Religion

Or, at least they get close. After days of reading ignorant headlines about a “comatose woman”, CNN has upgraded Terri Schiavo’s condition to “disabled”. I say they get close. The article still describes her as being in a “coma-like” state and does not make it clear that Terri is verifiably conscious.

Meanwhile, Greg Krehbiel reminds us that the executive branch is not helpless in the face of bad court decisions:

“Gov. Bush has swallowed the lie of the imperial court. Who, after all, controls the police in the state of Florida? Isn’t it the governor? By the wise design of our founders, judges have no power at all to enforce their decisions. They rely entirely on the executive branch. It’s one of those checks that was supposed to keep us from tyranny, but the check has bounced. Executives act as if they’re captive to courts.

It just gets better and better. Bryan Baldwin of Catholic Light has the following report:

“This afternoon at the Hospice Center Terri Schiavo, whose feeding tube was removed on Wednesday, was denied Viaticum. Monsignor Malanowski was told by police and the attorney for her husband that she could not receive the 1/4 Host he had brought her. (Mrs. Schiavo is fully capable of swallowing.) She has been visited by Msgr. Malanowski for over three years and today, as always, she reacted with joy at his presence as she sat in her chair and turned to greet him.

Here’s an inspiring story of small private businesses making a big difference:

“In a boycott that may be the first of its kind, a group of builders and contractors in Austin, Texas have banded together to stop construction on a new abortion business. Workers were slated to begin construction on Tuesday of a new $6.2 million Planned Parenthood abortion facility.

‘We’re going to do everything we can to stop it, slow it down and make it more expensive,’ said Chris Danze, owner of Maldonado and Danze, Inc. an Austin concrete contractor. Danze is chairman of the Austin Area Pro-Life Concrete Contractors and Suppliers Association. He said every concrete supplier within 60 miles of Austin has indicated it will not supply materials or labor to the project …”

I. Shawn McElhinney, combining the insights of theology and philosophy, takes on the enemies of Catholic print shops everywhere in his latest commentary. As always, Shawn’s treatment is comprehensive and thought provoking.

While I greatly appreciate his stalwart defense of my rights as a printer, nevertheless I am uncomfortable with the classical liberal formulations that seem to cement his argument. He writes:

“For one cannot demand liberty for a particular faculty for themselves which they then turn around and deny to others: this stance is blatantly hypocritical … if one demands liberty for their own conscience, then they must extend the same to the consciences of others who do not agree with them. Thus, the homosexual activists who would appeal to not being coerced against their conscience -by enemies either real or imagined- cannot be credible in their complaints if they are hypocritically trying to coerce the consciences of those who do not agree with them.”

I received one more phone call this morning from a polite lady who also wanted to “confirm” the story, saying “Maybe you don’t realize how big this is and how many people are talking about it.” At one point she asked what I would do if I found out one of my children was homosexual. “Would you throw him out?”, she asked.

A fellow who says he owns a “4 million dollar business” left a message wanting to talk about “last week’s incident”.

Someone sent an e-mail from the franchise website saying I must be “gay” because “homophobes are closet gays”.

Yesterday, my wife discovered that the back of my car had been vandalized with a key, but we don’t know when this happened.

A new blogger asks, “Why is it that some Catholics enjoy Latin so much?”:

“I was born in 1966 and so grew up in the post-Vatican 2 church. I went to public school, and we didn’t learn any foreign languages there. And there was no Latin instruction in CCD. So I don’t know a word of Latin. And when Latin is used at Mass, I find myself getting annoyed at not being able to understand, to participate (and I do not go to Mass to be a spectator). It might as well be Arabic, Russian or Chinese. Apart from nostalgia, what’s the attraction? At my former parish we did some statistics and learned the median age was around 37, so half of the people there were essentially born after Vatican 2. If all this sounds like ranting, that’s probably a fair analysis.”

“It was the Irish Catholics who came up with the idea to remember somehow those souls who did not live by the Faith in this life. It became customary for these Irish to bang on pots and pans on All Hallow’s Eve to let the damned know that they were not forgotten. In Ireland, then, all the dead came to be remembered. This, however, is still not exactly like our celebration of Halloween.

In a recent discussion with Pansy Moss, I said that I would try to post some research on divorce and domestic violence that specifically refutes certain commonly accepted “facts”. Due to lack of time my own comments will be brief. With respect to divorce, Dr. Steven Baskerville writeshere in Catholic World Report:

“Arizona State University psychologist Sanford Braver has shown that at least two-thirds of American divorces are initiated by women. Moreover, few of these divorces involve grounds such as desertion, adultery, or violence. The reasons most often given are ‘growing apart’ or ‘not feeling loved or appreciated.’ Other studies have reached similar conclusions. The proportion of divorces initiated by women climbed to more than 70 percent when no-fault divorce was introduced, according to Margaret Brinig of the University of Iowa and Douglas Allen of Simon Fraser University. Mothers ‘are more likely to instigate separation, despite a deep attachment to their children and the evidence that many divorces harm children.’”

Although contradiction, complexity, and paradox await anyone bold enough to make sweeping generalizations about the generations, a sober assessment of our present circumstances requires that we make them. Richard Weaver traces the slow decline of the West to the nominalism of William of Occam in the 13th century, and perhaps he is right. But in our time the pace of generational decline has been staggering and begs for more of an explanation than Weaver proposes.

The main event of the 20th century is this: the Greatest Generation failed to pass the baton.

“The child who has been exposed from his earliest years to good classical music, and has seen his soul being developed by it, will not be nearly as tempted by the crude rhythm and message of rock and other contemporary forms of pseudo-music as someone who has grown up without a musical education. Such a musical education, as several of the Optina Elders have said, refines the soul and prepares it for the reception of spiritual impressions.

The child who has been educated in good literature, drama, and poetry and has felt their effect on his soul — that is, has really enjoyed them — will not easily become an addict of contemporary movies and television programs and cheap novels that devastate the soul and take it away from the Christian path.

Is this finally the last straw? Are EWTN and the History Channel really worth risking the slightest exposure of your children to such images as you accidently hit Fox News on the remote?

I’m with Mr. Aaron Wolf, who says it is long past time to smash your television here:

“There is an invader in your home, and it sits like a god in your living room, in the place of the family hearth. It may hurt your vision, cause brain cells to die, and even keep you from reading a good book. But the worse thing about it is that it is an ambassador for the Culture of Death, a ‘big, bright, green pleasure machine’ whose goal is to introduce you and keep you attached to the world which hated Christ and against which Judgment is coming. It is impossible to shield yourself or your children from all evil (since we are born with Original Sin) but that does not mean that we should leave a 26-inch window into Hell open in the living room …”

“The story is told of Cardinal Kaspar, who heads the Vatican Congregation for Dialogue with other religions. He recently attended a Greek Orthodox service. Some of you may know that their services go on for a very long time. Afterwards the celebrant said to him, ‘I hope that you were not bored’. The Cardinal replied, ‘no, not at all’. ‘It did not go on too long for you then? Perhaps you think we might modernise it or make it simpler’, the celebrant asked. ‘No’, replied the Cardinal. ‘It should stay exactly as it is. It is very beautiful’. So the celebrant said, ’so why did you do all that you have done to your Mass then’? And it is quite true of course, that many people now look towards the east to recover that sense of the mysterious and spiritual in a religion that has sometimes been stripped bare to its essentials and sometimes even beyond. That’s why we need the traditional liturgy…”