Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 1384
January 24, 2011
As you ponder...
This story, press on to think about the meaning of Israel's dietary laws and the concept of "pollution" in the Old Testament and the New.
Turns out sin, while the responsibility of the sinner, also has a social dimension. Who knew you could learn so much from a pig or a maggot?
Turns out sin, while the responsibility of the sinner, also has a social dimension. Who knew you could learn so much from a pig or a maggot?
January 21, 2011
Nifty little piece on how the Church weighs
...Marian apparitions.
If you want a full meal deal discussion of the fascinating problem of private revelation (of which Marian apparitions are one species), check out Chapter 3: Private Revelation, Marian Apparitions, and Sundry Tales of the Unexplained in Volume 3: Miracles, Devotion, and Motherhood from my Mary, Mother of the Son trilogy. (There's also an Appendix which discusses the major Marian apparitions approved by the Church).
I'd order the whole trilogy if I were you since a) it's cheaper than ordering each book and b) if you read Volume 3 without reading the other two, there's a good chance you will miss a whole lot.
If you want a full meal deal discussion of the fascinating problem of private revelation (of which Marian apparitions are one species), check out Chapter 3: Private Revelation, Marian Apparitions, and Sundry Tales of the Unexplained in Volume 3: Miracles, Devotion, and Motherhood from my Mary, Mother of the Son trilogy. (There's also an Appendix which discusses the major Marian apparitions approved by the Church).
I'd order the whole trilogy if I were you since a) it's cheaper than ordering each book and b) if you read Volume 3 without reading the other two, there's a good chance you will miss a whole lot.
Last Christians...
Ponder Leaving Hometown in Iraq
Mission accomplished (assuming the mission was the destruction of a Church that has been in Iraq for two millennia). But who cares? Salvation really comes through democratic capitalism and American military power in the mideast, not through Jesus Christ. So if the Church is annihilated there, it's not that big a loss. And besides some of Saddam's goons were Christian, so the Church had it coming. The point is, the war was a triumph and not morally problematic in the slightest.
Mission accomplished (assuming the mission was the destruction of a Church that has been in Iraq for two millennia). But who cares? Salvation really comes through democratic capitalism and American military power in the mideast, not through Jesus Christ. So if the Church is annihilated there, it's not that big a loss. And besides some of Saddam's goons were Christian, so the Church had it coming. The point is, the war was a triumph and not morally problematic in the slightest.
Some of you may remember the anti-war movement
It turns out that the bulk of "anti-war" activists were really just trendy anti-Bush dilettantes who could care less about the wars they protested and who evaporated the moment Obama (another shill for statist/corporate fusion) was elected.
Some of us continue to say that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are disastrous adventures and that we need to bring our troops home, not only from combat zones, but also from the other 100 countries in which we maintain a military presence in order to maintain the Empire. But nationalism being to a nation what the sin of pride is to an individual, we stubbornly keep spending ourselves into the dirt. One of these days we will figure out (I hope) that patriotism means love of country, not love of the state or the corporation.
Some of us continue to say that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are disastrous adventures and that we need to bring our troops home, not only from combat zones, but also from the other 100 countries in which we maintain a military presence in order to maintain the Empire. But nationalism being to a nation what the sin of pride is to an individual, we stubbornly keep spending ourselves into the dirt. One of these days we will figure out (I hope) that patriotism means love of country, not love of the state or the corporation.
Prayer Requests
A reader writes:
Also, another reader writes:
Just so you know, I did a google search for Deacon Ken Donohue, and I saw this post and I wanted to let you know that he is passing away... Please pray for him.He is a good man and was very kind to me when I visited Anchorage. May God grant him the grace of a happy death and bring him into eternal light and rest through our Lord Jesus. And may he comfort, strengthen and console all who love him through Jesus. Mother Mary, pray for Deacon Ken and all who love him!
Also, another reader writes:
Please pray for my brother and his wife in their pregnancy. The last two ended in miscarriages, so we're hoping God will bless us with another member of the clan.Father, hear our prayer for these needs and grant our prayer through Jesus Christ. Mother Mary, pray for all involved in these situations.
Also, a local priest just died recently. So, please pray for his souls and the souls of all the faithfully departed.
Everything you Need to Know about Andrew Sullivan's Paranoid Obsession
Behold the word cloud generated by the Daily Dish:
One of the strangest spectacles in American political journalism has been the instant, visceral and obsessive hatred--and I do mean hatred--Andrew Sullivan has displayed for Sarah Palin from the instant she appeared on the national stage. From the weird obsession with Trig Trutherism, to the need to analyze everything she says and does, to the continual need to chronicle such trivialities as Bristol's dance career, the sheer stalker obsessiveness of Sullivan's Palinoia has been a spectacle to behold. One can't escape the sense that it's about more than her (admittedly slipshod and self-aggrandizing) rhetoric. It's certainly not about her imminent election to the White House (which ain't never gonna happen). No, it's more... well, uterine than all that. She seems to sum up in her very being something that I doubt even Sullivan can fully articulate, but which seems to have as much to do with her nature as a female as it has to do with her dumb rhetoric, her gold-digging disloyalty to her oath of office, and her exploitation of her role as demagogue du jour for the right. She is deeply shallow and a complete lightweight, and yet Sullivan can't quit her. In this, he is much like the rest of the press, as Ross Douthat notes. But Sullivan is more. Nobody in American journalism manifests the level of sheer obsessiveness with her as he does. Nobody else made a spectacle of himself as a Trig Truther and still, to this day, thinks that it would have mattered even if he *had* proven his crazy obsessive theory to be true. It is this bizarre gynecological obsession that sets Sullivan apart from the run of the mill journalist who first sets Palin up as Somebody Important and then complains when Palin uses the attention the media draws to her to bask in the spotlight and complain about the media. Funnily enough, I'm not aware of any time that Palin has responded directly to Sullivan (though I don't follow her very closely and could be missing quite a lot).
Anyway, all that is preface to noting that, one of the small benefits of Sullivan's obsession is that, periodically, it will turn up fun little tidbits like this:
Morbid Curiosity Leading Many Voters To Support Palin
The problem is, you have to wade through 10,000 gallons of raw obsessiveness to pluck little diamonds like this out of the sewage.
I'll be glad when the primaries are over and Palin is finally relegated to the FoxNews talk circuit where she will be happy pound the self-promotion drum and hunting bears with the Kardashians and/or Lindsay Lohan. She's in it for Sarah Palin and the sooner the people who take her with such deadly seriousness on the fringes of Right and Left realize that, the better.
One of the strangest spectacles in American political journalism has been the instant, visceral and obsessive hatred--and I do mean hatred--Andrew Sullivan has displayed for Sarah Palin from the instant she appeared on the national stage. From the weird obsession with Trig Trutherism, to the need to analyze everything she says and does, to the continual need to chronicle such trivialities as Bristol's dance career, the sheer stalker obsessiveness of Sullivan's Palinoia has been a spectacle to behold. One can't escape the sense that it's about more than her (admittedly slipshod and self-aggrandizing) rhetoric. It's certainly not about her imminent election to the White House (which ain't never gonna happen). No, it's more... well, uterine than all that. She seems to sum up in her very being something that I doubt even Sullivan can fully articulate, but which seems to have as much to do with her nature as a female as it has to do with her dumb rhetoric, her gold-digging disloyalty to her oath of office, and her exploitation of her role as demagogue du jour for the right. She is deeply shallow and a complete lightweight, and yet Sullivan can't quit her. In this, he is much like the rest of the press, as Ross Douthat notes. But Sullivan is more. Nobody in American journalism manifests the level of sheer obsessiveness with her as he does. Nobody else made a spectacle of himself as a Trig Truther and still, to this day, thinks that it would have mattered even if he *had* proven his crazy obsessive theory to be true. It is this bizarre gynecological obsession that sets Sullivan apart from the run of the mill journalist who first sets Palin up as Somebody Important and then complains when Palin uses the attention the media draws to her to bask in the spotlight and complain about the media. Funnily enough, I'm not aware of any time that Palin has responded directly to Sullivan (though I don't follow her very closely and could be missing quite a lot).
Anyway, all that is preface to noting that, one of the small benefits of Sullivan's obsession is that, periodically, it will turn up fun little tidbits like this:
Morbid Curiosity Leading Many Voters To Support Palin
The problem is, you have to wade through 10,000 gallons of raw obsessiveness to pluck little diamonds like this out of the sewage.
I'll be glad when the primaries are over and Palin is finally relegated to the FoxNews talk circuit where she will be happy pound the self-promotion drum and hunting bears with the Kardashians and/or Lindsay Lohan. She's in it for Sarah Palin and the sooner the people who take her with such deadly seriousness on the fringes of Right and Left realize that, the better.
The Butcher Gosnell...
causes even the pro-abort zealots at Slate to crack in their resolve.
May God bring good out of that monstrous evil.
May God bring good out of that monstrous evil.
Materialist Dogma
In which we talk about the ways in which dogmatic atheism blinds itself. Don't miss the fun in the comboxes, wherein Catholics are chided for their simplistic faith that God is a man in a white beard.
Scratch an atheist, find a fundamentalist.
Scratch an atheist, find a fundamentalist.
Passing of an Age
Two gentlemen who hailed from a better class of human being than our present culture is wont to produce have passed, and I salute them.
Farewell Sargent Shriver:
"He and his beautiful bride, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, would go to Mass every day — as much an act of rebellion against brutal modernity as it was an act of worship." - Bono
And farewell Dick Winters:
To get a sense of what this modest "unheroic" man endured for our sakes:
May their souls and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
Farewell Sargent Shriver:
"He and his beautiful bride, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, would go to Mass every day — as much an act of rebellion against brutal modernity as it was an act of worship." - Bono
And farewell Dick Winters:
To get a sense of what this modest "unheroic" man endured for our sakes:
May their souls and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
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