The Silence of the Lambs.

Among other things, John Podhoretz notes that Kerry's invocation of the President's National Guard service is stupid:

ABC reporter Brian Ross uncovered the 33-year-old interview. But Kerry tried to blame the controversy on George W. Bush instead: "This is a controversy that the Republicans are pushing," he raged, "and this comes from a president and a Republican Party that can't even answer whether or not he showed up for duty in the National Guard. I'm not going to stand for it."

Kerry mentioned Bush's National Guard service not once, but twice, during his five minutes with Charlie Gibson. So now we have the Democratic candidate for president himself making the accusation that the president of the United States was a deserter.

You don't have to be a Bush fan to think this is spectacularly stupid. The issue isn't Bush or his campaign. The issue is Kerry and a series of statements he made on the record in the media dating back more than 30 years. Trying to change the topic to Bush's service simply smacks of cornered desperation.

And that is Kerry's great weakness as a candidate - a weakness that will be hard for him to overcome, because it appears to be a character trait. The man who said "I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it" is a man filled with the conviction that he can talk himself out of a tough situation.

Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks that Kerry's attack on the "deserter" issue is mean-spirited and lame. But the odd thing is that this attack is largely unnoticed by the media. There have been no sly insinuations that Kerry is engaging in slander or the "politics of attack.' We don't hear an invocation of the "before the election" rule under which political issues are laundered by winning an election. In short, Kerry is being given the benefit of a looser standard of conduct than a Republican would have received.

And is it any wonder why Kerry commits gaffe after gaffe?

Media Bias Alert.

The Ranting Prof pionts out that the New York Times chose to juxtapose Pat Tillman's death against that of a discharged homesless veteran. Obviously, we can't celebrate the sacrifice of brave men without that postmodernist angle, but, I wonder, did the Times have a story entitled "While Thousands March for Abortion, One Woman has a Different Perspective"?

Probably not.

Taranto's "Roe Effect"?

The Corner has this post about Roseanna Arquette:

She wasn’t at the march yesterday (unless I missed her), but Andrew Breitbart and Mark Ebner have a similar story in their book Hollywood Interrupted. In the October 1985 issue of Playboy, actress Rosanna Arquette answered a question about whether or not she had ever had an abortion. She replied: “Well, as a matter of fact, yes. And my mother went to have an abortion when she was pregnant with me. I mean, she was on her way, and then the nurse told her to go out through the back door because the place got raided and the doctor got arrested because it was illegal….”

So, if there had been no raid, there would have been no Toto song, no "Desperately Seeking Susan," maybe no Madonna film career, no deep love that only a mother can give to a helpless infant....

In a snide moment, one might say that we would have been better off without some of this history, but even those events - and I'm obviously thinking of Madonna - make up some part of our shared memory.

For our hard core, hard right friends.

Enough pussy footing around with linguini-spined libs and tapioca-brained moderates. We're fed up with that "compassionate conservativism" nonsense. We're looking for a real man of action. That's why in 2004, we're supporting Lord Vader for President!!

Responsa from the Holocaust.

Columnist Jeff Jacoby describes what sounds like an incredible book.

If you liked Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" you're going to love "Angels and Demons" - and then you should be kept away from sharp objects because you might run with them.

Bill Cork is not impressed with the research or scholarship in "Angels and Demons." I like his point that Brown believes that English is a "pure language" which explains why his occultist conspirators do their occultic conspiratorial rituals in English.

Ha, that's rich. Everyone knows that English is English because (a) the influence of the Danish language in the Danelaw caused the shearing off of gender cases, which makes studying other languages such a pain, (b) English was further distorted by the long period of Norman French ascendancy when approximately 40% of the words we use today entered the language, usually in a very class specific manner which is why there are "cows" in the field but we eat "beef" (Anglo-saxon peasants grew the "cows"; Norman lords ate the "beef") and (c) another 40% of modern words are borrowed from other languages.

Here's my my previous post on the Da Vinci Code.

Prediction - after spending a year ignoring the multinational nature of the Coalition, the press will now play up the withdrawal of members of that multinational coalition.

Poland is withdrawing from Iraq.

Still better than our French and German "allies."

Suppressed political science research.

Blogosferics links to research that indicates that the Republican candidate for governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, was torpedoed by racism. Jindal is the son of immigrants from India and the data indicates that he lost votes in those areas of Louisiana which provided stronger support for the racist David Duke.

Of course, don't expect to hear to ever hear this election used as an example of the need to have a dialogue about race. Since it was a Republican who was tanked, it just doesn't count. But Blogosferic's point that racism lurks on the Left as well as the Right is absolutely correct, and I will extend that point by noting that, like anti-semitism, it will survive on the Left long after it becomes extinct on the Right because of the careful way that the Left ignores the beam in its eye.

Adorable Fuzzball calls for "Death to Americans."

Continuing the project of shining the light on Michael "Why Couldn't More Republicans have been Murdered on 9/11" Moore, please read Moore's current missive to the cockroach element of American society. It contains gems like:

First, can we stop the Orwellian language and start using the proper names for things? Those are not “contractors” in Iraq. They are not there to fix a roof or to pour concrete in a driveway. They are MERCENARIES and SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE. They are there for the money, and the money is very good if you live long enough to spend it.

Well, to paraphrase Heinlein, there are two kinds of soldieres in the world - slave soldiers and soldiers who fight because they're free to do so. By that standard, all American soldiers are MERCENARIES and SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE.

Likewise:

The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win. Get it, Mr. Bush?

And after they win, do we stand cheering by when they start to gas more Kurd towns like they did in the past? Or is that just another egg that had to get scrambled to make the omelette of progressivism in the tradition of the ethnic cleansing of ethnic Chinese perpetrated by the racist Communist Vietnamese government which was made possible by idealistic anti-war activists like John F. Kerry, Jane Fonda and the rest.

Remember, though, that Moore was the prophet who accurately predicted "payback Tuesday" when the Dems would sweep the congressional elections and put his gross bulk behind the Wesley Clark juggernaut.

What a poltroon.

American soldiers in Afghanistan respond to Andy Rooney

Isn't the internet great? Posturing liberal "humor-writer" previously known for long thought pieces on annoying refrigerator magnets can pen a series of rhetorical questions for American troops and actually get a response within a week.

Santificarnos has moved to a newer, sharper site.

Here's the new address.

For all your apostacy tracking needs.

Christopher at Ratzingerblog has Kerrywatch up and running.

John F. Kerry is, of course, entitled to call himself a Catholic and be a fervent proponent of abortion. He can do whatever he wants in the privacy of his conscience and, for that matter, no one is likely to set up an Inquisition to track his private votes.

On the other hand, Kerry isn't entitled to assert that being a fervent proponent of abortion is a position that is acceptable within the teachings of the Catholic church. His public and outspoken position is the problem for a reason having everything to do with "scandal" and very little to do with "private conscience." When Kerry elevates himself to a level comparable to that of the magisterium in disputing the fixed two-thousand year old position of the Catholic church that abortion is murder, then he is clearly moving into the territory of scandal.

Consider this recent Ellen Goodman column:

What next? Will we have a political reporter to cover John Forbes Kerry at each Sunday Mass from now to November? Will there be a Holy Communion beat? A wafer watch?

One of the more unseemly stories of the Easter weekend hovered around the controversy over Kerry and Catholicism. The intra-church debates about whether a pro-choice, pro-civil union Kerry could consider himself a good Catholic ratcheted up into a public spectacle about whether he would step up to the altar and whether a priest would offer him the sacrament.

The whole thing, fumed Frances Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice, turned us into a nation of "eucharistic Peeping Toms": "I hope the bishops are satisfied that the sacraments of the church are now the subject of a media frenzy."

Of course, anyone who's ever been to the Paulist Center on Beacon Hill where Kerry worships had little doubt he would be welcomed by a community that "expresses the good news of Jesus in a contemporary society." But ever since the primaries, there has been a conservative rumble from parish to Web log about whether Kerry is a good enough Catholic to be president.

Goodman, of course, reaches for Frances Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice who has been given the opportunity recently to utter misleading nonsense. Putting aside Kissling's claim that the Church in neutral on the subject of whether a politician can support unfettered abortion, or infanticide for that matter, neither Kissling nor Goodman appear to understand what the role the Eucharist - the "waifer" in Goodman's trivializing vernacular - plays in the Church's self-understanding.

And, honestly, it's not easy to understand. My Communio group opened with the story of one member's daughter's Episcopalian fiance receiving communion in a Catholic church. Although we know that this inconsistent with Catholicism's understanding of the Eucharist celebration, but it seems somehow uncharitable to point out the inappropriateness of this behavior when the poor fellow simply wants to blend in with his new family.

Ironically, the Communio article we read was Michael Figura's "The Eucharist as Sacramental Incarnation" which examined the patristic understanding of the Eucharist. With respect to the Kerry issue - and the issue of the member's daughter's fiance, I found this passage illuminating:

The bread and wine do not symbolozie only Christ's Incarnation (Body and Blood) and Passion; they also stand for the Christian people. The bread, baked from many grains, and the wine, pressed from many gapes, represent the people who have become one in Christ (citations omitted) But this unity of the Church is not simply an effect of the Eucharist; the celebration of the Eucharist itself already presupposes it. Just as for Cyprian there is no salvation outside the Church (citations omitted), there is no valid Eucharist outside the Church, for example in the schismatic or heretical communities.

The key phrase was, "But this unity of the Church is not simply an effect of the Eucharist; the celebration of the Eucharist itself already presupposes it. "

As a matter of history, this is exactly correct. Historically, the Eucharistic celebration was the great symbol of unity and unifier of the Christian people. Unlike the "one time is enough for a lifetime" rite of Baptism, the Eucharistic celebration occurred regularly and required a continual reaffirmation of beliefs. Whether one was an Ebionite, a Marcionite, a Donatist or Orthodox was determined by who one was in communion with, which meant where one could take communion.

The difference between these earlier communions seems academic and sterile today. What, for heaven's sake, is a Marcionite? Well, among other things, Marcionites believed in the existence of two Gods. The God of Jesus, who was loving and the God of the Old Testament, who was the evil creator of the physical world. Jews, under the Marcionite view of things, were Satan's people since they worshipped the God of the Old Testament.

Now if anyone thinks that the Marcionite view is a mere academic curio, consider the trajectory of history in light of the sorry history of anti-semitism we've seen in a world that didn't consider Jews to be literally worshippers of Satan.

Determining the limits of communion clearly has had serious consequences over deep historical time.

Now, to bring it back to John F. Kerry, is the public support of abortion an issue whose dimension precludes the unity that the Eucharist presupposes? After all, there's nothing in abortion that offends any of the historic creeds.

On the other hand, we live in a new era. For over a hundred years, we've lived in an era that easily accepts the idea that human beings are malleable things that can be sculpted to serve social needs. Millions upon millions of humans have been murdered so that the Communist or National Socialist state could achieve utopia. In the West, the defining ideology has established that the highest goal of society and its individual members is the quest for pleasure and self-fulfillment, to the extent of assuring mother's that their right to self fulfillment trumps the right of people to live.

And now we're at the beginning of the age of cloning and genetic engineering. What exactly will place breaks on mothers and fathers achieving self-fulfillment through "designer babies?"

From that perpective, there may be less unity between those who view humans as ontologically unique and those who believe that one human may be used as an ends to another's self-fulfillment than there is between my friend's daughter's Episcopalian fiance and her Catholic daughter. From that perspective, Kerry's coincidental baptism doesn't put him in union with a Church that affirms that humans are special at all moments of their existence.

That's it. Once the dames perfect cloning all of us XY chromosome types are on the evolutionary trash heap.

Zinken - an anthropology blog - reports that "young female chimpanzees outlearn their brothers" which "echo[es] learning differences seen in human girls and boys."

Hah, women won't take over until they can consume mass quantities of alcohol and prove their immortality by driving at excessive rates of speed.

Oh.... right.

Never mind.

In the grand tradition of artists who provide nuanced apologies for Stalinist mass murderers...

...Consider Oliver Stone and his apology for the sincerity of Fidel Castro as denomstrated in this interview in which Stone explains that an "interview" of Cuban prisoners allowed him to learn the truth of the Cuban criminal justice system:

OS: Let me give you the background. He obviously set it up overnight. It was in that spirit that he said, "Ask whatever you want. I'm sitting here. I want to hear it too. I want to hear what they're thinking." He let me run the tribunal, so to speak.

ALB: But Cuba's leader for life is sitting in front of these guys who are facing life in prison, and you're asking them, "Are you well treated in prison?" Did you think they could honestly answer that question?

OS: If they were being horribly mistreated, then I don't know that they could be worse mistreated [afterward].

ALB: So in other words, you think they thought this was their best shot to air grievances? Rather than that if they did speak candidly, there'd be hell to pay when they got back to prison?

OS: I must say, you're really picturing a Stalinist state. It doesn't feel that way. You can always find horrible prisons if you go to any country in Central America.

ALB: Did you go to the prisons in Cuba?

OS: No, I didn't.

ALB: So you don't know if they're any different than, say, the prisons in Honduras then?

OS: I think that those prisoners are being honest.

"You're really picturing a Stalinist state???" "It doesn't feel that way???"

When has a sympathetic intellectual or artist ever felt "that way" in any Stalinist state?

The essential truth of Zen Budhism is not "every man for himself."

Likewise, Secret Agent Man masterfully fisks a Newsweek article devoted to defending John Kerry's claim that the essential truth of Catholicism is "my ego and the current zeitgeist describe eternal truth."

FYI, Fresno

Victor Davis Hanson will be on the Ray Appleton show on KMJ on Friday.

You're welcome.

The sweet, sweet stirrings of that most ethereal emotion - schadenfreude - fills my soul.

Liberal radio net Air America kicked off the air in Chicago and Los Angeles for kiting a check.

No homeless and no widows during Clinton years.

Media Research Center notes the absence of media interest in widows of terrorist attacks prior to this year:

For weeks now, the networks have celebrated a very selective set of widows to dish out their anti-Bush outrage, and ignored the families who support President Bush. On the day of Rice’s testimony, NBC and then MSNBC championed four women known as the "Jersey Girls," who uniformly hate Bush, especially Kristen Breitweiser, who has coldly and routinely declared that 3,000 Americans were "murdered on Bush’s watch."


Meanwhile, a Nexis search quickly shows that NBC has aired no news story with the words "widow" and the U.S.S. Cole, where terrorists killed 17 Americans in 2000. NBC aired no news story with the words "widow" and the embassy in Kenya, where terrorists killed 12 Americans in 1998. NBC aired no news story with the words "widow" and the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, where terrorists killed 19 Americans in 1996. These grieving families have never been given a nationwide TV platform on NBC to express their opinions on how the Clinton administration handled investigations of those incidents.

I saw one of the widows on MSNBC last night. She insinuated that Attorney General Ashcroft and his family were warned not to fly on September 11 and she wanted to get to the bottom of who was responsible for 9/11.

I don't know about the first part, but I'm pretty sure that the answer to the second part is "Islamofascist terrorists."

Patterico in the Daily Journal.

Bearflagger Patterico has caught the attention of the San Francisco Daily Journal, the Northern California legal rag. A new feature entitled "From the Blogs" features Patterico's post on the application of the Three Strikes Law.

Way to go.

It's amazing what you can find with about 10 seconds of Google.

So long as you have an odd inspiration and nothing else to do.

Anyhow, I really like the Official R. Lee Ermey Website.

Now drop and give him twenty.

"I have a dream...."

And we're so close, so damned close. Our country actually has an accomplished female black National Security Advisor about whom the media remains studiously silent. No retrospective on barriers breached or sly insinuations about the base motives of those who would question her policy decisions.

I guess it helps that she's a Republican.

Then Democrat Bob Kerrey has to go and engage in pandering and CNN has to defrost Anita Hill to comment on Condaleezza Rice's performance. See also this Dennis Prager column.

When will those Democrats finally put these crude, outdated stereotypes behind them?

Not that I want to question Andy Rooney's patriotism...

....but isn't this exactly the kind of treasonous, subversive, poisonous propaganda that Nazi crapweasels had Lord Haw Haw broadcast to Allied troops during World War II?


God bless the First Amendment.

Good. I never could pronounce it anyhow.

Chicxulub meteor did not cause extinction of dinosaurs.

Apparently, dinosaurs were still stumping around the planet 300, 000 years after the impact. Scientists are now looking at another impact site.

But, really, what's the point? So, this really big meteorite didn't kill the dinosaurs. It was some other really big meteorite. Isn't the whole point, though, of the "nuclear winter by meteorite impact" theory that the ecological changes of really big meteorite impacts are worldwide and catastrophic?

Unless, of course, they're not. In which case, maybe the cause of the extinction is something other than a single meteorite impact.

Turin Shroud Discovery.

Face found on back of shroud.

What does it mean?

Better Living through Science Fiction - What if Bush had acted on the August 6 PDB?.

Suddenly it seems that political pundits have moved onto Harry Turtledove's turf by playing the "what-if" game of Alternate History with the POD ("point of departure") set for September 10, 2001, when George W. Bush listens to Dick Clarke and rounds up 19 moslem men on vague and nebulous grounds.

The outcome is a great political success for the enemies of George W. Bush.

Stromata envisions a future/past where Bush is impeached to be replaced by President Gephardt and a round of bombings at the Empire State and Sears building which were incited by Bush's "lawless" actions.


Greg Easterbrook likewise redacts history to include a Bush impeachment and the 44th President, Dick Cheney, promising to hand Condaleeza Rice over to the Hague for her involvement in the lawless invasion of Afghanistan.

Kathleen Parker has an invigorated Kerry campaign accepting victory from "Windows on the World, the elegant restaurant atop the World Trade Center's Tower One.

What a strange political world we live in today. The Left wants to have all the fun of playing both the strong, virile role and the sensitive, caring role. Yesterday I heard a caller to Washington Journal on the "Democrat" line both defend Clinton's virility by hawking his firing of cruise missiles at Osama's Afghanistan terror training camp and excoriate Bush for interning thirteen year olds at Gitmo.

Presumably, in the caller's worldview, there were no 13 year olds at the business end of Clinton's cruise missiles.

As every adult should know, political decisions involve difficult choices. Choices involve prudential judgments based on imperfect information. In the legal world, where corporate decisions are involved, the law will invoke the "business judgment rule" to prevent the second-guessing and micromanagement of disinterested fiduciary decions. So long as a corporate fiduciary - a director or an officer - has taken the effort to receive good information, and so long as the the fiduciary appears to be acting rationally, and so long as there is no obvious conflict of interest, the business judgment rule teaches that the decision can't be second-guessed merely because, in retrospect, a better course of action might have existed.

I think as Americans, we tend to give our elected officials a kind of "business judgment rule." I know that when Clinton launched cruise missiles against the Sudan and Afghanistan, I was willing to chalk up his actions as potentially being based on information that he had access to as the President, albeit the proximity to the impeachment vote and his testimony on sexual harassment brought up concerns about the "conflict of interest" issue.

But this perspective seems to be lost on the "adversary culture" of the Left. For them, Bush is to be castigated for "ignoring threats" and for "inciting hatred" against Moslems because either spin provides a poltical edge.

Consider for example, the "infamous" August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing ["PDB"] (via Donald Sensing) which was the cause celebre of the Rice interrogation. To hear the innuendo, the PDB must have been a real "smoking gun," and yet to read it is to be impressed by its shallowness. Honestly, it reads like a AP filler filed by a pool reporter. And the passage about the "potential hijacking of airplanes" says this:

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [deleted text] service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar' Abd aI-Rahman and other US-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

Note that the idea that Bin Laden desire to hijack an airplane is not "corroborated" and is classed as "more sensational." That's not exactly the kind of context that causes the mind to leap to a demand for immediate action.

Victor Davis Hanson observes that the capacity for internal criticism and correction is one of the traits which has made Western civilization so powerful. Certainly, an investigation into the failures before 9/11 is a worthwhile enterprise, but let's keep in mind that the real enemy is still out there.

Needless to say, but I'll say it anyhow, if this statement had been made by a Republican candidate for President, it would be Exhibit A in the case for that candidate's incompetence.

But the New York Times gives John F. Kerry a "do-over" in this statement:

Mr. Kerry became combative when told that some conservatives were criticizing him for being a Roman Catholic who supported policies, like abortion rights and same-sex unions, that are at odds with Catholic teaching.

"Who are they?" he demanded of his questioner. "Name them. Are they the same legislators who vote for the death penalty, which is in contravention of Catholic teaching?"

He added: "I'm not a church spokesman. I'm a legislator running for president. My oath is to uphold the Constitution of the United States in my public life. My oath privately between me and God was defined in the Catholic church by Pius XXIII and Pope Paul VI in the Vatican II, which allows for freedom of conscience for Catholics with respect to these choices, and that is exactly where I am. And it is separate. Our constitution separates church and state, and they should be reminded of that."

Mr. Kerry apparently meant John XXIII, as there is no Pius XXIII.

"Apparently" indeed.

Nice of the Times to give Kerry the benefit of the doubt.

Update: Alright, Man Without Qualities asks the very question I was too polite to ask. Just how dumb is Kerry not to have a grasp of the basic beliefs of the majority of citizens he purports to represent? I rather suspect that if I were an elected to the Senate from Utah I would care enough about my constituency to learn something about Mormonism, if only not to sound like a moron when I said something about the subject.

By the way, has anyone else noticed this weird habit that Kerry has of "dissing" the constituencies to which he nominally belongs, but sucking up to everyone else. For example, he shows up late to Mass wearing ski clothes, but there he is in a suit and tie to take communion in an AME church. Likewise, he serves 4 months in Vietnam and then trots back home to accuse his fellow veterans of war crimes.

There is some kind of weird pathology there. It's almost as if he thinks he's better than everyone else in the organizations of which he's a member.

TPOTC Insights

Cacciaguida - "defending the 12th Century since the 14th" - has a cartload. I like the observations about St. Simon of Cyrene. Cacciaguida has this to say:

It's a strange and brief friendship, but it changed Simon's life: how else explain St. Mark's obvious assumption that his readers will be so familiar with Simon's sons that he can identify Simon simply as "the father of Alexander and Rufus" (Mark 15:21)? St. Josemaria says:

Years later, Simon's sons, Christians by then, will be known and held in high esteem among their brothers in the faith. And it all started with this unexpected meeting with the Cross.

Interesting.

Three Strikes Initiative.

Patterico has some thoughts on why it would be profoundly unwise to enact the proposed amendment to Three Strikes.

Books for Iraq

Send a book to a soldier in Iraq.

Go n-aora maorlathaí míthrócaireach do bhall fearga!

Pronounced - guh NEE-ruh MWEER-lah-hee MEE-hro-kwih-ruhkh duh WAHL FA-ruh-guh.

It translates as "May a pitiless bureaucrat satirize your manly part."

It's obviously something that we've all been looking for - The Irish Curse Engine.

One of many useful items at Celt Digital - the Celtic World on the Web.

[Via Penner]

Eat a cow for Jesus.

Call me thin skinned, but I suspect that if this "Cow Pope" gimmick were made a "Cow Prophet," there would be outcries of insensitivity from somewhere.

[Via the Corner]

At the weird intersection of science fiction and reality.

Jerry Doyle from Babylon 5 has a talk radio show.

Next Year in Jerusalem.

Aaron shares his Passover plans.

If we can't trust Kerry when he has nothing more than his eternal destiny to consider, why should we trust him with nukes?

Can. 844 §2 - Whenever necessity requires or a genuine spiritual advantage commends it, and provided the danger of error or indifferentism is avoided, Christ's faithful for whom it is physically or morally impossible to approach a Catholic minister, may lawfully receive the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist and anointing of the sick from non-Catholic ministers in whose Churches these sacraments are valid.

Not that there's anything wrong with Methodists or Episcopalians. In fact, Kerry should just choose a church, cross the Tiber and honor his covenant with God and his co-religionists.

Kerry's actions presage several problems. One problem is that Kerry seems to publicly demonstrate exactly the indifferentism that Canon law warns against:

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry made a stop at a Catholic church during his Idaho vacation Sunday to attend Mass, loudly arriving 11 minutes late and wearing a ski suit.

According to a report in the American Spectator, a senior staff member in the Kerry Campaign said, "It was just a media-op. We set it up with some reporters that we knew were going to be there."

A further problem is that Kerry's behavior constitutes "scandal," defined as:

2284 Scandal is an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil. The person who gives scandal becomes his neighbor's tempter. He damages virtue and integrity; he may even draw his brother into spiritual death. Scandal is a grave offense if by deed or omission another is deliberately led into a grave offense.

2285 Scandal takes on a particular gravity by reason of the authority of those who cause it or the weakness of those who are scandalized. It prompted our Lord to utter this curse: "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea." (Mt 18:6; cf. I Cor 8:10-13.) Scandal is grave when given by those who by nature or office are obliged to teach and educate others. Jesus reproaches the scribes and Pharisees on this account: he likens them to wolves in sheep's clothing. (Cf. Mt 7:15.)

The final problem - one that should be a concern to every voter - is that Kerry doesn't seem to have anything greater than Kerry to which he feels a need to remain faithful.

Update: Christopher at Ratzinger Fan Club offers his perspective on the "Kerry scandal."

Second Update: This Slate essay argues that Kerry has to take "the piety" issue seriously and that his best option "may be talk proactively about how his Catholic faith has affected other parts of his life, like his commitment to helping the poor." This might explain Kerry's odd recent attack on Bush for having "faith but no works." [And isn't that just the most blatant attempt to inject sectarianism into the political dialogue in recent years?]


Bill Sulik points out that to the average Protestant, and in these post-catechetical days, I suspect many Catholics as well, the issue of Kerry flitting from church to church to take communion may seem to be no big deal. Bill underscores the issue of principle and character with an appropriate quote from Robert Bolt's A Man for all Seasons.

But, for any person for whom his religious confession is anything but a "media-op," it ought to be a big deal. A fundamental deal. Kerry has, inter alia, publicly affirmed his belief that the Eucharist is the body of Christ and that the Catholic Church was founded by Christ. The Passion of the Christ shows one reason why that's a fundamental point. Another reason is offered by Kerry's older brother in the Faith, St. Thomas More who was beheaded because he refused to compromise that Faith. It's not like anyone is asking Kerry to make such a commitment. It's not like anyone would expect him to.

I ran across this nifty site about St. Thomas More, which offers this:

Imagine if you will, a day grey and stormy. The wind is blowing chillingly, the skies are overcast, the sun has not been seen for hours. You look around you and see all this as fact! Now, imagine a powerful, wealthy man coming up to you and telling you that he will give you all the honors and glories of the world if you will just remove your coat, look upwards, and tell those standing around you that the day is clear and beautiful, the sun is shining and there isn't a cloud in the sky.

If you do as this man asks, you will have glory, honor, power and probably riches before you. But you will look like a liar and a fool to not only yourself but all those around you. The facts of the matter are painfully clear to you, you can, after all, see the obvious, but what is offered is very tempting. You stay silent, hoping that the fool of a rich man will go away and leave you alone, you don't want to have to choose between what you see as obvious truth and what this lunatic wants you to profess. But the lunatic presses for an answer. All around you people are telling you to give in, that they would in a heart beat. You hear people shouting out to you that the day is beautiful, just tell the man the day is beautiful. That's all you have to do, is tell one lie and all riches and power will be yours, you will have no more intergrity left of course and your word will have become meaningless if you sell it so cheaply, but others are telling you that you will be so rich none of it will matter....

What will you do?

Good question.

Passion Sunday

Yesterday was Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday is also known as "Passion Sunday" and during the Mass a very lengthy narrative of the Passion - from triumphant entry into Jerusalem to death on the cross - is read. The priest reads the passages for Christ. Since the congregation reads the lines from the mob and others, the laity is left with reading inspiring lines like "Crucify him" and "we want Barabas."

I'll confess that in prior years I have had a low key resentment of this tradition. It seemed to reinforce the division between the laity and the priesthood by reinforcing the sinful and corrupt nature of the laity. Obviously, I understand that the priest represents Christ in the Mass and I understand that Jesus' crucifixion was made necessary because of the sins of each of us, but I always had the vague feeling that the Palm Sunday mass was another instantiation of the Church of Peter making sure that the Church of Mary knew its place. After all, I had never really cried out for Barabas or shouted "crucify him." That Palm Sunday stuff was all make-believe.

Because of Mel Gibson's The Passion, I think that has all ended. When I watched the crowed before Pilate, I knew that I had a real kinship with them and that in the right time and place, I would have been standing there with them, my brothers. Is that intuition simply 40 years of post-Vatican II propaganda finally claiming a mind? Or is it that a deep layer of theology was triggered?

I don't know, but I think that Rabbi Spero in this essay makes many fair points, including:

Moreover, Christians did not see the movie the way some Jews feared they would. While Jews focused on the Jewish faces in the movie--Sanhedrin, high priests, the mob--the Christian audience focused on the countenance of Jesus. And whereas Jews saw a suffering Jesus they thought would provoke anger at Jews, Christians beheld a loving Savior willing to endure suffering so as to provide salvation. As with a mother drawn to the specific cry of her baby among many crying babies, Jews focused on Jews, negatively depicted, while Christians were entranced by the sacrifice of their kindred Jesus. It was as if each group saw a different movie.

American Christians viewing the film did so as a religious experience, akin to how Jews who sit down at a Passover seder focus on the message of redemption and liberation, not Egyptian culpability. In contrast Jews view the crucifixion as an historical event, making it thereby more analogous to post-Biblical sagas such as World War II where the Germans, the Nazis, are the focal point of blame. To Christians, therefore, the circumstances and actors are secondary to the divine message. It is not viewed as a duel between specific participants.

This is truly positive news from a broader social perspective.

From a narrowly individualistic perspective, I found myself reflecting on images from the movie as we went through the Passion narrative. The Agony in the Garden became real. The scourging became real. St. Simon of Cyrene became real. Peter's denial became real.

Christianity is a religion founded on a belief in the essential truth and goodnes of reality. The world is true and good because it was created by a True and Good God. Christianity does not subscribe to the idea that the perceived world is mara and that a person's greatest goal is to escape this world of illusion. For Christians there must be meaning in this world world because it exists, albeit finding that meaning may be beyond our present capacity since the world is wrapped in mystery.

Even so with the Passion. There must be meaning in the way the life and death of Jesus actually happened. Although the Redeemer could have been a truck driver in Petaluma who returned from the dead after a hit and run accident, and we would be making the sign of the automobile, that's not what happened. As Raymond Brown points out, the tendency to de-emphasize the life and Passion of Jesus in the face of the glory of the Resurrection, was the issue which probably split the Johanine community in the First Century. Because the Passion happened the way it did, there must be meaning in the way it happened.

Which is something to ponder, but not to solve since it like the world is enfolded by myster.

The Patriotism of siding with your nation's enemies.

In case you missed it, here is Michael Friedman's saved screen shot of the Daily Kos amazing spleen-venting diatribe in favor of the death of American "mercenaries" in Iraq. The Daily Kos is one of the leading leftist blogs on the internet, which has links to Democrat activists and candidates. The day after this post went up, Kos deleted it, but nothing is ever lost on the web.

Where does this bile come from? It is not mere tit for tat politics. It is not the leftist trope of "equivalence" transported from the conflict between totalitarian communism and democratic America reduced to the internecine squabbles between Reps and Dems. Reps and conservatives simply don't find joy, even schadenfreude, in the death of Americans in foreign conflicts. Witness, for example, Clinton's debacle in Mogadishu. I didn't hear any leading conservative express the thought that these "mercenaries" got what they deserved. And even during the clearly political use of force on the eve of the impeachment vote and Clinton's testimony on Monica, Republicans didn't say what was the truth, namely that Clinton was either erratic or timing military action for political advantage.

Where does this bile come from? Probably Vietnam. The left has been living off the myth of Vietnam - with its concealed premise that America was on the wrong side - for decades. Back in the 70s and 80s, I could argue for the morality of American involvement in Vietnam, usually to the unbelieving derision of my opponents. Now, however, arguing that America was involved in a noble cause, even if it was not in America's strategic interest, would be inconceivable.

But I have to side with Mona Charen on this one:

I will admit to being a sorehead about Vietnam. I'm one of those people who resents the fact that Kerry's side is so often portrayed as having been right in that terrible argument, when as we know, the fundamental struggle against communism was moral and honorable, whatever may be said about the advisability of putting American troops on the ground in that place (a decision taken not by Nixon, Kerry's nemesis, but by John F. Kennedy, Kerry's hero).

All true. All forgotten.

Moderns also forget the blithe assumption of the moral superiority of the "agrarian reformers" in Hanoi and the aftermath of their victory as described by Charen in this passage involving Dick Cavett and an opponent of Kerry:

Cavett attempted to remain neutral, but it was ultimately too much for him. Not only did he agree with Kerry, but O'Neill tried his patience by interrupting repeatedly. With barely concealed sarcasm, Cavett said: "Nobody believes that there will be a blood bath if we withdraw. That was a cliche we used to hear a lot. Neither of you believes that do you?" Kerry's answer was emblematic of the antiwar left. He said he thought it was a "baiting argument" by the pro-war side since "there'd be no interest on the part of the Vietnamese to start massacring people after people (the United States) had pulled out."

Following America's withdrawal and Congress' decision to cut off every penny for Southeast Asia, there was a terrible genocide in Cambodia, so terrible that it overshadows the horror of what befell Vietnam. Roughly 800,000 boat people chose to take their lives in their hands rather than remain in communist Vietnam. Some 65,000 were executed, and this does not include those who slowly starved in concentration camps.

If memory plays true, the only anti-war activist to admit that she was wrong about the aftermath of a Communist victory was Joan Baez.

It appears that slandering America and Americans generally means never having to say you're sorry.

Update:

Check out Keith Berry's take on the silence that Kos's statements have met among fellow leftists.

It looks like NPR may weather this onslaught after all.

Howard Kurtz sounds like he wants to be supportive of the fledgling liberal radio network, but the best he can come up with is stuff like:

With a preaching-to-the-converted tone, Franken ripped President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter ("a walking horror show," he called her), the target of several parodies in which the conservative commentator was portrayed -- in rather mean fashion -- as an ill-tempered, cursing, borderline racist.

Imagine that. Stuart Smally is "rather mean."

And:

A good radio show has strong pacing and a deft mixture of ideology, confrontation and humor. Franken's "Factor" was meandering and discursive, almost NPR-like, sounding more like someone shooting the breeze at a dinner party than trying to persuade listeners. The "bumpers" between segments were soft and Muzak-like. With Franken speaking in a relatively low voice, the self-proclaimed "Zero Spin Zone" sometimes sounded like a zero energy zone.

Ouch.

Showing respect to the complex issues arising from the "tragic conflict of life with life" and to the sensitivities of those Americans who believe that human identity doesn't begin at plus or minus five minutes after a baby's head exits the birth canal.

On the other hand, Planned Parenthood shows itself to be a bunch of sophomoric, humorless cretins.