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Bishops,
media views of “zero tolerance” create gap in perceptions (CNS)
new
“U.S. church leaders left a Vatican summit on clerical sex abuse
saying they felt encouraged to take new steps to curb such abuse and rein
in offenders. But they arrived home in the United States to a largely
negative reaction and headlines that read: ‘Cardinals Confront Sex
Abuse and Come Up Short,’ and ‘Vatican Summit Confounds, Angers.’
What happened? Why such a gulf between perceptions? One big reason was
confusion over the term ‘zero tolerance,’ especially in light
of a final communique by summit participants. Going into the meeting,
‘zero tolerance’ was a phrase used by bishops and dioceses to
describe the policy of removing from positions of ministry any priest
who has abused minors or who is facing a credible accusation. In effect,
the priest remains a priest, but he is out of a church job. The summit
communique introduced a new, even stronger potential punishment that may
be designed for priest-offenders: a quick procedure of forced laicization.
That means an abusive priest would not only be out of a job, he would
no longer be a priest. Unfortunately, many in the media never understood
the distinction.”
What
We’re Fighting For: We hold these truths to be self-evident. Let’s
start acting like it. (Brendan Miniter) new
“Now it’s time for Western culture to stand up again. Worries
about imperialism, especially cultural imperialism, should be cast off.
Global free trade isn’t imperialistic; it’s the spread of a
natural right, economic freedom. Demanding that a country respect its
people’s basic rights isn’t imperialistic, and neither is standing
for an unfettered media. No one wants to bring back colonial empires.
All cannot remain quiet on the Western front. The West, not just America,
is locked in a struggle with forces that question its foundation. Osama
bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and many others reject the fundamental ideals
of Western culture: individual sovereignty, freedom of conscience, free
interaction among men and the right to the fruits of one’s own labor.
They reject the Western intellectual framework that has permitted scientific,
political and economic freedom and given the world the fruits of unparalleled
creativity. These thugs hate Western success and religious plurality.
Like Lenin buying rope from capitalists, the only Western product they
seem to like is weaponry. The media’s historical ignorance helps
undermine Western confidence. Rarely do we see reports explaining how
the West benefited from Judeo-Christian thought. We are told America’s
Founding Founders were deists if not atheists. Yet studying the period
you’ll find countless references to God and prayers of asking God’s
guidance. John Adams once said the intellectual framework for rebellion
was laid in the churches years before it became a political struggle.
That makes sense, for America is founded on the idea that man is endowed
by his Creator with the right to be free.”
Blind
Spot (Randall Kennedy) new
“The key argument in favor of racial profiling, essentially, is that
taking race into account enables the authorities to screen carefully and
at less expense those sectors of the population that are more likely than
others to contain the criminals for whom officials are searching.... Some
commentators embrace this position as if it were unassailable, but under
U.S. law racial discrimination backed by state power is presumptively
illicit. This means that supporters of racial profiling carry a heavy
burden of persuasion.... Stressing that racial profiling generates clear
harm (for example, the fear, resentment, and alienation felt by innocent
people in the profiled group), opponents of racial profiling sensibly
question whether compromising our hard-earned principle of anti-discrimination
is worth merely speculative gains in overall security. A notable feature
of this conflict is that champions of each position frequently embrace
rhetoric, attitudes, and value systems that are completely at odds with
those they adopt when confronting another controversial instance of racial
discrimination — namely, affirmative action. Vocal supporters of
racial profiling who trumpet the urgency of communal needs when discussing
law enforcement all of a sudden become fanatical individualists when condemning
affirmative action in college admissions and the labor market. Supporters
of profiling, who are willing to impose what amounts to a racial tax on
profiled groups, denounce as betrayals of ‘color blindness’
programs that require racial diversity. A similar turnabout can be seen
on the part of many of those who support affirmative action. Impatient
with talk of communal needs in assessing racial profiling, they very often
have no difficulty with subordinating the interests of individual white
candidates to the purported good of the whole. Opposed to race consciousness
in policing, they demand race consciousness in deciding whom to admit
to college or select for a job.”
A
War of Resolve: American kowtowing to “moderate” Arabs may embolden
bin Laden. (Bernard Lewis)
new
“It was the shock of America’s rapid and sharp reaction that
made bin Laden blink. After the U.S.’s initial response, he halted
his campaign and adopted a more cautious attitude. But some recent American
actions and utterances may bring a reconsideration of this judgement and
the halt to which it gave rise. Our anxious pleading with the fragile
and frightened regimes of the region to join — or at least to tolerate
— a campaign against terrorism and its sponsors has put the U.S.
in a corner where it seems to be asking permission for actions that are
its own prerogative to take. Likewise, the exemptions accorded to some
terrorist leaders, movements and actions not immediately directed against
us have undermined the strong moral position which must be the foundation
of our global war on terrorism. The submission to being scolded and slighted,
as Secretary of State Colin Powell did in his recent meeting with the
king of Morocco, and his failure to meet with the president of Egypt,
make the U.S. seem it is reverting to bad habits. That only further contributes
to a perceived posture of irresolution and uncertainty on the part of
the U.S. administration.”
Radical
Islam gains adherents abroad (Stephen Handelman)
new
“But even where it succeeded in gaining a political foothold, radical
Islam exposed itself as incoherent and unsatisfying to those whom it most
needed to attract. Islamists’ ‘incendiary rhetoric and uncompromising
approach to statecraft alienated the very middle classes that earlier
sympathized with their critique of corrupt elites,’ wrote Ray Takeyh
of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. So what does their failure
have to do with Europe and the West? The answer is chillingly simple:
Unable to win political traction at home, radical Islam has found its
most passionate new adherents in Muslim communities abroad. At least 12
million Muslims — perhaps as many as 22 million — live in Europe
today. The targets of economic discrimination and prejudice themselves,
many can be easily swayed to violence in the pursuit of a political agenda
set elsewhere. That governments in the Muslim world are aware of this
is indisputable. Also indisputable is the fact that the money and logistics
support channelled to these overseas groups by some of those governments
deflects the still-genuine threat posed by Islamic alternatives at home.”
Intellectuals
are failing the West (Paul Mulshine) new
“With a few prominent exceptions, such as Johns Hopkins University
professor Fouad Ajami, intellectuals have been reluctant to criticize
the Muslim world’s tilt toward totalitarianism. And that Muslim world
will continue to be a threat to the West as long as so many fanatics cling
to the illusion that a government is justified in ignoring basic rights
as long as it claims to be religiously inspired. ‘Even the massacre
of 3,000 innocent people has not alerted people to what’s going on,’
Warraq said of the events of Sept. 11. ‘I noticed in England, where
I have some liberal friends, that many of the intellectuals took it that
this was all because of American foreign policy. It’s really, really
dangerous to go along that line of thought.’ The problem is much
deeper than that, according to Warraq. The leaders of the Islamist movement
see themselves as on the verge of another great expansion like the one
that occurred in the Middle Ages. And the mushiness of the multiculturalists
fuels their ambitions.... The multiculturalists maintain that different
cultures can have different values, even if those values infringe upon
the basic rights of the individual. The opposite view, best stated by
Thomas Jefferson back when it was European kings who were claiming to
rule in the name of God, is that rights are unalienable. Any government
that tramples on them is illegitimate. Warraq says Western intellectuals
should insist that Muslim governments observe individual rights.”
Excusing
child abuse (Matt Kaufman) new
“There are some things whose evil should be so obvious that no debate
is necessary. We wouldn’t be a better society if we sat down for calm,
dispassionate discussions of the merits of, say, rape. (‘Sure,’
one side would argue, ‘women say “no means no,”
but some of them don’t really mean it.’) The same is true
of sex with children. That’s why it’s important that we not only reject
pedophilia, but reject it vehemently, with undisguised disgust. We modern
folk hesitate to display that sort of disgust, for fear we’ll be considered
‘judgmental.’ But we’d better recognize something: If the pro-pedophilia
crowd can simply get recognized as a legitimate side in a debate — sharing
podiums with opponents, haggling over the fine points of scientific studies,
gradually accustoming people to the idea that some types of pedophilia
aren’t really so bad — then they’re well on their way to achieving their
goal. As Newshouse News Service writer Mark O’Keefe summarizes their view,
‘it may be only a matter of time before modern society accepts adult-child
sex, just as it has learned to accept premarital sex and homosexual sex.’
That’s a sobering comparison for anyone who complacently assumes society
will never reach the point of tolerating pedophilia. It’s also an important
reminder of where the roots of the threat really lie.”
Gunmen
stole gold, crucifixes, escaped monks report (Jerusalem Post) new
“Three Armenian monks, who had been held hostage by the Palestinian
gunmen inside the Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, managed to
flee the church area via a side gate yesterday morning. They immediately
thanked the soldiers for rescuing them. They told army officers the gunmen
had stolen gold and other property, including crucifixes and prayer books,
and had caused damage. The three elderly monks were assisted by soldiers.
One of them held a white cloth banner with the words ‘Please help.’
One of the monks, Narkiss Korasian, later told reporters: ‘They stole
everything, they opened the doors one by one and stole everything... they
stole our prayer books and four crosses... they didn’t leave anything.
Thank you for your help, we will never forget it.’”
In
Dealing With Abusive Priests, Bishops Stood Along Wide Spectrum (NYT)
new
“While some American bishops transferred predator priests from parish
to parish, the leader of one diocese, Bishop Donald W. Wuerl of Pittsburgh,
battled for seven years to remove a sexually abusive priest from the ministry.
Bishop Wuerl suspended the priest, the Rev. Anthony Cipolla, in 1988 after
a former altar boy sued him for damages and at least one other victim
stepped forward. And when Father Cipolla persuaded the Vatican’s
highest tribunal to reinstate him, Bishop Wuerl traveled to Rome with
suitcases full of papers to document the priest’s sex crimes. The
Vatican reversed course in 1995, upholding the bishop’s sanctions
and vindicating what he describes as his effort to protect the safety
of his flock. ‘You have to assure your people that their needs are
first,’ he said in an interview last week. Bishop Wuerl stands on
one end of a broad spectrum of how Catholic leaders have responded to
the sexual abuse crisis in the church. While he and some other bishops
in the nation’s 194 dioceses have sought in various ways to prevent
abuse and to hold pedophiles accountable, others have seemed more concerned
with protecting the church’s name and its bank accounts, church leaders
and religious scholars said in interviews.... In an interview on Thursday
at his downtown Pittsburgh chancery, Bishop Wuerl said that shortly after
assuming leadership of the diocese in 1988, he paid a visit to the shattered
family of two brothers who had been abused by priests. The meeting had
a profound effect on him, he said. ‘You cannot visit with someone
who has been abused without coming away with deepened resolve that this
should never happen again,’ he said. That same year, he removed Father
Cipolla as a chaplain at a Catholic home for handicapped children, after
Timothy A. Bendig, a Pittsburgh paramedic, accused the priest of having
repeatedly abused him when he was an altar boy earlier in the 1980’s.
Mr. Bendig, the second Pittsburgh Catholic to step forward with accusations
against Father Cipolla, sued the Diocese of Pittsburgh for damages, eventually
obtaining a settlement. Father Cipolla appealed his removal all the way
to the Vatican’s highest court, the Signatura, which in 1993 ordered
that he be reinstated, on the ground that Bishop Wuerl had violated his
rights under canon law. But in 1995, after the bishop went to Rome to
offer details of the priest’s behavior, the court reversed itself.
‘Bishop Wuerl took a brave stand in my case,’ Mr. Bendig said
in an interview. ‘He just insisted, “This man should not be
a priest.”’”
Well,
oil be ... it's our new pal, Russia (Bill Virgin) new
“So we have finally soured on our friends of convenience, the Saudis.
This is hardly surprising. After all, if you expect us to keep your country
from being annexed by Saddam as the 19th or 20th province of Iraq but
you treat our troops like your subjects, all the while secretly encouraging
attacks on us and our allies, even we Americans eventually catch on. But
this is all right, because we believe we have found a new best friend
— the Russians. An affiliation with the Russians has several attractions.
It provides an answer and an alternative to the reason we’ve put
up with the Saudis this long — oil. Having Russia as a major supplier
would allow us to tell the Saudis to literally and figuratively go pound
sand. And being business and political partners with Russia puts on our
side a nation that, while smaller than in the Soviet Union era, is still
a significant force (‘we just know we’ve got those nukes around
here somewhere’).”
Jewish
Chiefs: Anti-Semitism Grows (Yahoo! News) new
“World Jewish leaders warned Tuesday that the level of anti-Semitic
attacks in Europe is the worst since World War II. The executive committee
of the World Jewish Congress demanded better protection by authorities.
Secretary-general Avi Beker said 360 anti-Semitic incidents in France
over the past two weeks heralded worse to come for Jewish communities
in Europe. ‘There is today an anxiety on the part of Jews when they
go to the religious centers, they go to their social centers, when they
send their children to school,’ Beker said on the last day of a two-day
emergency meeting of the umbrella group that represents Jewish groups
from about 80 countries. ‘This is quite shameful for Europe.’
Synagogues, Jewish schools and cemeteries have been targeted in attacks
in several European nations in recent weeks, coinciding with Israel’s
major offensive in Palestinian cities in the West Bank. Suspects in many
of the attacks are Arab youths of North African origin.”
U.S.
to help U.N. redefine “families” (WT) new
“The Bush administration has joined European delegates to an upcoming
U.N. summit on children in moving to recognize families ‘in various
forms,’ including unmarried cohabiting couples and homosexual partners.
A coalition of Catholic and Muslim countries has formed to block the change
to the traditional U.N. definition of the family — married heterosexual
parents and children — at the General Assembly’s Special Session
on Children from May 8 to May 10. A senior official at the U.S. Mission
to the United Nations in New York said the U.S. Mission and the State
Department are backing the delegates from Switzerland and the European
Union in their efforts because so many children today are brought up by
single parents. Informal negotiations resume today in New York on a final
document for the summit. The U.S. official spoke anonymously, saying he
did not want to be ‘hung out to dry’ for explaining the administration’s
position. He said the United States supports the proposal to recognize
families ‘in various forms’ because ‘obviously we feel
this more reflects the families of today, which are headed by single parents
and extended families.’ Customarily, U.N. members are obliged to
conform their national laws to the body’s declarations, and critics
have said that the European-backed changes would make such proposals as
homosexual ‘marriage’ and domestic-partner benefits an internationally
recognized right.”
PAT
Answers: It’s time to stop taking the likes of Paul Ehrlich seriously.
(Pete Du Pont)
“So how did the leading environmentalists get it so wrong in the
1970s? Perhaps the most important reason was a profound misunderstanding
of the way the world works. The root of the misconception was Paul Ehrlich
and John Holden’s famous equation: I = PAT. The negative Impact of
humans on the environment, they said, is the product of Population times
Affluence times Technology. A bigger population was a bad thing because
people consume resources and need houses and roads and so forth. More
affluence was bad too as it allowed greater capita consumption of resources,
and that must be multiplied by the negative impact of the technology necessary
to produce the resources consumed.... What was missing in this view was
the greatest resource of all — the human mind and its ability to
develop efficient technologies that would improve the quality of life.
Missing was the understanding that more electricity for more operating
rooms to do more heart surgery was a good thing. More fertilizer meant
less acreage had to be tilled, thus saving — and actually expanding
— the forests. More production of goods meant more jobs, more opportunity
and more national income to devote to environmental improvement. In short,
I = PAT posited not even a zero-sum society (your gain is my loss), but
a negative-sum society (your gain is always the world’s loss). It
was a cost-benefit analysis in which there was only cost, never benefit.
And it was dead wrong.”
Religious
Freedom in Jeopardy? (Susanna Cornett)
“The protection religious groups have now is because of our Constitution
— the protection of religious freedom — and because it is generally
felt even among non-believers that religion on the whole benefits society,
if for no other reason than that it is an expression of our freedom of
speech and pursuit of happiness. What if, as society changes, the religious
practices become more and more out of step with it? I think the response
to what we see in Afghanistan is illustrative. When the media speak about
the oppression of women in Afghanistan, using burkas as a symbol of it,
they don’t separate belief from practice. The problem, as I see it, is
not that women wear burkas, but that the ones who don’t believe it necessary
are forced to do so. Our society, however, can’t quite conceive of women
choosing to live within the restrictions imposed by some of the stricter
Muslim teachings, so we assume that any woman who is living that way is
doing so through force or ignorance. Perhaps that is true in some cases,
but not all. And if we insist that their religious freedoms must stay
within certain boundaries, then how can we preserve the full range of
our own? I’m not advocating, in the Muslim instance, that all manifestations
of Islam should be allowed. Murder of the innocent is always wrong, and
we have a responsibility to stop it. And I’m also not saying that the
teachings of Islam are correct; I don’t believe that’s true. But how we
as a society respond to their religious choices, and how those of us who
are religious respond to evil when we find it in our midst, will shape
the tomorrow for religious freedom in the United States. Losing tax-exempt
status wouldn’t end religious freedom in this country, but it would move
us further down that road, and it’s not a road with easy return. Just
as our right to privacy is in jeopardy from laws passed ostensibly to
give us greater homeland security, so our religious freedoms could suffer
from laws passed to prevent ecclesiastical abuse. I think we stand at
a crossroad; how we call the Catholic Church hierarchy to account for
lies, abuse and years of protecting self at the cost of the innocence
of dozens of young men and women will help determine on which path we
set our feet.”
The
Hard Way: It’s easier to fight than to pray. So let’s pray. (Peggy Noonan)
“So what are we to do? I was daydreaming about all this as I walked
in my neighborhood on Pierrepont Street yesterday, and I found myself
staring at a message someone had drawn onto newly poured concrete: ‘Smile.
Today is what you have.’ It struck me, naturally, as sentimental
street art. And then I thought no, it’s both spiritual — ‘This
is the day the Lord made / let us rejoice and be glad in it,’ wrote
the Psalmist — and fatalistic.... It is easier to fight than to pray.
In fact it’s much easier to fight than to pray. It’s one of
the reasons we do more of the former than the latter. And fighting is
hard. But it’s not the hardest thing of all the things we could do.
The hardest thing is this: I have been reading about Karol Wojtyla during
World War II, long before he became Pope John Paul II. Mr. Wojtyla was
in his late teens when the war started, and after the Nazis invaded Poland
he worked manual labor, on the freezing overnight shift at a factory,
outdoors, breaking and carrying rocks.... He helped friends in the Resistance,
but he did not join them. Why? Because, as he told a friend, the only
resistance that would work was asking God’s help. ‘The only
thing that will be effective is prayer.’ .... Prayer is the hardest
thing. And no one congratulates you for doing it because no one knows
you’re doing it, and if things turn out well they likely won’t
thank God in any case. But I have a feeling that the hardest thing is
what we all better be doing now, and that it’s not only the best
answer but the only one.”
On
Jew-hatred in Europe (Oriana Fallaci)
“I find it shameful that in part through the fault of the left —
or rather, primarily through the fault of the left (think of the left
that inaugurates its congresses applauding the representative of the PLO
leader in Italy of the Palestinians who want the destruction of Israel)
— Jews in Italian cities are once again afraid. And in French cities
and Dutch cities and Danish cities and German cities, it is the same.
I find it shameful that Jews tremble at the passage of the scoundrels
dressed like suicide bombers just as they trembled during Krystallnacht,
the night in which Hitler gave free rein to the Hunt of the Jews. I find
it shameful that in obedience to the stupid, vile, dishonest, and for
them extremely advantageous fashion of Political Correctness the usual
opportunists — or better the usual parasites — exploit the word
Peace. That in the name of the word Peace, by now more debauched than
the words Love and Humanity, they absolve one side alone of its hate and
bestiality. That in the name of a pacifism (read conformism) delegated
to the singing crickets and buffoons who used to lick Pol Pot’s feet they
incite people who are confused or ingenuous or intimidated. Trick them,
corrupt them, carry them back a half century to the time of the yellow
star on the coat. These charlatans who care about the Palestinans as much
as I care about the charlatans. That is not at all.”
Return
of the Guy (Charlotte Allen)
“In the furnaces of September 11, there was suddenly forged a new
social trend: the return of the guy. (Remember that it was four guys who
rushed the terrorists who commandeered United Airlines Flight 93, wrenching
it to the ground near Pittsburgh.) This trend was continued in the war
against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. No one, even NOW, was heard
to gripe that there were no women reported among the U.S. Special Forces
troops fighting hand to hand with militant supporters of Osama bin Laden
during the days after the Taliban fled Kabul. ‘For the first time
in a long time, American heroes are not movie actors or sports figures
or celebrity scandal-survivors,’ political commentator Andrew Sullivan
wrote in the Sunday Times of London. ‘They are cops
and firemen and special forces soldiers.’ Their sex is male, and
they do the kind of work that calls on specifically male attributes and
virtues: physical strength, tough fatherly leadership (think of Rudolph
Giuliani), brotherly bonding into fighting units, courage, and blunt compassion.
Welcome back, guys.”
The
Big Lie and the Big Lawsuit (Lawrence Henry)
“The world has changed, and it’s a meaner place. Little children
who once would have gathered around a pipe smoker to say, ‘That smells
good’ and ‘Daddy, why don’t you smoke a pipe?’ now
point fingers and say ‘That stinks!’ and ‘You’re gonna
die!’ Carrie Nation and her saloon-busting hatchet are totems of
historical ridicule today. But Carrie Nation’s heirs in the anti-smoking
movement have tapped into all the same wretched excesses of American culture
— bluenosery, totalitarianism, and vandalism. There is a difference,
of course. Today’s Carrie Nations have used thirty years of anti-tobacco
jihadery to practice the sinister modern techniques of the Big Lie and
the Big Lawsuit. Along the way, they’ve corrupted science, destroyed
objective journalism, and made the truth nothing more than a commodity.
They’ve demonized tens of millions of people and turned tens of millions
more into preening, self-righteous jerks. And of course they’re not
done. Having practiced and perfected their techniques, they’re now
casting around for new targets. Food looms as the most likely. But there
are others, lots of others. I would say that George Orwell himself would
be challenged to describe it all. But of course he wouldn’t.”
Their
way of life isn’t ours (Paul Mulshine)
“The problem, if my readings and discussions with American Muslim
political activists are any indication, is that their goals and ours seem
to be mutually exclusive. In our phone conversation, Obeidallah made a
point of insisting that Muslims in America want to live Islam as what
he termed ‘a way of life.’ I asked him what he meant by that.
‘Living Islam as a way of life means the leader is actually an Islamist,’
he said. ‘It means you must govern by the rules of the Koran and
the rules of the Prophet Mohammed.’ He is not alone in that view.
When I interviewed another leader of New Jersey’s Muslim community,
Yasir El-Menshawy, the president of the New Jersey Council of Mosques
and Islamic Organizations, he also insisted that the Muslim idea of a
religious state is superior to the American idea of a secular state. ‘Muslims
tend to want to have a more complete implementation of Islam running the
affairs of the state,’ El-Menshawy told me. When I insisted that
the American system of religious freedom is clearly a better one, he responded,
‘I don’t agree the U.S. system is clearly a better system.’”
I
do have a few things to say now (Jon Carroll)
“Listen to me. It doesn’t matter who’s right. Let me say
that again: Right now, it doesn’t matter who’s right. Stop with
the screeds. It doesn’t matter who’s right. Peace making requires
more courage than war making. Peace making require more intelligence than
war making. Peace making requires patience, time, serenity and an open
mind. I know about the numerous failures of peace making in the Mideast.
But if we are to be humans, hope is always an obligation. We must always
start again. We have just lived through a century of mass deaths, deaths
in unimaginable numbers. Six million Jews killed by Nazis, at least 8.5
million people killed by Stalin, 800,000 Armenians murdered by Turks;
100,000 Kurds murdered by Saddam Hussein. One million Cambodians killed
by the Khmer Rouge; 800,000 Tutsis of Rwanda murdered by Hutus in 100
days. Do you know whether the Tutsis or the Hutus had a better claim to
their disputed lands? Are you interested in the validity of the political
claims made by the Armenians? The last two times we entered a world war,
only a few people believed that it would happen. Generals on both sides
of World War I thought it would last six months. At the beginning of World
War II, the British called it ‘the phony war.’”
Over the past months, some Catholic
priests have weighed in on the current scandals:
The
priceless gift of the priesthood (Fr. William Leahy)
“To be a priest requires living a life marked by faith, integrity,
and service, and it offers the possibility for doing so much good and
for helping make God more present in our world. One day this winter I
visited the parents of a recent graduate of Boston College whose son,
like 20 other alumni of our university, was killed in the attack on the
World Trade Center. In grief and pride they told stories about their son,
and showed me photographs, awards, and diplomas that chronicled his young
life. They were speaking to me, I knew, as the president of the institution
their son had loved but also as a priest. They asked if I would like to
go upstairs and see their son’s bedroom, which they had kept exactly
as he had left it. Perhaps they would have asked the same of the president
of Harvard University or Stanford University. Perhaps not. But as a priest
I was glad to be there to offer whatever comfort I could. Such moments
have been part of my life as a priest, and as a result I feel truly blessed
by God. I do not deny that there have been times of suffering and sorrow
in my life. Like so many others, I feel betrayed and saddened by the shameful
incidents of sexual misconduct committed by some priests, so devastating
and harmful, especially to children and their families. But I trust that
God and his people will sustain me and my fellow priests, now and in the
future, and that my vocation, with all of its gifts, will never cease
to be the wonderfully fulfilling experience that it is for me today.”
A
Plan for the New Millenium (Fr. Robert J. Carr)
“The Roman Catholic Church has secularized itself and turned itself
into a corporation. This is the center of the confusion.... We are supposed
to be a community of faith. Ultimately, the issue, therefore, is whether
we are a community of faith or a corporation. It is time to make the choice.
The difference between a corporation and community of faith is all about
how we define our association as members of the Roman Catholic Church.
We were founded for one reason: ‘God so loved the world that in the
fullness of time, he sent his only begotten son that whosoever believes
in him may not die, but have eternal life.’ We maintain that Jesus
is resurrected. Many outside Christianity do not understand what that
means in the long run, yet to put it simply: Believing in the resurrection
of the dead means to live in a mindset that is so radical that once someone
begins to comprehend this truth, they live their lives in radical ways
not possible prior to that moment. Indeed, it is such a key aspect of
our faith, that St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15 that if Jesus did
not resurrect from the dead, we are wasting our time. I guess that is
the best, yet quite poor, way of explaining what the depth of this fully
inexpressible truth says to us.”
Holiness
Is the Key (Fr. Roger Landry)
“The only adequate response to this terrible scandal, the only fully
Catholic response to this scandal — as St. Francis of Assisi recognized
in the 1200s, and as countless other saints have recognized in every century
— is holiness! Every crisis that the Church faces, every crisis that the
world faces, is a crisis of saints. Holiness is crucial, because it is
the real face of the Church. There are always people — a priest meets
them regularly, you probably know several of them — who use excuses for
why they don’t practice the faith, why they slowly commit spiritual
suicide. It can be because a nun was mean to them when they were 9. Or
because they don’t understand the teaching of the Church on a particular
issue — as if any of these reasons would truly justify their lack of practice
of the faith, as if any of them would be able to convince their consciences
not to do what they know they should. There will doubtless be many people
these days — and you will probably meet them — who will say, ‘Why
should I practice the faith, why should I go to Church, since the Church
can’t be true if God’s so-called chosen ones can do the types
of things we’ve been reading about?’ This scandal is a huge
hanger on which some will try to hang their justification for not practicing
the faith. That’s why holiness is so important. They need to find
in all of us a reason for faith, a reason for hope, a reason for responding
with love to the love of the Lord. The beatitudes which we have in today’s
Gospel are a recipe for holiness. We all need to live them more.”
March
10, 2002, Homily (Msgr. Thomas Kane)
“What do we say? Immorality has no defense, does it? Abuse of minors
has no defense. For our religious leaders, it may be absolutely inexcusable.
And our hearts go out indeed to the victims of child abuse at the hands
of churchmen. I cannot explain the Boston situation satisfactorily, and
I cannot excuse Palm Beach. But as your pastor I should like to share
some personal reflections with which you may identify and, hopefully,
that will ameliorate some of the anguish that we feel – indeed embarrassment,
as Catholics, that we all feel in view of the recent events.... I can
honestly tell you that, after all these years, my idealism about the priesthood
is exactly the same as it was when I served mass as a kid. It has not
deteriorated. It has not been jeopardized. It has not diminished. And
I think I can speak from the experience of knowing maybe 3,000 priests,
and therefore knowing more of abuses than the average person would. And
nonetheless to say unhesitatingly to you, the priesthood in its ideals,
in its ministry, in its practice, is no less good, holy and outreaching
as you ever thought it was. I say that to you as one who’s seen much
of the sordid side of the life, sometimes, of my brothers, but also to
reassure you that you are not to be disillusioned by the stories of the
New York Times or Time magazine or the Washington Post or Boston Globe.
You are not to be disillusioned. The priesthood is everything I thought
it was as a kid, and from that vantage point of many years later, I would
like to assure you that we are in this thing with you, we suffer with
you, we know that embarrassment that you face, when maybe members of our
faith nod knowingly to you, when those who are critical, when those who
would smirk, when those who are cynical – I’d like to just say to
you: We know we have our problems, but we have a priesthood that is as
dedicated and holy and generous as ever it was.”
What
the Titanic teaches (Stephen Cox)
“Investigation revealed that the Titanic had been following normal
navigational practices and that she was equipped with more than normal
safety features — including 200 more lifeboat spaces than government
regulations required. In fact, more than 400 of the Titanic’s lifeboat
spaces were never used. A very large ship, like a very large plane, is
hard to evacuate completely; even if the Titanic had provided lifeboat
spaces equal to the number of passengers, there would not have been enough
time to use them all. No plans or regulations can guarantee that any vessel
— or any human enterprise — is completely safe. Every action,
even the apparently obvious action of turning a ship to evade an iceberg,
carries with it an incalculable risk. And our moral decisions are just
as risky as our practical decisions. The Titanic continues to fascinate
the world because it raised this essential fact to the highest pitch of
dramatic intensity. The Titanic sank [Apr. 14-15, 1912] in two hours
and forty minutes — the length of a classic play. During that time,
everyone involved in the disaster had to ask the most basic questions
about what life is worth and what means may be used to save it. People
had time to think, observe, reflect; but they finally had to decide, irrevocably,
what they ought to do. Their decisions were as various as the individuals
themselves.”
It’s
a war, not a grudge match (George Jonas)
“In his Rose Garden speech on April 4 announcing Mr. Powell’s
mission, the President struck a lyrical note: ‘America itself counts
former adversaries as trusted friends — Germany and Japan and now
Russia,’ Mr. Bush said. ‘Conflict is not inevitable. Distrust
need not be permanent. Peace is possible when we break free of old patterns
and habits of hatred.’ What Mr. Bush failed to mention was that Germany
was flattened and de-Nazified before it became America’s trusted
friend; imperial Japan was nuked, and Soviet Russia had imploded. The
friendship of these nations was preceded by a complete collapse and fundamental
restructuring of their respective societies. One wishes the Mideast conflict
were just a grudge match between two old men. Unfortunately, it isn’t.
It’s a war between the Jewish state and those who have been trying
to reject it for the past 54 years. Despite Mr. Bush’s uplifting
speech, Mr. Powell probably lacks the illusions of Neville Chamberlain.
He isn’t going to Ramallah as Chamberlain went to Munich in 1938,
with the lofty hope for ‘peace in our time.’ Mr. Powell is hoping
only for a licence from the Arab world to wage his own war in peace. He
wants to finish a job in Iraq he left unfinished a decade ago.”
Evil’s
triumph over conscience (Norman Doidge)
“Spooked, America is unwilling to let Israel end Arafat’s reign
of terror. Washington has retreated into approaching him with a kind of
primitive behaviour-therapy that says, ‘If he renounces terror’
or ‘If he controls terror,’ then we will talk to him. It is
as though all that matters is to get him to say the right words, never
mind his intentions; as if no distinction need be drawn between his strategic
goal — the destruction of Israel — and a tactical willingness
to say he opposes terror (when a lie serves his strategy). Arafat has
discovered, as Shakespeare understood, that the more brazen and relentless
one’s acts of brutality, the more likely it is that one will be allowed
a second chance, and find even powerful men of conscience coming to one’s
door offering to forget, to forgive and to give forgiveness a bad name.”
How
white liberals destroyed black families (Anthony Covington)
“It would be nice to put the blame for inequality of incomes between
African, Euro- and Asian Americans squarely where it belongs. Not on ‘white
racism’, ‘the legacy of slavery’ and other dead or dying
nebulae, but on poor old Dad — wherever he is. Even he is not the
real villain. Rather, the most blame falls on American Democratic politicians
between 1949-1999, including Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter
and Bill Clinton. Their allies in the American left-wing devised the welfare
state, an institution that wrecked the African-American family better
than slavery or racism ever did. ‘Hold on’, I hear you say,
‘that sounds upside down?’ However, consider this; it is not
colour, religion or your education in the USA that makes you more likely
to end up in poverty, unemployed, on drugs and in crime. It is not having
a father. Fatherless families of whatever colour in the USA make up 70
per cent of criminals, drifters, unemployed and failures. Parenting and
not race is the major factor — undeniably so. Study after study confirms
it.”
The
death of socialism (Roger Kimball)
“It is one of the great ironies of modern history that socialism,
which promises a more humane, caring, and equitable society, has consistently
delivered a more oppressive and mismanaged one. Socialism’s motto
— Muravchik optimistically offers it to us as socialism’s ‘epitaph’
— turns out to be: ‘If you build it, they will leave.’
If, one must add, they are allowed to leave. As Muravchik reminds us in
this excellent survey of socialist personalities and socialist experiments,
encouraging dissent is never high on a socialist’s agenda. The socialist
pretends to have glimpsed paradise on earth. Those who decline the invitation
to embrace the vision are not just ungrateful: they are traitors to the
cause of human perfection. Dissent is therefore not mere disagreement
but treachery. Treachery is properly met not with arguments but (as circumstances
permit) the guillotine, the concentration camp, the purge.”
Understanding
history (Balint Vazsonyi)
“At last, reparations for slavery have taken center-stage. It has
been like waiting for the other shoe to drop, ever since the United States
decided to compensate persons of Japanese ancestry for their treatment
following Pearl Harbor. Once we accepted the proposition whereby the attitudes
of the present, though no less transitory than those of the past, should
nonetheless be applied to the past, we mortgaged the future. We can no
more relive the past than foretell the future. The appropriate expression
of disagreement with the ways of the past is to change those ways in the
present, for what we believe will be a better future. Attempts at ‘rectifying’
the past are bound to fail because, owing to obvious limitations, they
have to be selective. Unavoidably, what we see as old injustices will
result in new injustices.”
The
Mau-Mauing at Harvard (John McWhorter)
“The campus race game has largely prevented any sustained investigation
into what — if anything — Afro-American studies programs actually
accomplish academically. The assumption in the mainstream press during
the West-Summers contretemps was that the intellectual quality of Harvard’s
Afro-American studies was unassailable. Unfortunately, that’s far
from true. Survey the department’s undergraduate curriculum, and
you find that most of the courses express the pernicious belief that victimhood
defines what it means to be African-American — that to be black in
America has always been a story of betrayal, disappointment, passivity,
and tragedy, and that when things seem to be improving, it’s only
an illusion.”
Hunt
the Boeing! (Urban Legends Reference Pages)
“The notion that the Pentagon was not damaged by terrorists who hijacked
American Airlines Flight 77 (a Boeing 757) and crashed it into the military
office complex, but that the whole affair was staged by the U.S. government,
has been promulgated by French author Thierry Meyssan in his book, The
Frightening Fraud. Meyssan offers no real explanation for what
did cause the extensive damage to the Pentagon, asserting only that Flight
77 did not exist, no plane crashed into the Pengaton, and that ‘the
American government is lying.’ Unfortunately, the appeal of conspiracy
theories has resulted in widespread dissemination of Meyssan’s ‘theory’
in France and the USA, particularly in web sites that mirror his work.
As Le Nouvel Observateur noted: ‘This theory suits everyone
— there are no Islamic extremists and everyone is happy. It eliminates
reality.’ The text cited in the example above comes from a
Hunt the Boeing! And test your perceptions! web site, one of
the English-language mirrors of Meyssan’s claims, where readers are
invited to ponder a series of questions about why photographs of the damaged
Pentagon seemingly show no evidence of a crashed airplane. The answers
to the questions are....”
Are
Michael Bellesiles’s Critics Afraid to Say What They Really Think?
(Jerome Sternstein)
“Has the time come to ask if Michael Bellesiles’s Arming
America is an example of scholarly deceit? Some defenders of Bellesiles’s
work have insisted in various forums that Bellesiles’s critics have
yet to bring forth any evidence to suggest scholarly fraud. Recently,
in making his case, one apologist pointed to the ‘searching examinations’
of Bellesiles’s book in the January 2002 issue of the William
and Mary Quarterly (WMQ), which, ‘although severely critical,
eschews charges of fraud or misrepresentation.’ To be sure, ‘charges
of fraud’ do not appear in the Quarterly’s forum on Bellesiles.
But what is truly remarkable about that forum is what does appear there:
scathing appraisals of his book’s misuse of sources and evidence
which some might regard as consistent with academic fraud, such as repeatedly
misquoting, distorting, falsifying, or perhaps even deliberately inventing
evidence to support one’s thesis.”
The
slavery reparations hustle (Jeff Jacoby)
“Don’t bother telling the plaintiffs who sued last month to
collect reparations for slavery from three US corporations that they don’t
have a legal leg to stand on. They already know it. After all, you don’t
need a law degree to recognize that FleetBoston, CSX, and Aetna bear no
legal culpability today because of lawful activities their corporate ancestors
may have engaged in two centuries ago. Even unlawful activities were long
ago mooted by statutes of limitations. And in any case, none of the companies
being sued and none of their living shareholders has ever owned or trafficked
in slaves, just as none of the plaintiffs and none of the 36 million black
Americans whose interests they claim to represent has ever been held in
bondage. These specious lawsuits will never win. But then, they were never
expected to. The plaintiffs and their lawyers make no secret of the fact
that their goal is not to win a legal verdict but to pressure the companies
into making lucrative out-of-court settlements. If they balk, the lawyers’
PR machine will generate ugly publicity about the companies’ ‘insensitivity’
to African-Americans. Set up pickets outside their corporate headquarters.
Threaten a national boycott. Maybe arrange a public denunciation by Al
Sharpton or the Congressional Black Caucus. It isn’t hard to mau-mau
corporate America if you know how to play the race card.”
Big
earners hit hard by income tax (Houston Chronicle)
“Another way the rich are different: They pay the lion’s share
of the nation’s income tax bill. The wealthiest 5 percent pay more
than half the taxes, while people in the bottom half pay 4 percent. The
annual federal tax deadline for most of America is next Monday. Two-income
households are increasing, putting more families in the top slice of taxpayers.
Millions of small businesses and partnerships are up there, too, paying
personal instead of corporate income taxes. Many other people were boosted
by the 1990s stock market boom. President Bush’s big tax cut will
prevent the wealthy from paying an even greater share in coming years.
But key provisions, such as the doubling of the child tax credit, will
cut or eliminate income taxes for many middle-income people, while the
rich won’t qualify.”
Congress
Sets Record for Pork Spending (FOXNews)
“A war and a recession did not stop Congress from doling out the
pork for special hometown projects, a government watchdog is reporting
Tuesday. Citizens Against Government Waste is releasing its annual ‘Pig
Book,’ a listing of what it calls the most egregious examples of
special interest spending. The results are grim, but not surprising, group
officials said. ‘Taxpayers will be disappointed,’ said Thomas
Schatz, president of CAGW. ‘Here they are, sitting around doing their
taxes — a good time to be thinking what they’re getting for
their money, and in this case it’s a pretty bad deal.’ According
to the group, members of Congress seem to be the only ones not tightening
their belts since the economy took a downturn and the country started
fighting a war against terrorism. Pork — that is, excessive spending
for members’ pet projects, which usually grease the skids for special
interest and hometown support — increased 9 percent in fiscal year
2002 to $20 billion. The number of pork projects increased 32 percent
to a total of 8,341.”
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