Is the Tea Party a 'Social Justice' Movement?

Timothy Dalrymple, "Is the Tea Party a 'Social Justice' Movement?" (Patheos, June 16, 2010).

[Hat tip to J.M.]

Pretty funny: "Brother Fairy" and "Fr. Randy"

Damian Thompson, "Catholic priest blogger's latest comic creation: a traditionalist 'fairy'" (Telegraph.co.uk, June 11, 2010).

[Hat tip to J.M.]

Back again after short technical absence

My modem crashed and died last Friday, and I've just finished successfully installing the new one, which arrived yesterday by UPS and took a couple of days to install since I don't use any of the standard operating systems. In any case, it's good to be back, and I apologize for any inconvenience in moderating comments.

April 11, 2009: the day God laughed

I always get a nice lift from this YouTube clip of that most unlikely talent, Susan Magdalane Boyle, turning the tables on her judges when she first appeared as a contestant on the reality TV program, Britain's Got Talent, on April 11, 2009, singing "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Misérables. You can see the judges and members of the audience rolling their eyes in disdain as she walks on stage and begins answering the judges' questions in the brief preliminary interview. Truth be told, she looks the part of a born loser. Then, out of the mouth of this homely matron, God brings forth voice and song such as nobody expects. There is a moment of stunned silence, then the entire audience explodes in applause. God laughs. If we had any sense at all, we should weep.

Boyle still lives in the family home, a four-bedroom council house, with her 10-year-old cat, Pebbles. Her father died in the 1990s, and her siblings had left home. Boyle never married, and she dedicated herself to care for her ageing mother until she died in 2007 at the age of 91. Boyle has a reputation for modesty and propriety, admitting during her first appearance on Britain's Got Talent that she had "never been married, never been kissed". A neighbour reported that when Bridget Boyle died, her daughter "wouldn't come out for three or four days or answer the door or phone."

Boyle is Catholic and sang in her church choir at her church in Blackburn, West Lothian, Scotland. Boyle remains active as a volunteer at her church, visiting elderly members of the congregation in their homes.["Susan Boyle," Wikipedia]

Her first album, Susan Boyle: I Dreamed a Dream,was released in November 2009 and debuted as the number one best-selling CD on charts around the globe.

Suicide in foreign policy

The unraveling foreign policy of the current administration could have been scripted, chapter-by-chapter, from James Burnham's Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism (1964; rpt. Regnery Publishing, 1985).

David P. Goldman, in "The Morality of Self-Interest" (First Things, May, 2010), writes:

The value of Augustinian realism might be more easily seen in its absence. In the tenure of two administrations, our foreign policy has passed from adolescence -- the Wilsonian fancy that America could remake the world in its own image -- to senile renunciation of world leadership, without ever having passed through maturity. Instead of the uncertain meticulous work of containing failed states, nurturing prospective allies, and deterring prospective enemies, Washington has swung from a utopian effort to fix the world, to a baffling pretense that the world somehow will fix itself if only America leaves it alone. The result is a self-inflicted wound to America's world standing -- to the anguish of our allies and the undisguised contempt of our adversaries.

... President Obama's doctrine is the self-liquidation of American influence -- an uprecedented and, on reflection, astonishing position for an American leader.

American foreign policy baffles the rest of the world. Look, for example, at the damage to America's world position during March and April of this year. First came the Obama administration's staged quarrel with Israel over a routine zoning decision for homes in northeastern Jerusalem, which is a neighborhood where Arabs had never lived and an area which every proposal for the division of Jerusalem has assigned to the Israeli side. Over thirty years, American administrations have avoided making an issue of Israel's claim to an undivided Jerusalem; Obama broke with that precedent in a staged crisis. The White House threatened Israel with an imposed solution, something no previous administration had undertaken, and threatened to demand that Israel abandon nuclear weapons.

Then came the United States' cosmetic nuclear-arms reduction agreement with Russia, after canceling the Bush administration's promise to base antimissiel systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. On receiving this diplomatic reward, Russia staged a coup in Kyrgyzstan that erased the American-sponsored "Tulip Revolution" of 2005 and left the air resupply of American forces in Afghanistan subject to Russian good will. There were valid objections to the Bush proposal, but Obama removed it without exacting anything in return from Russia, and he did so in a way that undercut the position of American allies.

And then, in a third blunder, the president indicated that he might not prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear arms, when he told a television interviewer, "The history of the Iranian regime, like the North Koreans regime, is that, you know, you apply international pressure on these countries, sometimes they choose to change behavior, sometimes they don't." To the extent that America's desultory efforts to impose sanctions on Iran had credibility, Obama lost it the moment he began to speak.

There is a great deal more in this article worth reading on the concept of Augustinian realism, and how this differs from other versions of "realism" in foreign policy. What is inevitably highlighted is something like the attitude of liberalism Burnham must have had in mind -- a confident self-congratulatory smugness that if all right-thinking (liberal) administrations would simply implement policies in keeping with the religious ideals secular Western Enlightenment (and, what is the same, really, Postmodern) values, then everyone will start being nice to us and to everyone else in the New World Order. (Another cold one with them chips, Lutheran?)

Prince Charles: "Follow Islamic way to save the world"

Rebecca English, "'Follow the Islamic way to save the world,' Prince Charles urges environmentalists" (Mail Online, June 10, 2010): "Prince Charles yesterday urged the world to follow Islamic 'spiritual principles' in order to protect the environment.... Charles, who is a practising Christian and will become the head of the Church of England when he succeeds to the throne, spoke in depth about his own study of the Koran which, he said, tells its followers that there is 'no separation between man and nature' and says we must always live within our environment's limits.

The prince was speaking to an audience of scholars at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies - which attempts to encourage a better understanding of the culture and civilisation of the religion."

A bit of national inspiration ...

While Obama does his damnest to prevent a window for freedom in the Mideast, Europe, Central America and East Asia, a former marine 'stuns crowd' at Georgia Tea Party event with an inspiring surprise.

[Hat tip to S.K.]

Hamas not interested in humanitarian aid?

According to CNN:

Israel has attempted to deliver humanitarian aid from an international flotilla to Gaza, but Hamas -- which controls the territory -- has refused to accept the cargo, the Israel Defense Forces said Wednesday.

Palestinian sources confirmed that trucks that arrived from Israel at the Rafah terminal at the Israel-Gaza border were barred from delivering the aid.

Ra'ed Fatooh, in charge of the crossings, and Jamal Khudari, head of a committee against the Gaza blockade, said Israel must release all flotilla detainees and that it will be accepted in the territory only by the Free Gaza Movement people who organized the flotilla.

See also "Who cares about Gazans? Not the flotilla!" (TEOZ, June 4,2010). Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and even Syria, by contrast, are cooperating with Israel to distribute humanitarian aide to Gaza. The politicization of aid by the flotilla is clarified by a recent report in Der Spiegel.

So sorry, Mr. President: when it rains, it pours

White House Press Queen, Helen Thomas, tells Jews to get out of Israel, go back to Poland and Germany

Related: Charles Krauthammer, "Those Troublesome Jews" (The Washington Post, June 4, 2010).

Another absence from Metro-Detroit, if not Blogsville

I am writing this from NC where we are attending the ordination and first Mass of a friend of the family. I solicit your prayers for the young man, whose name is David Miller, soon to be Fr. Miller, from the Diocese of Charlotte. He is one of twelve children. Great family.

Very Interesting, Mr. Blago. Do tell.

"Washington Insider: Obama Member of Chicago Gay Man’s Club" (Fellowship of the Minds, May 27, 2010).

June: the Sacred Heart vs. LGBT Pride Month

A.

On June 1, 2008, at his weekly Angelus address, Pope Benedict XVI urged Catholics "to renew, in this month of June, their devotion to the Heart of Jesus." June is traditionally dedicated to the Sacred Heart, a symbol, the Holy Father explained, "of the Christian faith that is especially dear, to ordinary people as well as to mystics and theologians, because it expresses the 'good news' of love in a simple and authentic way, encapsulating the mystery of Incarnation and Redemption." (Scott P. Richert, "June, The Month of the Sacred Heart," About.com, June 1, 2010).

B.

For the second year in a row, the Obama administration has proclaimed June "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month."

From the White House Statement:

Much work remains to fulfill our Nation's promise of equal justice under law for LGBT Americans. That is why we must give committed gay couples the same rights and responsibilities afforded to any married couple, and repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. We must protect the rights of LGBT families by securing their adoption rights, ending employment discrimination against LGBT Americans, and ensuring Federal employees receive equal benefits. We must create safer schools so all our children may learn in a supportive environment. I am also committed to ending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" so patriotic LGBT Americans can serve openly in our military, and I am working with the Congress and our military leadership to accomplish that goal.

(Terrence McKeegan, J.D., "White House Declares June LGBT Pride Month," C-FAM, UN Blog, June 1, 2010).

And this leads to ... this? (Your reaction, cynical or sympathetic, will serve as a litmus of your relative innocence or contamination by the media-reinforced public PC mentality.)

Catholic Friends of Israel on Gaza Freedom Flotilla

Christopher Blosser, "Israel Confronts the Gaza Freedom Flotilla" (Catholic Friends of Israel, June 1, 2010) -- a continuously updated report and commentary offering an alternative to leftist anti-Israeli accounts.

Update:

Flotilla Choir presents: We Con the World

Related: Charles Krauthammer, "Those Troublesome Jews" (The Washington Post, June 4, 2010).

Benedict's criticism of Modernist Biblical Hermeneutic

Jordanes, "One must then bear in mind the living tradition of the whole Church" (Rorate Caeli, May 31, 2010):

... where the hermeneutics of faith, indicated by Dei Verbum, disappear, another type of hermeneutics appears of necessity, a secularized, positivistic hermeneutics, whose fundamental key is the certitude that the Divine does not appear in human history.

Pope Benedict XVI, address to the Fourteenth General Congregation of the Synod of Bishops (14 Oct. 2008)

Catholic World Report: Summorum Pontificum Benedict's gift to the young

Editor of the top-drawer conservative publication, Catholic World Report, George Neumayr, has come out with a remarkable editorial in the June, 2010, issue of the magazine, entitled "Ever Ancient, Ever New: Summorum Pontificum and the Young." Neumayr begins:

Pope Benedict's critics had hoped Summorum Pontificum would disappear without a trace. It hasn't. His apostolic constitution authorizing wider use of the Traditional Latin Mass continues to bear fruit, some of it annoyingly visible to these critics.

Far from just a sop thrown to aging traditionalists, as some liberal bishops cast it, Summorum Pontificum has proven popular with the young. As Pope Benedict noted in its accompanying letter, the Traditional Latin Mass is old in origin but new in appeal: "young persons too have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction, and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Sacrifice particularly suited to them."

An illustration of this appeared on April 24 in Washington, DC, when more than 3,500 people -- many of them children, teens, college students, and young families -- filed into the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception for a Pontifical Solemn High Mass that lasted two and a half hours.

According to The Paulus Institute, which sponsored the event and scheduled it to mark the fifth anniversary of the Holy Father's pontificate, it was the first Tridentine Mass offered at the Shrine's altar since 1965.

To Catholic liberals, whom Neumayr describes as presiding over seminaries that look like "ghost towns" and preaching "to pews that are almost empty," the vision of Catholic youth flocking to the Tridentine Mass in Washington was enough to trigger apoplexy. One of its publications, US Catholic (which I once dishonored in a review entitled, "What I Learned from U.S. Catholic Magazine," in This Rock) lashed out at the Mass. Usually an avid proponent of liturgies "relevant" to the young, it found this one disheartening. In fact, liberal heads exploded. Bryan Cones, managing editor of the magazine, could not restrain himself, blurting out in a blog post, "A ridiculous mountain of red silk" (US Catholic, April 29, 2010):

I've been holding back all week for fear of stirring up a hornet's nest, but my only response to the Latin Mass celebrated last Saturday at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington has to be: Really? Seriously? (You can read the fawning CNS coverage of "ancient chants and pomp, splendor and majesty" here.)

Who thought it was a good idea to dress up a bishop in a cappa magna and parade him around triumphantly in celebration of what Bishop Edward Slattery of Tulsa, Oklahoma referred to as "the fifth anniversary of the ascension of Joseph Ratzinger to the throne of Peter" while the church is in such a profound crisis of confidence in its leadership? Ascension to the throne, eh? Are we speaking of the "servant of the servants of God" here or the Emperor Augustus?

... If we're going to get stuck on a particular period in church history and its liturgy, does it have to be the 16th century? It was hardly a time of--how to put it?--liturgical modesty, much less the "noble simplicity" that is, after all, the historical hallmark of the Roman rite. Unless His Excellency is going to wrap that cappa magna around his waist and start washing feet, as Jesus did in John's gospel.

"Noble simplicity." Did you catch that? As if your local Gather-Us-In AmChurch group fest is an incarnation of that! And "stuck in the 16th century," did he say? As if the Gregorian Mass, called "Tridentine" in honor of Pius V's reform at the time of the Council of Trent, were created out of whole cloth by Pius V. (What do they teach in Church history classes these days! Or did I forget: do they teach that anymore?)

It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if the managing editor of US Catholic, which bills itself as being "In conversation with American Catholics," had conversed with any of the young people after the Mass. As Neumayr remarks, "What he snidely dismisses as absurd pomp, they see as powerful and otherworldly symbolism, which is far more 'relevant' to their search for God than anything contained in the secularized and insipid 'youth' liturgies US Catholic normally touts."

But if Cones is reluctant about accepting their testimony, suggests Neumayr, "he could always talk to John Allen," chief religion reporter for the similarly-left-leaning National Catholic Reporter. To his credit, Allen typically follows the evidence wherever it leads, even if it opposes the leftist prejudices of his paper, as one of his recent reports about the general traditinalism of practicing young Catholics does, in "American Catholic demographics and the future of ministry" (NPR, April 30, 2010):

[M]inisters of the Catholic future will be increasingly “evangelical.” The broad mass of twenty- and thirty-something Catholics today may be thoroughly secularized, but there is an inner core of faithful and practicing young Catholics who are the ones most likely to pursue a vocation to the priesthood or religious life, or to be most interested in making a career in the church as a lay person. The future leaders of Catholicism in America will come from this inner core. By now there’s a considerable body of data about these “millennial Catholics,” and the consistent finding is that they’re more traditional in their attitudes and practices than the “Vatican II” generation they’re replacing. These younger Catholics are attracted to traditional spiritual practices such as Eucharistic adoration and Marian piety; they have a generally positive attitude towards authority, especially the papacy; and they’re less inclined to be critical of church teaching....

Neumayr concludes his editorial with these observations:

Self-consciously "relevant" Catholicism as on display at US Catholic, with its pinched and hostile attitude to valuable traditions from the past and its feeble imitation of the world, has proven irrelevant to young Catholics who have left the church, and boring and off-putting to the ones who stay. They want bread, not stones, and Pope Benedict offers them that substance.

It was assumed that Pope Benedict principally wrote Summorum Pontificum for the old. He actually wrote it more for the young. He wanted them to know what many of their CCD teachers never taught them -- that "what earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred for us too."