Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 1312

Don't know much about Mitch Daniels

But my Indiana reader has a point:
Wake me when another politician puts his family before ambition.
Plus, the guy dealt a blow to PP in Indiana, as opposed to yakking and doing nothing. I like deeds better than words from pols.

Robert Farley...

...makes a deeply moving plea for America to let a Jolly American be a candidate for President.

I say more. I say America had *better* elect a Jolly American because failure to do so will only prove your obesophobia and demonstrate the need for an immediate emergency enabling act to deal with the present crisis. Once that crisis is past and all people everywhere have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are not bigoted against Jollies, then we will be able to return your liberties to you.

But not a moment before. Tolerance is not enough! You. MUST. approve!

Building on Nature

In which we noodle how the Faith grow different (and goes to seed differently) in different soils.

Thoughts Occasioned by Harold Camping

As you may have noticed, nothing happened on May 21 but some really good Rapture jokes (personal favorite: "People are telling rapture jokes like there's no tomorrow.")

However, nothing daunted, Harold "More Wrong about Everything than Even Bill Kristol" Camping continues unabated, having figured out within 48 hours of yet another false prophecy that the prophecy wasn't false but was, in fact, fulfilled *spiritually* on May 21, meaning that Judgement Day is still set for October 21.

What amazes me was one true believer out there on the web saying "1994 was strike one, and May 21 was strike two" but who was still willing to give him one more chance. That's what one guy I know calls "active stupidity".

Me: I'm grateful in a back-handed way to Camping. I was (pun alert) camping this weekend with the Scouts over in Eastern Washington and, as we stood around the campfire saying our Rosary and watching the last red sky in the west fade, it sort of hit me that God suspends Judgement Day each moment and continues to hold everything in being when, really, it would be much less of a nuisance for him to just let all creation go away. When you think of the universe as actively willed by God from nanosecond to nanosecond and realize that Creation is happening *right now* not long ago at the Big Bang, you realize what a mind-boggling act of generosity it is. When you realize that the Redemption via the Passion, death and Resurrection of Jesus is superadded on to that act of generosity and is, itself, part of what hold creation in being and keeps it all from going to smash... wow! That Mass that's being said somewhere in the world right now may be the only thing that is stopping judgment from coming.

Thanks be to God!

Prayers for Joplin and the Heartland

Father, hear our prayer for those killed, injured, bereaved, and homeless from the storms. We ask that you would take the dead to your side, and heal and help the living through our Lord Jesus Christ. Mother Mary, pray for all affected by these storms. And we ask, Father, that you would turn aside these tornados from human habitations and render them harmless through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Babies are Not for Sale

Sean Savage, co-author of the book "Inconceivable: A Medical Mistake, the Baby We Couldn't Keep, and Our Choice to Deliver the Ultimate Gift", challenges the Church's teachings on IVF and announces his opposition to them in a column he wrote for CNN's Belief Blog entitled "My Take: Catholic Church should reverse opposition to In-Vitro Fertilization".

This won't be happening anytime soon, Sean, because the Church will never endorse the notion that children are commodities which we have the right to purchase. They are gifts from God. This means that you get them via nature, not commerce and that you have neither the right to manufacture them, nor the right to kill them once God sends one your way. They are, in a word, persons, not things.

581 Followers!

Excellent! My Security Forces deal with another threat to national security in a proportional and sensible way! When my plans for global domination are complete, this will be standard operating procedure, as will tasering 86 year old bedridden women, stepping on their oxygen hoses and arresting their children when they protest. We have to take these measures if we are going to live in a state where I, your Leader, feel safe from you, who might all be terrorists if I gave you your freedom. What's that I hear, my minions? Outrageous? you say?

Look! Bread and circuses! Ahnuld was the helpless pawn of the woman he impregnated! Please gossip and discuss. Shiny!

I will be making the rounds in the Pits of Despair later today to see which of you is suitable to join my elite Cybermen program.

That is all!

Since I'm not a Real Christian....

I'm going to deal with this...



by going fishing with the Boy Scouts in Eastern Washington this weekend. I'll be back on Monday to score all the empty clothes and nice computer and stereo equipment that are Left Behind. Might even pick up some sweet squatter's deal on empty houses and cars.

Of course, this being Seattle, I don't expect too many Raptures here. But you guys living in the South are gonna have the whole place to yourself!

I'm outta here! Ciao!

John Jay Report stuff

A reader sends along a link about the report and remarks:

Forgive me, though, for thinking that the author's objecting to the term 'pedophilia' as "malicious" where 'ephebophilia' is the correct term seems a laugher. As a daddy to two boys that are 11 and 13, they still seem like children to me if technically they are no longer 'pre-pubescent.' Get a grip.

Yeah. The whole "it's wasn't pedophilia, but ephebophilia" thing seems like the sort of pettifogging distinction without a difference that butt-saving bureaucrats like to make. Let me put it this way: if some priest laid a hand on my 15 year kid, I wouldn't stand there parsing distinctions about pedophile vs. ephebophile. I'd call the cops. I'd also engage in intense interior debate about the morality of beating the living daylights out of the priest who harmed my kid.

I don't have a problem with *laypeople* taking responsibility for the fact that pervert priests are not grown in hydroponic tanks and that they come from the culture that we--the laity--have created. That's because I believe in subsidiarity and think the people who are closest to the proble should take responsibility for their part in the problem. So, as a layperson speaking to laity, I think we need to face the fact that we are the manufacturers and guardians of our culture and not pretend that the abuse crisis happened without our help and cooperation. We own all the guns, staff all the police, run all the courts, man all the prisons, do all the psychology and lawyering. We let this happen as much as anybody and, as laity, we should own up to that.

However, when clergy and especially the episcopacy are assessing the trouble, they really need to do better than "blame the sexual revolution and Woodstock." Sure, the abuse follow the general contours of sexual insanity demographic from the 70s. Yes, the Church always tends to reflect and be colored by the culture around it.

But you know what? That *still* doesn't mean the pervert priests had no choicess to make and it emphatically does not meant that bishops who lied and covered it all up were helpless puppets of the spirit of the age. We laity have a duty to take responsibility for creating sexually deranged culture. But priest and, in particularly, bishops who committed and covered up sexually derange crimes have every responsibility to take responsibility and spare us the "Blame Woodstock" evasion of responsibility.

Color me dissatisfied with the report.

Steven Greydanus...

...isn't too keen on the new "Pirates of the Caribbean" flick.