"Catholic Confusion at the Very Top"

. . . is the title of a provocative feature article by David Palm in the latest issue of the New Oxford Review (March 2004), pp. 18-30. The most recent online issue posted at the NOR website is July/August 2003, so you won't find it there, but the entire article has been published online (with NOR permission) by the Seattle Catholic (April 6, 2004).

Palm is a thoughtful convert to the Catholic Faith from an Evangelical background, who is widely published in such Catholic apologetics venues as This Rock, The Catholic World Report, and Coming Home Network Journal. In this article Palm gently but firmly overcomes his own resistance to face the fact of confusion emanating from the hierarchy of the Church itself. Examining positions that the Vatican has taken on such matters as the death penalty, the question of universalism (whether all are saved), honoring heretics, praying with pagans, and rewarding liturgical abuse, Palm draws some painful conclusions:

Truly, these are confusing times in the Catholic Church. I have tried to clarify that the source of at least some of this confusion is found in a place that many orthodox Catholics have been unwilling to examine. Until relatively recently, I shared this resistance. I expect there will be those who proclaim that this is all just "Pope bashing." It is not. Any annoyance with what I've written should at least be tempered by a realistic evaluation of the concrete examples that have been presented (and, unfortunately, a great many more could be).

I would very much like to see our good friends at The Lidless Eye Inquisition and other related weblogs devoted to responding to "traditionalist" concerns take up the issues raised by Palm in a spirit of fraternal concern. While I personally have little doubt that nearly every dubium raised by Palm could be met with some plausible justification or rationale-- from the Pope's willingness to pray with pagans at Assisi to the introduction of female altar servers-- I nevertheless share Palm's profound concern that (1) clarity is being lost, (2) without clarity there can be no conviction, (3) without conviction there can be no vision, and (4) without a vision, people perish.

Senators for Moloch worship, human sacrifice

• Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)
  
• Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
  
• Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
  
• Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI)
  
• Sen. Jon S. Corzine (D-NJ)
  
• Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL)
  
• Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
  
• Sen. James F. Jeffords (I-VT)
  
• Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)
  
• Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
  
• Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI)
  
• Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT)
  
• Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD)
  
• Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)
  
• Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-MD)
  
• Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
  
• Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR).

(Thanks to Times Against Humanity.)

On May 1, 2004, good friend Sinka adds:

Also tsk, tsk. You are missing at least two hapless persons under the Moloch Worship List: Senator James Jeffords (VT) and U.S. Rep. Bernard Sanders (VT)--The first miss I can understand, he is the wormy type who shuns the light seeking instead his dark closets, bloody turncoat that he is. The second though, accchhh. Now here's a chap who will always misinterpret the light as public confidence in and support of his right to preach the ways of the darkside in the hopes of converting the youth of all ages.

Ja wohl, Sinka!

Hollywood actors for a culture of death

More than 100 Hollywood celebrities signed their names in support of the recent pro-abortion rally in Washington, DC, and some were there in person. The entertainers who supported the abortion march include:

Christina Aguilera, Ashley Judd, Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Bacon, Alec Baldwin, Ted Turner, Cindy Crawford, Jane Fonda, Bea Arthur, Ed Asner, Amy Brenneman, Stockard Channing, Glenn Close, Sheryl Crow, Tyne Daly, Laura Dern, Ellen DeGeneres, Fran Drescher, Kirsten Dunst, Melissa Etheridge, Morgan Fairchild, Calista Flockhart, Janeane Garofalo, Whoopi Goldberg, Ed Harris, Salma Hayek, Marg Helgenberger, Helen Hunt, Natalie Maines, Ewan McGregor, Sarah McLachlan, Demi Moore, Julianne Moore, Alanis Morissette, Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen, Cybill Shepherd, Julia Stiles, Sharon Stone, Amber Tamblyn, Charlize Theron, Uma Thurman, Kathleen Turner, Bradley Whitford, and many more. (Source.)

Alasdair MacIntyre on the New York Times

". . . that parish magazine of affluent and self-congratulatory liberal enlightenment . . ." (Whose Justice? Which Rationality? p. 5)

Satan's march: we've come a long way, baby!

The world is changed. I feel it in the earth. I feel it in the water. I smell it in the air. Much that once was, is lost. For none now lives who remembers it.

Senator John Kerry, like most Americans, used to oppose abortion. In 1972, he called it "tragic" that abortion should ever be regarded as "alternative birth control" or an "alternative to having a child." But we has a nation, with Senator Kerry, have come a long way. We have elected presidents, like Bill Clinton, worthy of our self-serving and relativist values. We get the presidents, I suppose, whom we deserve. The last election was a measure of just how divided our country now is, and the fact that George W. Bush's opponent in this fall's presidential election is a Democrat of Senator John Kerry's "stalwart integrity," and the fact that a large percentage of our citizenry is actually willing to support this man, is a measure, again, of just how far we've come.

The recent March for Women's Lies in Washington, DC, is a clear wake-up call to anyone still complacently asnooze. Did you look at those thousands streaming up Pennsylvania Avenue, waving coat hangers, faces contorted, mouthing angry epithets at those survivors of abortion who stood as silent witnesses to their regret and remorse at having killed their unborn children?

Do you hear that pounding at the gates? Battering rams sound the end of a dying age. The Philistines are upon us. I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hystirical, naked . . . What sphinx of concrete and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch!

Did you see the full-page frontal rally photographs in the papers, the straight shots down Pennsylvania Avenue, of the kind you have never seen since 1973 in the annual March for Life every January 22nd in Washington, DC? Who sponsored this Kill-'Em-Young Rally?

EVENT SPONSORS:

• Planned Parenthood Racist Eugenics Federation
  
• National Infantacide Rights League
  
• National Organization for FemiNazis
  
• Anti-Catholic Liberties Union
  
• Black Women's Genocide Imperative
  
• National Latina Institute for Reproductive Sterilization
  
• Feminist Insanity
  
• Demonic National Committee
  
• National Socialist Public Radio
  
• New York Self-Congratulatory Times
  
• Hollywood Actors for a Cultue of Death
  
• Capital Hill Senators for Moloch

Garrison Keillor on Kerry

• John Kerry has two problems. People outside the northeast don't know who he is, and people inside the northeast do.
  
  
• John Kerry walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Why the long face?"
  
  
• What is John Kerry's favorite breakfast place?
  The Waffle House.
  What does he order?
  Flip-flop flapjacks.

(Courtesy of Prairie Home Companion, April 17, 2004)

Why can't Episcopalians play chess?

They can't tell the difference between a bishop and a queen.

(Courtesy of Garrison Keillor on Prairie Home Companion, April 17, 2004)

More on satan's march

from Straight Guy with the Catholic Eye, Matt C. Abbott.

Priests as superheroes?

Ever wonder how celibate Roman Catholic priests resemble Spiderman? (Chris Suellentrop has the answer in the MSN Slate Culturebox: Sex and the Single Hero: Spider-Man's vow of celibacy.)

The demonic element in pro-choice antipathies

Commenting on the unwelcome presence of abortion survivors and opponents at the recent pro-abortion rally in DC, Christopher writes: "Apparently nothing upsets 'pro-choicers' more than the implication by those who made the choice that it was wrong and they regret it" (Against the Grain). From the account of the march he cites from one of the witnesses, their reception was nothing short of malicious:

The March, in three words: "viciously, mercilessly abusive." The amount of verbal aggression and abuse hurled at me personally, by women and men, of all ages, for carrying the I REGRET MY ABORTION sign, well, I thought that I was ready for it. . . .

. . . But nothing prepared me for literally mobs of livid people screaming the most hateful vicious snide things at me personally. We were spit on, and had an egg hurled at us from the marchers. There were two groups of Satanists. And the signs. Like the guy who held a handmade sign, "BABY KILLER" with an arrow pointed downward at himself. If not for the riot police, we would have been mobbed. There was that much viciousness. People broke through the riot police's invisible line just to come up in my face and hurl insulting words. There were not enough police to form a complete line, so they would run up to me, shout out their abuse, and run back before the policeman or woman got to stop him/her. And I said nothing to anyone, just held my sign. (source.)

How's that for a glimpse into the usually unseen world, usually hidden from our view but often swirling about us waiting for an opportunity to break through! Demonic.

Kerry follows Democratic tradition of flip-flopping on abortion

Here's where John Kerry stood on abortion in 1972, when he gave the following statement to the Lowell (Massachusetts) Sun when first running for congress:

It's a tragic day in the lives of everybody when abortion is looked on as an alternative to birth control or as an alternative to having a child. I think that's wrong. It should be the very last thing if it has to be anything, and I say that not just because I'm opposed to abortion but because I think that's common sense. (Source.)

This is hardly the position of Senator Kerry today, who openly flaunts his disdain for the pro-life position of his own Catholic Church and served as a key-note speaker at last weekend's March for Women's Lies (a.k.a. the pro-abortion Kill-'Em-Young Rally) in Washington, DC. Furthermore, this constitutes simply the latest installment in the not so proud Democratic tradition of Al Gore, Bill Bradley, Jesse Jackson, Ted Kennedy, Dick Gephart, and many others who have flip-flopped their abortion positions in order to support baby-killer rights when it seemed pragmatic while running for national office. (Thanks for the tip from Jeff on Catholic(?) Kerry Watch.)

Whether the Reformation was a blunder?

The Anglican author of the blog, Pontifications, agonizes over the prospect of conversion to Rome (and the recent wrenching conversion of friends to Rome), in the wake of a post that provoked wide commentary over "Whether the Reformation was a blunder?"

The origins of totalitarian democracy

The blog, A Saintly Salmagundi's recent juxtaposition of a CNS news services photograph of last weekend's pro-abortion ralley in Washington, DC, with a photograph of a Nazi rally in WWII Germany (click beneath the picture of the DC rally, where it says: Have you seen something like this before?) in a recent post, provoked me to write a piece which I mailed to "Catholics for Free Choice." Thanks for the inspiration Salmagundi!

J.L. Talmon, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, once wrote a book entitled THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIAN DEMOCRACY. It was a study of J.J. Rousseau's SOCIAL CONTRACT, among other things. But a salient point made by Talmon is that much that passes for freedom of thought, democracy, and toleration today is deeply imbued with presuppositions of totalitarianism. In fact, nothing is so utterly repressive and destructive of freedom and toleration than the extension of toleration to the very framework of values that furnishes the foundation for freedom and toleration itself. In fact, Michael Polanyi (in his book, Meaning) makes a similar point when he addresses the point where "the inconsistency of liberalism based on philosophic doubt" becomes apparent:

Freedom of thought is destroyed by the extension of doubt to the field of traditional ideas, which includes the basis for freedom of thought.

This is what happens when Catholics extend their personal preferences for free choice to include matters over which the Catholic Church has clearly declared that it has no authority to change its position-- such as abortion. The Catholic Church claims less authority than any other Christian church in the world; that is why it is so conservative. Mainline Protestant churches often feel free to change "the deposit of faith" by going along with whatever happens to be the majority opinion of the times. This is why G.K. Chesterton could declare: "the Catholic Church is the only thing which saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his own age." J.J. Rousseau, of course, that champion of French egalitarianism and freedom who became, in effect, the antecedent spokesman for the yet future French Revolution, was so tolerant as to declare of those who could not give their assent to the majority opinion in a democracy: "They must be COMPELLED to be free." Which gives new and poignant meaning to the term "freedom." When does "free choice" become a choice for a "freedom" that undermines the freedom of many others and becomes a repressive regime of tyranny?

Original sin in Central Park, NY

Two gay lovers, naked as jaybirds and apparently as crazy as looneybirds, climbed a tree in Central Park yesterday - and put on a bizarre four-hour show that drew cops and hundreds of gawkers. (From The Front Page Daily News, and courtesy of the Saintly Salmagundi)

Church impotent, Church effeminate

Ever since Leon J. Podles wrote The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity, I've wondered about this question. We used to hear about the earthly Church Militant and the heavenly Church Triumphant. Now what we've got, if Podles is to be believed, is something closer to the Church Effeminate. Even the American sociologist, Robert Bellah, in Habits of the Heart, sounded an alarm about the "therapeutic" atmosphere of much of American Christianity.

The most recent contribution to the discussion is Doug Giles' essay, "Where Are God's Warriors and Wild Men?" Excerpts:

Have you ever asked yourself, "Why do churches today look more like the lingerie department at Wal-Mart, than a battalion of men poised to plunder the powers of darkness?"

So why do most men avoid church? Here's the veneer stripped-away answer: going to church for the majority of men is an exercise in unwanted effeminacy.

What can be done?

Put an end to preaching by cheesy, whiny, quiche eating, preening Nancy Boys ... right now! It freaks us meat eaters out. Get it? Hire a pastor who throws off a good John Wayne vibe instead of that Boy George feeling.

[Get rid of] the saccharine-laced slush we have had to sing ad nauseam et infinitum for the last, oh, 100 years.

(Thanks to Sean Fagan for the Giles tip)