Current Events: August 2008 Archives

Both major U.S. political parties have good people in their ranks. Neither party fully represents a Catholic way of thinking about social issues. One of the lessons we need to learn from the last fifty years is that a preferred American "Catholic" party doesn't exist. The sooner Catholics feel at home in any political party, the sooner that party begins to take them for granted and then to ignore their concerns. Party loyalty is a dead end. It is a lethal form of laziness. Issues matter. Character matters. Acting on principal matters. The sound bite and the slogan do not matter. They belong to a vocabulary of the herd and human beings deserve better.

~Archbishop Chaput in Render Unto Caesar

I hate when books start giving you good quotes in like the first three pages.

Palin named as McCain running mate.

I have to say I had many reservations about McCain for a long time, but little by little, he starting to win me over.

Dear Mr. Luse was the first person I thought about when I heard about this.

The Global War Against Baby Girls

If you were asked to name the technologies whose proliferation inadvertently threatens the human race, what would you include? IEDS? Assault rifles? Nuclear warheads?

Add this one to your list: the sonogram machine...

Eberstadt explains that there is a "slight but constant and almost unvarying excess of baby boys over baby girls born in any population." The number of baby boys born for every hundred baby girls, which is so constant that it can "qualify as a rule of nature", falls along an extremely narrow range along the order of 103, 104, or 105. On rare occasions it even hovers around 106...

...Yet in a number of Chinese provinces--with populations of tens of millions of people--the reported sex ratio at birth ranges from over 120 boys for every 100 girls to over 130 boys for every 100 girls. Eberstadt notes that this is "a phenomenon utterly without natural precedent in human history."

One commenter to the article notes:

I've said it over and over again, those 30 million Chinese men WILL find mates. If they have to invade India, Iran or wherever.

HT:This One Goes to 11 by Margaret Cabaniss

Dawn Eden proposes we start a campaign telling Senator Biden to Keep your rosaries off my uvula!"

This is bad. If Obama is elected, this adds the the mistaken notion that you can be Catholic and extremely pro-choice. Perhaps I shouldn't worry as practicing Catholics know the difference and this would not change their minds. This is starting to truly look more like a spiritual war and less like a political election. Tells me I have to step up the prayers.

This is a comment from Fr. Joseph on the Inside Catholic article "Obama Flunks Rick Warren's Abortion Question" by Deal Hudson:

I think it's about time we, as a culture, stop bad-mouthing people who have the humility to know that ONLY GOD knows the answer to some questions. Thank you for stating the case for pluralism, tolerance, and civility so well.

For instance, it's about time we recognize the humility displayed by Mr. Hitler and all those good Christians in the S.S. who run the gas ovens. NOBODY (except God) can know when Jews REALLY have human rights. Only the most arrogant, shallow people would dare to step in and IMPOSE ONE THEOLOGICAL OPINION regarding this question. In a modern, pluralistic society, we have separation of Church and State. It would be arrogant in the extreme for the Catholic Church, for instance, to insist that its own FAITH-BASED position on the question of gassing Jews should be IMPOSED on people who don't share the Catholic belief system.

Anyone who would arrogantly shut down the gas ovens in the name of a sectarian, theological viewpoint is breaking the social compact by which ALL religious viewpoints are welcome in our society. If you try to shut down the gas ovens, people will STILL kill Jews in back-alleys and basements, under dangerous, unsanitary conditions.

Gassing Jews is not a decision that Mr. Hitler and his Party ever take lightly. It is demeaning and insulting to suggest that they ever gas Jews CASUALLY. Although some people think the gas ovens ought to be BOMBED, violence is NOT the answer. Trying to force a ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL Jew-gassing policy on people who do not share our faith tradition, and who never take this decision frivolously, assumes that some BUREAUCRAT IN WASHINGTON knows best when Jew-gassing is appropriate and when it isn't. I thought Americans stood for LESS government, LESS bureaucracy, not more.

Surely, we can find COMMON GROUND on this issue. We should stop the sectarian bickering, and work together on reducing the NEED to gas Jews. If we put Catholic Social Teaching into practice, we can accomplish a lot more toward reducing the poverty, hunger, and lack of education that LEAD to Jew-gassing. Greater access to modern methods of preventing the BIRTH of Jews would greatly reduce the NEED to gas adult Jews.

There are good people on both sides of this issue--people of many faiths, or of no faith--but ALL points of view on Jew-gassing should be welcome in the American Tapestry. Once we start down the road of forcing our own religious tenets on those who do not share them, we put our society on the road to a Taliban-style theocracy!

Finger-pointing, scape-goating, demonizing our opponents--these strategies have never worked, and they never will.

Written by Fr. Joseph

Posting it on your blog or course, especially when the fact are none other then The National Enquirer. But unfortunately, the major news networks are much more respectable and don't publish true politician dirt...unless of course they find stuff on Bush.

So, since I know people who visit P&P are respectable people who do not read Perez Hilton, I'll share some of the fun stuff with you (actually, it's not fun at all and my heart bleeds for Mrs. Edwards and her children):

According to the Enquirer:

- Edwards' political operatives are still paying the mistress and alleged baby momma Rielle Hunter. She was also reportedly whisked away on a private jet two days before he confessed their extramarital affair on national TV!

- Edwards secretly visited Rielle and their love child three separate times at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles this year. So the July visit was one of three? Bastard!

- After Edwards confessed the affair to his wife, he restarted it, and was sexually involved with Rielle when she became pregnant.

- Despite his denials, Edwards WAS aware that his former finance committee chairman, Fred Baron, was funneling money to Rielle.

The Enquirer is also reporting that experts are now calling for a federal investigation into Edwards' use of campaign funds.

Remember, Rielle was given $100K to produce Edwards campaign videos.

Wonder how past Edwards contributers feel about their hard earned money going to Johnny's ho?????

Update: There is an article today about Mrs. Edward's perspective during all of this. I have little tolerance for infidelity, especially dirty old men who cheat on their loyal companions of 30 years who have terminal cancer. Oddly, it probably gives this woman no comfort to know we all think her husband is a complete ass who made a horrible choice in judgment. The only thing that would help would be to go back in time and un-jerkify Mr. Edwards somehow. I wish I could do that for her. :(

(translation after the jump)