage I like because it reveals Paul's great humanity, charity and spirit of service. He loved these people! Whereas it's easy to think of Paul has kind of a blowhard (he did, after all, once literally preach someone to death!), or an itinerant preacher who has a lot of advice but doesn't stick around long enough to be a friend. Not so: he lived in communities for years at a time, often, working to earn his living, so as not to be burdensome:

In a certain sense it could be said that he was a worker priest because — as he also says in this passage — he worked with his hands as a tentmaker so as not to be a financial burden to them but to be free, and to leave them free.

Yet although he did manual work, he was nevertheless a priest for the whole of the period, he constantly advised them throughout this time. In other words, even though he was not always physically available to preach, his heart and soul were very present for them; he was steeped in the word of God and in his mission.

This seems to me to be a very important point; we cannot be part-time priests, we are priests for ever, with the whole of our soul, with the whole of our heart. This being with Christ and being an ambassador for Christ, this being for others, is a mission that penetrates our being and must ever more deeply penetrate the totality of our being.

A little more: 

Then St Paul says: “I have served the Lord with all humility” (v. 19). “Served”: a key word of the entire Gospel. Christ himself says: I did not come to dominate but to serve (cf. Mt 20:28). He is the Servant of God and Paul and the Apostles continue to be “servants”; they are not masters of faith but servants of your joy, St Paul says in the Second letter to the Corinthians (cf. 1: 24).

“Serving”, must also be decisive for us: we are servants. And serving means not doing what I propose for myself which would be what I should like best; serving means letting myself take on the Lord’s burden, the Lord’s yoke; serving means not being swayed by my own preferences, my priorities, but letting myself truly be “taken on in service” for others.

This means that we too must often do things that do not immediately seem spiritual and do not always correspond with our own choices. All of us, from the Pope to the lowliest parochial vicar, have to do administrative work, temporal work; yet we do it as a service, as part of what the Lord imposes on us in the Church and we do what the Church tells us and expects of us.

This is beautiful:

if the contemporary world is curious to know everything, even we ourselves must be more curious to know God’s: what could be more interesting, more important, more essential for us than knowing God’s wishes, knowing God’s will and God’s face?

This inner curiosity should also be our own curiosity to know God’s will better, more fully. We must therefore respond and reawaken this curiosity in others: truly to know the whole will of God, in order to become thoroughly acquainted with God’s will, hence to know how we can and should live and to recognize what is the path of our life.

Thus we must make known and understood — as far as we are able — the content of the Church’s Creed, from the Creation until the Lord’s return, until the new world. Doctrine, liturgy, morals, prayer — the four parts of the Catechism of the Catholic Church — indicate this totality of God's will.

And it is also important if we are not to get lost in detail, not to give the idea that Christianity is an immense packet of things to learn. Ultimately, it is simple: God revealed himself in Christ. But to enter this simplicity — I believe in God who shows himself in Christ and I want to see and do his will — has meaning and, according to the situation, we enter more or less into details; but it is essential to make the ultimate simplicity of faith understood.

RTWT as there is much, much more. I don't know how he's going to top that at the Chrism mass this week!

Shortly after giving that address, the Pope made his annual Spiritual Exercises, preached by one Fr. Lethel. 

It didn't garner much press, but the Pope's visit to the Fosse Ardeatine memorial (the site of a mass execution carried out by the Nazis in reprisal for a Partisan attack) impressed me. Here are Jewish-Christian relations for you. The pope quotes a note left by one of the slain:

It is a sheet of paper on which one of those who died had written: “God my great Father, we pray you that you may protect the Jews from barbarous persecution. One Our Father, two Hail Marys, one Glory Be.”

At such a moment, imprisoned, facing death, to be interceding for others and trying to find more to offer for them!

“I believe in God and in Italy”. In that testament carved in a place of violence and death, the bond between faith and love of the homeland appears in its full purity, without any rhetoric. Whoever wrote these words did so only out of deep conviction, as the extreme testimony to the truth believed, which makes the human soul royal even in extreme debasement. In this way every man is called to fulfil his own dignity: by testifying to this truth which each recognizes in conscience. 

Also a very nice address to the opening session of the "Court of the Gentiles."
Potpourri

• Rome: about-to-be-Blessed John Paul II has a feast day now (well, in Rome & Poland; the rest of us have to await his canonization); a statement on the inter-faith prayer service in Assisi, with some important differences with the last time around. Vatican is sponsoring a blog-nic, 150 invited to attend personally. YouCat --Youth Catechism-- released. Weird problems w/ Italian version!
• China: Vatican Commission on China met this week. Cardinal Zen none too happy with approach of Propaganda Fide. Vatican message to Chinese Catholics.
• Egypt (et al): Samir K Samir on the Arab Spring (not optimistic, alas); influential imam opposes dialogue w/ Vatican because its worried about safety of Christians. See also Weigel on Christians in the Middle East.
• France: First session of the Court of the Gentiles. Pope's remarks linked above are great. One positive report. Reviews not so good, though? Can't recall where I saw a discussion that sounded a little disappointing.
• Ivory Coast: Catholics are being slaughtered there as civil war has broken out. Round-up here. 
• Mexico: Catholicism in decline. Are they leaving the Church or just moving here? These #s, if true, call into question the thesis that immigrants are swelling the Church's ranks here.
• Pakistan: The Pope met w/ Paul Bhatti, brother of slain Pakistani Christian politician Shabaz Bhatti; Christian village under attack.
• Spain: Churches attacked, prayer disrupted: Ground Zero in battle between Catholicism and relativism, say Weigel.
• US: Our UN delegation lies about the Vatican to coerce votes, attacks the Holy See, and Amb. Kmiec will resign rather than muck about with the State Dept. Seems they don't like him being Catholic. This is weird. You know that horrible story out of Philly? It seems 21 priests were stood down w/ no credible accusation against them.

And finally, God loves dogs. Have an intense and holy Passion Sunday & Holy Week!

Photo credit

Back To The Future

Paul Kengor has a few observations about the Democratic Party and Planned Parenthood. He cites Margaret Sanger's vision:

in the June 1935 edition of her flagship publication, Birth Control Review, in an article titled, "Birth Control in Russia," Sanger concluded:

Theoretically, there are no obstacles to birth control in Russia. It is accepted … on the grounds of health and human right…. [W]e could well take example from Russia, where there are no legal restrictions, no religious condemnation, and where birth control instruction is part of the regular welfare service of the government.

She later says this:

All the officials with whom I discussed the matter stated that as soon as the economic and social plans of Soviet Russia are realized, neither abortions nor contraception will be necessary or desired. A functioning Communistic society will assure the happiness of every child, and will assume the full responsibility for its welfare and education.

Well, okay, that was the hope (however utopian.)What actually happened, however was that the abortion rate skyrocketed. If we were indeed to learn something from the Russian experience, it might be that what you subsidize you get more of.

That's Not What We Mean By "Classless Society"

A few things about the President's speech on fiscal policy last Wednesday. Now that I've calmed down enough to read it, though I remain ticked off at his tacky abuse of Paul Ryan -- inviting him to attend, putting him in the front row, and then delivering a sustained and nasty attack on him: calling his Roadmap plan unAmerican and ungenerous, a plan to throw grandmas from the train. See, when I say "classless society," I mean equal opportunity for all, regardless of race, religion or family circumstance. Some of us appear to be confused about the term.

Stylistically, the usual. The Sophomores always have to toss in their comments about "coming together" and "journeying." Listening to excerpts on Wednesday, I was struck by something I noted in the Libya speech and in that town hall at Gamesa a few weeks ago. He tripped over his words an awful lot. He didn't sound confident: on the contrary, hesitant and ill-at-ease in delivery, like a guy who either doesn't really believe what he's saying or is unsure how the audience will take it.

He remains Opposite President, co-opting the vocabulary of Lincoln & Reagan while pushing the policies of Marx & Engels. This time, however, the opposites were in the speech itself.
He says of Paul Ryan & his roadmap, within a minute:

This vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America.  Ronald Reagan’s own budget director said, there’s nothing “serious” or “courageous” about this plan.  There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.  And I don't think there’s anything courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill.  That's not a vision of the America I know. 

And later, after laying out a scary vision in which the elderly, the handicapped and the poor are all out on the street for the benefit of Corporate Fat Cats he says:

even those Republicans I disagree with most strongly I believe are sincere about wanting to do right by their country.  We may disagree on our visions, but I truly believe they want to do the right thing.

Except for being unserious, cowardly, un-American and cruel. Gee, thanks. (And of course the very next night Obama told a room full of operatives that Ryan is "not on the level.") I don't want to hear diddly about civility from this man.

On similar lines, there's a whole portion at the end of the speech about how important debate is in a Democracy. He's absolutely right about this, for example:

This larger debate that we’re having -- this larger debate about the size and the role of government -- it has been with us since our founding days.  And during moments of great challenge and change, like the one that we’re living through now, the debate gets sharper and it gets more vigorous.  That’s not a bad thing.  In fact, it’s a good thing.  As a country that prizes both our individual freedom and our obligations to one another, this is one of the most important debates that we can have. 

He goes on and on in this vein, and then closes on the note that we have to get past "petty squabbling" and bickering and "come together." The coming together comes only after a vigorous debate, which gets squelched by calling it bickering....and by accusing the other guy of being merely mean.

As others have pointed out, the President's claims about the Ryan plan are false. He says the Repubs:

want to give people like me a $200,000 tax cut that’s paid for by asking 33 seniors each to pay $6,000 more in health costs.  That’s not right.

 It isn't true, either. The main Dem talking point -- that Ryan pays for tax cuts for the rich by gutting Medicare for people under 55 today-- is baloney:

"This is nothing but scare tactics," Ryan said at an event hosted by the economics think tank e21 on Thursday. Ryan explained that his proposal to lower tax rates would not be paid for by cutting Medicare but rather by nixing loopholes and deductions in the tax code.
"What we're saying is keep tax revenues where they are," Ryan said. "We're not talking about cutting taxes. We're talking about keeping taxes where they are and cleaning up the tax code: getting rid of loopholes and deductions, which by the way are enjoyed by the top [tax] rate filers, the people in the top two brackets, and lowering tax rates. A flatter system, a fairer system, a simpler system, one that is more internationally competitive."

As has also been noted elsewhere, the President has stooped to the tactic he told his own party a year ago not to use:

[W]e’re not going to be able to do anything about any of these entitlements if what we do is characterize whatever proposals are put out there as, ‘Well, you know, that’s—the other party’s being irresponsible. The other party is trying to hurt our senior citizens. That the other party is doing X, Y, Z.

But bollix on all that. What really gets my goat is this particular man presuming to be a champion of Down Syndrome children and the elderly against cold-hearted, mean-spirited Republicans:

Who are these 50 million Americans?  Many are somebody’s grandparents -- may be one of yours -- who wouldn’t be able to afford nursing home care without Medicaid.  Many are poor children.  Some are middle-class families who have children with autism or Down’s syndrome.  Some of these kids with disabilities are -- the disabilities are so severe that they require 24-hour care.  These are the Americans we’d be telling to fend for themselves.  

Give me a break! This is the most pro-abortion President in history. His side's "treatment" for Down's Syndrome sufferers is to abort them in utero. And at the very moment he is attacking Paul Ryan for hurting Seniors, he is advocating saving money on health care by refusing them treatment!

Here's the White House Fact Sheet released in conjunction with this speech. It includes this little goal:

Bend the long-term cost curve by setting a more ambitious target of holding Medicare cost growth per beneficiary to GDP per capita plus 0.5 percent beginning in 2018, through strengthening the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).

That would be "death panel" to you and me. Think I'm kidding? This will include:

• The President’s framework will strengthen IPAB to act as a backstop to the other Medicare reforms by ensuring that Medicare spending growth does not outpace our ability to pay for it over the long run, while improving the program and keeping Medicare beneficiaries’ premium growth under control. Specifically, it would:
• Set a new target of Medicare growth per beneficiary growing with GDP per capita plus 0.5 percent. This is consistent both with the reductions in projected Medicare spending since the Affordable Care Act was passed and the additional reforms the President is proposing.
• Give IPAB additional tools to improve the quality of care while reducing costs, including allowing it to promote value-based benefit designs that promote proven services like prevention without shifting costs to seniors.
• Give IPAB additional enforcement mechanisms such as an automatic sequester as a backstop for IPAB, Congress, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

In other words, they are already talking about per-beneficiary caps on spending, rationing care, and allowing the HHS secretary to decide that some people are too old or sick to be worth being paid for.

Republicans are being mean to Grandma. They're going to let her have exactly what she's been promised if she's already old, but for those of us 55 and under, they're going to spread some sacrifice around so that the safety net doesn't tear apart under the strain of the weight it's carrying.  We on the other hand are nice, we're going to euthanize her!

We Will Be Remembered In Spite Of Ourselves

Americans For Tax Reform And Boehner's CR

My eyes spin whenever numbers are crunched, so I have no opinion worth consulting, apart from being not too worried about a Continuing Resolution that will only carry us through September (or less). Far more important battles are looming.

For what it's worth, Americans For Tax Reform is defending Boehner on the Continuing Resolution, against....just about everyone.

the nit-picking on numbers is a result of conflation between how the government budgets and how it spends money.  The entire FY 2011 budget discussion has revolved around the government’s Budget Authority (BA), the permission given to government to spend money. Thus, the House-passed H.R.1 cut $61 billion in BA for the fiscal year, while H.R. 1473 cuts almost $40 billion.

Some are arguing now that because these cuts are not reflected in outlays, or the money that actually goes out the door, they are not “real.” This is not only disingenuous, it is totally ignorant of the way the federal government budgets.

What’s more, it is an entirely nonsensical conservative position to argue that rescinding permission to spend money does not equate to spending cuts. To reform the federal budget process, small government advocates need to address the way government spends money – as the process is driven by BA, and not outlays, it is unhelpful to discuss budget-cutting in terms of outlays. It is especially malevolent to do so now in the eleventh hour of the budget fight that has revolved entirely around a discussion of BA for FY 2011.

Don't take my word for it, but that does make the sudden revolt seem stupid.

Defund.

Shamelessly pinched from here.

Rallying The Troops

Hardee-har-har. The Veep is being mocked for dozing off during The Prez' speech this afternoon. But by my count, 3 of 5 people in this shot are dozing. Biden ain't the story here.



Paul Ryan's reaction is a bit more...animated.


He's pretty self-controlled though obviously angry. If I were in his shoes I'd be livid. The President invited him to attend a speech that was nothing more than an attack on his Road Map and on him personally: an act of unbelievable arrogance.

"I Had To Flog Myself To Read It"

Buckley on Ayn Rand, whose appeal continues to mystify me utterly: Nietzsche for Dummies. He quotes Whittaker Chambers' review in 1957 as saying his review of Atlas Shrugged that he'd never encountered anything so utterly devoid of goodness. Precisely.


Why anyone finds Rand to be an alternative to the State I cannot understand, as she is herself nothing but a totalitarian. Chambers has her number:

Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal. In addition, the mind which finds this tone natural to it shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: “To a gas chamber — go!”

She really believed this (as the last line of AS tells us), as witness what Buckley says about her refusal to go anywhere he was because he dared to disagree with her.

I would say the world in which we live: sterile, childless, post-Christian and under the tyranny of "experts" is precisely what Atlas Shrugged asked for....though not perhaps what she thought it would look like.

Out Of Touch With Families

Many folks have remarked on the President's rather arrogant answer to a fellow who asked him about gas prices at a town hall in Pennsylvania, but to my mind they missed the most interesting aspect of the exchange.

I sometimes wonder if Conservative bloggers actually listen to the cuts they remark on, since the context is often missing --and on this clip, at least one guy I read said the Prez had no reason to assume the questioner drove a big car. But he did: the guy told him so, and said it was because he had a big family....and that's what's more interesting....the President's reaction to his and another guy's family sizes.

It's not arrogant or disapproving or judgmental...just stunned. He's never heard of such a thing. He was perfectly nice about it, but the fact that some families truly can't fit in a prius is not on his radar screen in any way. That says more to me about the ivory tower he's in than the gas remark. The relevant remarks begin about 2:20.  Curtsy: Jill Stanek

Says The Man Who Smooches Castro

Carter says religious leaders discriminate against women.

Former President Jimmy Carter says much of the discrimination and abuse suffered by women around the world is attributable to a belief "that women are inferior in the eyes of God."
Carter said such teachings by "leaders in Christianity, Islam and other religions" allow men to beat their wives and deny women their fundamental rights as human beings.

I think you can leave the Christians out of that, thank you very much. I grant there are some traditionalists who are a little too selective in their reading of Ephesians 5, focusing on wifely "submission" to husbands while ignoring the husbands giving up their lives in service to their wives part. (Elsewhere described as "mutual submission in the Lord.") But that is in no way of the same order as the Islamic consideration of woman as of the devil.

If Carter imagines himself to be defending women against radical Islam and feels he needs to toss Christianity in there so as not to inflame the hyper-sensitive, fine, but where do you get off talking human rights at all after locking lips with the Castro brothers for days and days, with nary a word about political prisoners in Cuba? 

I guess Marxism fares better because it represses men and women equally?

Two Futures

So I Guess That Settles It

Dear Formerly Single Gal: It is definitively a spork, and not a foon.

Shamelessly pinched from here.

What If We Seized All The Wealth?