Critical Issues

There can be no lasting prosperity without a moral foundation in law

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Quote of the Day for Monday, January 24th, 2011:

Indiana Congressman Mike Pence addressing the rallying assembly this morning before beginning the annual Walk for Life in Washington DC:

We gather to mark the 38th anniversary of the worst Supreme Court decision since Dred Scott. And we gather today in the shadow of a new pro-life majority on Capitol Hill. And we will keep gathering until Roe v. Wade is sent to the ash heap of history where it belongs.

These are trying times in the life of this nation. Our economy is struggling and our national government is awash in a sea of debt. Amidst these struggles, some would have us focus our energies on jobs and spending.

We must not remain silent when great moral battles are being waged. Those who would have us ignore the battle being fought over life have forgotten the lessons of history. As in the days of a house divided, America’s darkest moments have come when economic arguments trumped moral principles.

A nation that will not stand for life will not stand for long. You know there can be no lasting prosperity without a moral foundation in law.

And as to focusing on spending, I agree. Let’s start by denying all federal funding for abortion at home and abroad. The largest abortion provider in America should not also be the largest recipient of federal funding under Title X. The time has come to deny any and all federal funding to Planned Parenthood of America.

Thank you for braving the cold one more time and saying to the heart of our national government, ‘We will fight on for life. We will fight on for the unborn and the brokenhearted.’

And we will fight on because we know, as Jefferson said, ‘God who gave us life gave us liberty…and God is just and his justice cannot sleep forever.’

And we know this: We will win this fight because the deepest desire of every mother and father is to protect their child, at any cost, even with the own lives and that truth cannot be erased.

The American people will make this right. We will restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law. Because every American knows in their heart, this is the greatest nation on earth because we acknowledge the God-given right to liberty, the pursuit of happiness and the unalienable right to life.

Yes, there was a huge, non-violent protest gathering for social justice in the nation’s capitol today. Who woulda thunk?

I like Pence, but he gets something very wrong here: Roe V. Wade was not the worst Supreme Court decision since Dred Scott: it far exceeds Dred Scott in evil, both in intent and in application.

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Religion & Society

It is only human to be exhilarated if one thinks one is riding on the crest of the future.

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Quote of the Day for Saturday, January 22nd, 2011:

Sociologist Peter L. Berger, concluding his 1970 book, A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural:

I would like to emphasize once more that anyone who approaches religion with an interest in its possible truth, rather than in this or that aspect of its social manifestations, would do well to cultivate a measure of indifference in the matter of empirical prognoses. History brings out certain questions of truth, makes certain answers more or less accessible, constructs and disintegrates plausibility structures. But the historical  course of the question about transcendence cannot, of itself, answer the question. It is only human to be exhilarated if one thinks one is riding on the crest of the future. All too often, however, such exhilaration gives way to the sobering recognition that what looked like a mighty wave of history was only a marginal eddy in the stream of events. For the theologian, if not for the social scientist, I would therefore suggest a moratorium on the anxious query as to just who it is that has modernity by the short hair. Theology must begin and end with the question of truth.

I’m spending quite a bit of time lately pondering what went wrong in Western society during the 1960s – 1970s, especially as it relates to the breakdowns which the spirit of the age precipitated in the Catholic Church. It’s a complicated matter. Reading popular theologians of the period tends to put my stomach in knots, and Berger here captures much of the reason why: the politicization of even theology in an academic environment infatuated with modern ideas of history, in what Henri de Lubac, near the end of his Splendor of the Church, identified as “the most subversive temptation” within the Church: an anthropocentrism that loses sight of the transcendent goal of the Christian faith. Theology, indeed, must begin and end with the question of the truth, not with inquiries into fashionable notions of either “relevance,” “inevitability,” or social utility.

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Politics & Economics

Of the increasingly common bad habit of local politicians to resort to cosmic sermonizing…

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Quote of the Day for Friday, January 21st, 2011:

Victor David Hanson, writing yesterday for National Review Online, on when sermonizing on real or imagined global issues trumps the exercise of competence for local officials – or camouflages its absence:

Dupnik is a good example of the increasingly common bad habit of local politicians to resort to cosmic sermonizing when more mundane challenges go unaddressed. In Dupnik’s case, it is hard to monitor all the nuts like Loughner in the sheriff’s department files to ensure they don’t get guns and bullets and pop up at political events, but apparently far easier to deflect subsequent responsibility by sounding off on political issues.

I really didn’t intend to keep bringing up this Tucson fiasco, but Hanson makes some great points in this short article using this and other examples, and I love the “cosmic sermonizing” imagery – I just had to quote it.

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Critical Issues

They couldn’t help noticing the disgusting conditions, the dazed patients, the discarded fetuses

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Quote of the Day for Thursday, January 20, 2011:

From page 8 of the Grand Jury report of the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania concerning the long-unfettered illegal practices of abortionist Kermit B. Gosnell, M.D:

Pennsylvania is not a third-world country. There were several oversight agencies that stumbled upon and should have shut down Kermit Gosnell long ago. But none of them did, not even after Karnamaya Mongar’s death. In the end, Gosnell was only caught by accident, when police raided his offices to seize evidence of his illegal prescription selling. Once law enforcement agents went in, they couldn’t help noticing the disgusting conditions, the dazed patients, the discarded fetuses. That is why the complete regulatory collapse that occurred here is so inexcusable. It should have taken only one look.

This is a gruesome report, which paints a picture of both bureaucratic incompetence and political depravity, while managing to miss the more fundamental causes: crass indifference and moral imbecility. Gosnell – and accomplices – is being charged with murdering viable babies following botched abortions, among other charges.

However, from the first paragraphs, it was evident to me that this is a poorly written, and not particularly well reasoned, document – high on dramatic flair, and full of disturbing facts, but lacking precision. I imagine that’s not uncommon for Grand Jury reports, but this one includes such luminous idiocy as this:

We believe, given the manner in which Gosnell operated, that he killed the vast majority of babies that he aborted after 24 weeks. (pg. 115)

The idiocy is by no means limited to the jurors. The report includes quotes (e.g. pg. 101) from “assistants” who made a living for years in this detestable operation, and who themselves personally participated in and performed the post-natal murderous act with scissors they all called “snipping,” and yet who took photographs of a 34-week old baby after he’d been killed, because they were disturbed by the killing, since the baby was so big. So big! Well, thank God for occasional bigness, I suppose.

A society that can routinely look the other way while evil like this gets perpetrated is a society in its own death throes.

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Politics & Economics

The western world is an end state: the comfy couch at the end of history

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Quote of the Day for Wednesday, January 19th, 2011:

Walter Russell Mead, writing at The American Interest on the on-going decline – and largely unconsidered future – of the structures underpinning modern life in the West:

The word ‘developed’ contains an important assumption: that a historical process known as development (closely related to modernization — another problematic word) not only exists throughout the world, it culminates in a known end which has already been reached.  This word implies that countries like France, Canada and our own happy United States of America have reached the end of history, the summit of human achievement, stable and enduring arrangements in political economy that are unlikely to change much going forward.

Nothing could be stupider or less historically defensible than this belief, yet few assumptions are more widespread among the world’s intelligentsia, planners and, especially, bureaucrats.  Technological change has never been moving faster or with greater force than it is today as the implications of one revolution in IT after another work themselves out; the foundations of the global economic and political order are being shaken by the dramatic rise of new powers. Yet somehow many of us believe that the  western world is an end state: the comfy couch at the end of history rather than the launching pad for another great, disruptive leap into the unknown.

This is a smart essay from Mead that points out just how backward-looking the whole current debate over political economy is in America – and elsewhere. So-called conservatives are, of course, routinely accused of backwards, illiberal thinking (even though, at least in America, those known as politically conservative are almost uniformly advocating classically liberal policy). But even the left, with their pretentions of “progressing,” are not trying to move toward anything new, but are only doubling-down on a project that is already exhausted, even when viewed in the most favorable light.

Mead sees the best path forward in a new incarnation of liberalism. I suppose he’s right, at least at the white-board level, but the devil, as they say, is in the details. I think his view that the current state of liberalism is a continuing bulwark against socialism defies the growing evidence of the mainstreaming of a leftist politics of resentment, and the continued hostility to religion in public life emanating from the liberal institutions of influence (media, academia). Not to mention the ever-creeping scope of government. Maybe I’m misreading him. Then again, maybe he should similarly look at the evolution of socialism. Nonetheless, he’s a good read.

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Religion & Society

The smoking gun we’ve been looking for

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Quote of the Day for Tuesday, January 18th, 2011:

Priestcraft hysteria breaking out in an AP article by Shawn Pogatchnik, as published on Boston.com this evening, relating to the release today of a 1997 letter allegedly implicating the Vatican in a “cover up” of clerical sexual abuse:

Any bishops who tried to impose punishments outside the confines of canon law would face the "highly embarrassing" position of having their actions overturned on appeal in Rome, [Apostolic Nuncio Luciano Storero] wrote.

Catholic officials in Ireland and the Vatican declined AP requests to comment on the letter, which RTE said it received from an Irish bishop.

Child-abuse activists in Ireland said the 1997 letter demonstrates that the protection of pedophile priests from criminal investigation was not only sanctioned by Vatican leaders but ordered by them.

"The letter is of huge international significance, because it shows that the Vatican’s intention is to prevent reporting of abuse to criminal authorities. And if that instruction applied here, it applied everywhere," said Colm O’Gorman, director of the Irish chapter of human rights watchdog Amnesty International.

Joelle Casteix, a director of U.S. advocacy group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, described the letter as "the smoking gun we’ve been looking for."

Sigh. It really is sad – pathetic even – watching this persistent group of “watchdogs” trying to nail the Catholic Church – and especially the Vatican. Casteix is right, though: a smoking gun is exactly what they’ve been looking for, and looking for… If it wouldn’t be such a cynical thought on my part, I’d have to wonder if they wouldn’t in fact be delighted to find one.

Bishops, of course, have no punishments to impose outside the confines of canon law, so I’m not sure the poor writer of this article has even the most basic grasp of the subject he is trying to enlighten the world on. But the sources he quotes (anonymously or not) should really have been given the opportunity to read the “smoking gun” letter before they embarrassed themselves with this kind of silly hyperbole – not to mention slander. I mean, I can only assume they didn’t read it, right?

Not that a mere dissociation of fact from accusation will get in the way of another round of priestcraft hysteria, mind you… But isn’t it interesting that all the publications I found promoting this story this evening printed small jpegs of the letter, instead of actually printing the contents of the letter? Hmmm… [Update: The New York Times included a full-sized, readable PDF of the letter with their article – credit to them, but they did dust off that magical “defrock” vocabulary, so I call that a wash ;-)]

The reality is that the letter advised the bishops that certain specifics of their proposed policy did not comply with existing canon law, which therefore might well produce the “highly embarrassing” result of a guilty priest having his canonical (not criminal!) punishment overturned on appeal, on account of a technicality. This is roughly the equivalent of a high court advising a legislature that a piece of draft legislation was unconstitutional and unenforceable, and therefore needed to be reworked in order to achieve its goal. Smoking gun… Oy vey!

Since left-wing tools like the AP only want to provide the public “information” that will agitate them to support the “progressive” agenda (like, discrediting the Catholic Church), the rest of us who care about life on this tender planet need to somehow pick up the slack. Here, then, is the actual text of the letter, for anyone more interested in facts than hysteria:

Dublin, 31 January 1997

Strictly Confidential

Your Excellency,

The Congregation for the Clergy has attentively studied the complex question of sexual abuse of minors by clerics and the document entitled "Child Sexual Abuse: Framework for a Church Response”, published by the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Advisory Committee.

The Congregation wishes to emphasize the need for this document to conform to the canonical norms presently in force.

The text, however, contains "procedures and dispositions which appear contrary to canonical discipline and which, if applied, could invalidate the acts of the same Bishops who are attempting to put a stop to these problems. If such procedures were to be followed by the Bishops and there were cases of eventual hierarchical recourse lodged at the Holy See, the results could be highly embarrassing and detrimental to those same Diocesan authorities.

In particular, the situation of ‘mandatory reporting’ gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and a canonical nature".

Since the policies on sexual abuse in the English speaking world exhibit many of the same characteristics and procedures, the Congregation is involved in a global study of them. At the appropriate time, with the collaboration of the interested Episcopal Conferences and in dialogue with them, the Congregation will not be remiss in establishing some concrete directives with regard to these Policies.

For these reasons and because the above mentioned text is not an official document of the Episcopal Conference but merely a study document, I am directed to inform the individual Bishops of Ireland of the preoccupations the Congregation in its regard, underlining that in the sad cases of accusations of sexual abuse by clerics, the procedures established by the Code of Canon Law must be meticulously followed under pain of invalidity of the acts involved if the priest so punished were to make hierarchical recourse against his Bishop.

Asking you to kindly let me know of the safe receipt of this letter and with the assurance of my cordial regard, I am

Yours sincerely in Christ,

+Luciano Storero

Apostolic Nuncio

To: the Members of the Irish Episcopal Conference

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Media & Culture

Such dangerous behavior could be triggered by any number of future public events

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Quote of the Day for Monday, January 17th, 2011:

Call it a parting shot (!) on the Great Tucson Media Meltdown of 2011. This is former Washington Times Editor in Chief, Tony Blankley, commenting over at National Review Online:

Because even though the Tucson shooting did not cause the media irresponsibility — this time — continued media misreporting and bias is now so ingrained that such dangerous behavior could be triggered by any number of future public events.

Now is the time for us all to pause, and consider how the working members of the media can live with their biased liberalism — yet not allow it to permeate their work and undercut the political dialogue and political process that is the foundation of our democracy.

Indeed, it may well be the case that the now institutional failure of the mainstream media to do its job with reasonable objectivity may itself be the cause of the incivility in political dialogue. Without an objective umpire in the political debate, the players are forced to shout louder and louder so that their interpretation of the state of play on the field can be heard by the fans. But political incivility is a topic for some future discussion. Now is the moment for the nation assembled to try to come to terms with the tragic failure of the media to report objectively about political incivility.

As incomprehensible as this insight undoubtedly is to most of the educated class in our country, I couldn’t agree more with Blankley’s observation that the truly important lesson the nation should be taking from the tragedy in Tucson is the threat to sound public order posed by the depraved state of the mainstream media – the gatekeepers of public opinion. I take it as given that Blankley is mocking his compatriots here with his foray into the silly-world of fretting over “incivility,” but I also assume that his overarching assertion is serious. He’s damn right.

In particular, he’s right about the media’s role as umpire. This is likewise one of the reasons why a just order requires that  the state limit its activity in commerce, education, healthcare, and every other sphere that is not strictly governmental: when the arbiter has a stake in outcomes, the process is severely compromised and invariably corrupted, and there is no place left for the wronged to seek redress using institutional means. That spells trouble.

The Fourth Estate wields far too much power in modern society for good men and women to give silent assent to its moral decay. We seriously need to have a public discussion in this country about the grave state of the mass media.

HT to Ed Morrisey over at HotAir.com

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Media & Culture

Almost 1,700 people had clicked that they “like” “General Rachid Ammar President”

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Quote of the Day for Sunday, January 16, 2011:

From the New York Times’ World News desk, in an article on the evolving – or devolving – political situation in Tunisia, following the sudden departure of long-entrenched President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali:

On Saturday afternoon, there were some signs that General Ammar himself may now have an eye on politics. On Facebook, a staging ground of the street revolt, almost 1,700 people had clicked that they “like” a Web page named “General Rachid Ammar President” and emblazoned with his official photographs.

While it’s encouraging that the unrest and ensuing power vacuum in Tunis have resulted in levels of violence that have managed to remain below the point of full-fledged conflagration – so far – the idea of Facebook “like” clicks being used as any kind of measuring stick of political legitimacy just strikes me as bizarre. Somehow, I think John Locke must be rolling over in his grave. I don’t see how this ends well.

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Politics & Economics

That sometimes frustrating, sometimes contentious, but always necessary and never-ending process to form a more perfect union

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Quote of the Day for Thursday, January 13th, 2011:

President Barack Obama, from his address yesterday at the memorial service for those killed in the Tucson shooting:

In George and Dot, in Dorwan and Mavy, we sense the abiding love we have for our own husbands, our own wives, our own life partners. Phyllis – she’s our mom or grandma; Gabe our brother or son. In Judge Roll, we recognize not only a man who prized his family and doing his job well, but also a man who embodied America’s fidelity to the law. In Gabby, we see a reflection of our public spiritedness, that desire to participate in that sometimes frustrating, sometimes contentious, but always necessary and never-ending process to form a more perfect union.

And in Christina…in Christina we see all of our children. So curious, so trusting, so energetic and full of magic.

So deserving of our love.

And so deserving of our good example. If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let’s make sure it’s worthy of those we have lost. Let’s make sure it’s not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness that drifts away with the next news cycle.

In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, a tip of the hat this morning to President Obama for his deft handing of the Tucson Media Meltdown. It was gratifying and heartening to see that he saw fit to quell the circus unobtrusively, while honoring the dead, the wounded, and the heroes involved in the tragedy.

I’m only half surprised by his approach, as his tenure seems to be building his character. If this had happened two years ago, I honestly don’t think he would have risen above the fray like this, as he persistently displayed a penchant for perpetual campaigning and partisanship. In this address, he sounds presidential to me for the first time.

Like so many Catholics, I pray for the president at Mass every day, and while I still despise his political agenda, it almost feels rewarding to see him able to discern that there is more to leadership than power. I’m proud of him for the first time since he took office.

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Politics & Economics

Vicious charges made by people who claimed to be criticizing viciousness

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Quote of the Day for Wednesday, January 12th, 2011:

New York Times columnist David Brooks, in a too-rare moment of lucidity, commenting Monday on the despicable liberal media spin on the Giffords shooting:

Keith Olbermann demanded a Palin repudiation and the founder of the Daily Kos wrote on Twitter: “Mission Accomplished, Sarah Palin.” Others argued that the killing was fostered by a political climate of hate.

These accusations — that political actors contributed to the murder of 6 people, including a 9-year-old girl — are extremely grave. … They were vicious charges made by people who claimed to be criticizing viciousness.

Yet such is the state of things. … We have a news media with a strong distaste for Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement, and this seemed like a golden opportunity to tarnish them. …

I have no love for Sarah Palin, and I like to think I’m committed to civil discourse. But the political opportunism occasioned by this tragedy has ranged from the completely irrelevant to the shamelessly irresponsible.

I think Brooks misses the Left’s sly assault via this tragedy on the 1st Amendment, but I have to give him credit for bucking the mob of his fellows, and doing it early, before the backlash from an offended public – if this was published in the grey lady Monday, it must have been written no later than Sunday night. Besides, the aspect he instead focuses on is at least equally important, and he hits the nail on the head in terms of the viciousness involved. I don’t know how some of these people sleep at night…

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