Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 1412

Prayer Request and Praise report

Lorna got her feeding tube and PIC line removed. Also, her back appears to be healing well and it looks like they aim to send her home by December 16. Therapy still has far to go and she's still in great pain. But the doctor aims to have her walking, however clumsily, by Christmas.

Don't slack off on the prayers, but do thank God for this wonderful progress through his Son Jesus! Pray that they get the trach out soon and that she continues on the mend.

Godwin Delali Gadel...

...is a gung ho African Catholic. He is also a busy bee, creating materials like this:

Catholic Fiction: Is the Rosary Biblical? from Godwin Delali GADEL on Vimeo.

You can find more of his stuff here.

Bp. Finn speaks common sense

...offends conservative pieties again.

Last time, it was his observation that the death penalty should be abolished.

Now it is the advocacy of the fact that, since we have already chosen to integrate illegal immigrants into our economy and exploit them, we should also go ahead and make them citizens via the DREAM act.

Much high dudgeon in the comboxes about this extremely common sense position, with the usual huff-puffery about how the bishops should only talk about abortion, as well as rubbish about "failure to go through proper channels" means illegal immigrants are open to being exploited in perpetuity and never given citizenship and so forth. Jack Smith articulates the common sense reply:

Please don't equate the immigration experience of our ancestors with current immigrants. Our millions of ancestors spent between 2-5 hours on Ellis Island and only 2 percent were rejected. We intentionally steal decades of cheap labor from current immigrants and cost them thousands of dollars and decades of grief to become legal.

If you would like to afford current immigrants the legal pathway my Irish and Italian immigrant ancestors had, I'm all for it. They'd all have been legal a few hours after they arrived.

All in all, the response of several readers is a fairly typical sample of the "ignore bishops except for abortion" mentality of the Right, which maps pretty closely with the "ignore bishops except for when they are useful for Democrat talking points" mentality of the Left. Happily, some readers do get that the teaching of the Church is not simply a grab bag of useful adornments for one's pre-existing political committments.

Keep up the struggle, Jack!

Eric Sammons forgets...

the all-time favorite mantra of the Catholic Jerk: "I'm not indulging the sin of anger. I'm Jesus overturning the tables of the moneychangers! I'm heroic!"

That tends to be the favorite among conservatives. Lefty Christians tend to prefer the appellation "prophetic" for every time they behave rudely.

A faithful minion...

sends along this vital protection from the eye of the State.

Available in children's sizes. Adult sizes have the words in metallic ink so they show up in the x-ray machine.

The whole "We have abuse people in order to stop the ticking time bomb!!!!" thing is looking less appealing now that Caesar has started abusing his citizens. I wonder how long the torture zealots will be able to maintain the cognitive dissonance before they finally admit that "Safety Through Contempt for Basic Human Dignity" was a bad idea.

Some of the End to Evil crowd are still trying to maintain the lie, dubbing the TSA gropes "freedom fondles" (I am not making that up). But for most people, the neocon project of an ever more intrusive State promising utopian safety through Leviathan by any means necessary is now pretty effectively seen as the Faustian bargain it always was. A few idiots may still buy this snake oil. But once the State stops terrorizing foreigners in CIA black sites and starts terrorizing little boys at airports, sane people see the jig is up. If Caesar can spit on due process abroad, he will inevitably do it at home too.

And is. Only the most brainwashed neocon will stand for it. Enough!

Mary Aggie's has some ideas

...for Advent.

Brothers Under the Skin

Every time I listen in to somebody like Rush, he is railing against "moderate Republicans" who won't face the fact that liberals hate them and want to destroy them, so there's no point in even trying to carry on a conversation with them. They are Other. They are the Enemy. Moderates are fools for even considering anything less than all out war with the Implacable Foe. If conservatives give an inch they are on the verge of utter destruction by a juggernaut bent on total domination!!!

Meanwhile, across the aisle, we find liberals saying:



Everybody is certain they are the beleaguered victim betrayed by wishy-washy wimps on their own Team.

Funny, innit?

Daring Artists

bravely face the applause of their peers.

Golly! Another art exhibit mocking Jesus on the cross and celebrating gay sex. Who could have predicted it? And gosh! Nothing about Bronze Age Muslim goons stoning homosexuals to death! What a surprising omission from our courageous arts community!

A reader asks...

I've been teaching Sunday school this year with fourth graders and one of my catechists keeps bringing up the same problem. He says that Jesus was not sinless, because of the cleansing of the temple. I haven't been able to figure out a satisfactory answer of why this violent act was not a sin. Could you help me out? Thanks and happy Liturgical New Year!

I'd start by interrogating the assumption that violence is always a sin. How does your catechist know that? Also, defining "violence" would be good. It appears to me that your catechist is starting with the assumption that his suburban American notions of sin and virtue have been mystically elevated to Absolutes by which he sits in judgment of Jesus. It *may* be that your friend is qualified by some godlike power to do this. But the more likely explanation is that his notions of violence and sin are defective. Suggest the possibility that it is he and not Jesus who might not know what he is talking about. Definitely worth exploring if he wishes to actually be a Catholic catechist committed to such notions as "Jesus is God and not just some guy." Otherwise, get him away from the kids, because he has no business teaching them.

My readers are utterly awesome

Reader Kelly Franklin responds to this challenge almost instantly.

The Vision of Old Smith
(An exercise in obsolete English)

When late in Widdendream I strayed
Like a Yemeles Hoddypeak,
In the sundown twinkle of the Twitter-light
Through horizon's blazing streak,
I found myself in a vision-land
And a Malagrugrous place.
In the Brabble and Freck of the spirit world
I espied a nightmare face.

Now before ye Kench and mock my tale
As the child of a Brannigan,
Or the feverish foal of a Bibesy's binge,
Or a madman's scurrilous din,

I'll swear I'm as sober as Old St. George
And Ludibrious though I be
My Scriptitation's as good as gold:
I'll deliver it truthfully.

For there, Jargogled on every side
By the demons' garrulous game
Stood the son of Sanguinolency
Old Scratch, and Adam's bane.

The devil himself stood cackling
(I shudder now to tell)
Deliciating in fiendish plans
To bring more souls to hell.

He soon devised Illecebrous
Temptations sickly sweet
And I, Quagswagged by burning winds
Smelt the singeing of my feet

And so, Corrading snippet prayers
Forgot since infancy
I stammered, spat, and stuttered out
(No Perissology)
A single line to the Mother of God,
And to Old Saint Michael's sword,
And a bit of De Profundis,
And a lot of "Save me Lord!"

And quick as a flash the vision's gone
And the day's begun to break,
But as I yawned I thought I heard
The slithering of a snake.

And so my generous tavern-friends
I offer you my tale
Poor Jollux that I be, will you
Treat me a mug of ale?

I bow in reverence before the stellarness of his wondrousness. You're your mother's son, Kelly. It's an honor to know you.