Pope John Paul the Great

In prayers. Seemed time to pull this out and recall all that he has done. "Totus tuus."

In one of the best articles on JPII that I have read, George Weigel opens with dramatic intensity:


"At the height of Hollywood's infatuation with things Catholic, no screenwriter would have dared propose such a storyline: Months after his country regains its independence, a son is born to Polish parents in the small provincial own of Wadowice. His mother dies before he makes his First Communion. Raised by his father, a gentleman of the old school and a retired military officer of deep piety, the youngster is easily the best student in the town schools, an enthusiastic athlete, an amateur actor of note in a town that prides itself on its theatrical tradition. One of his close friends is the son of the leader of the local Jewish community.

"After moving to Krakow with his pensioner-father he enters the ancient Jagiellonian University, but his brilliant academic performance and his rapidly developing career as an actor in avant-garde theater are abruptly terminated by the Second World War.

"Amidst the brutalities of a Nazi occupation intended to eradicate Poland from history's map, he works as a quarryman, blaster, and manual laborer, often walking four kilometers to work in the freezing Polish winter, clad in jeans and wooden clogs, his face smeared with Vaseline to prevent his skin from freezing. At risk of his life he helps organize a resistance movement aimed at saving Polish culture through the power of the 'living word,' proclaimed in an underground theater; at the same time, he takes his first steps in Carmelite spirituality under the tutelage of a quirky lay mystic who forms young men into 'Living Rosary' groups after the priests of the local parish have been sent to Dachau.

"His father dies and the young man's vocational struggle intensifies: is his life to play itself out on the stage or in the sanctuary? When his decision to seek the priesthood matures, he enters a clandestine seminary run by the heroic archbishop of Krakow, who serves Hans Frank a meal of stale bread and acorn coffee when the haughty Nazi governor insists on being invited to dine at the episcopal manse. The surreptitious seminarian (one of whose classmates suddenly disappears, only to end up in front of a firing squad) studies philosophy and theology in the dim light of the chemical factory where he works the midnight shift; his books are pock-marked by the lime that splashes out of the water-purification machinery he tends.

"In the wake of the Warsaw Uprising, the Nazis try to forestall a similar eruption of resistance by arresting every young man in Krakow; our protagonist dodges Gestapo patrols, makes his way across town, and enters the bishop's residence where the clandestine seminary is reformed. He lives in a makeshift dormitory that was once the archbishop's drawing room; after Poland's 'liberation' by the Red Army in 1945, he engages a Soviet soldier in a long, earnest conversation about the possibility of God.

"After priestly ordination, graduate studies in Rome, and a sympathetic look at the worker-priest movement in France, he returns to Krakow and, after a year in a country parish, begins an intense ministry to university students at St. Florian's Church. While Stalinist orthodoxy is being ruthlessly enforced in Polish intellectual life, liturgical innovation, a pastoral strategy of 'accompaniment,' and thousands of hours in the confessional distinguish his approach to the university chaplaincy. Completing a second doctoral degree, he joins the faculty of the only Catholic university in the communist world; there, he and his philosophy department colleagues conduct a bold experiment aimed at nothing less than the reconfiguration of post-Cartesian intellectual life. While commuting back and forth by overnight train to his teaching position he continues his pastoral ministry in Krakow and works to develop a modern Catholic sexual ethic in conversation with his former parishioners, now preparing for marriage or starting their families.

"One of the last episcopal nominations of Pius XII, he is consecrated bishop at thirty-eight and within four years is elected administrator of the archdiocese when the incumbent ordinary dies and the Church and the government deadlock on a new appointment. One of the intellectual leaders of the Second Vatican Council, he makes crucial contributions to its Declaration on Religious Freedom and, above all, to its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. Proving that Providence has a wicked sense of humor, he is nominated archbishop of Krakow with the enthusiastic support of the communist government and is created cardinal at forty-seven.

"As archbishop he conducts the most extensive implementation of Vatican II of any diocese in the world, all the while refusing to behave as cardinals are supposed to behave: he skis, he kayaks, he vacations with lay people. A working intellectual, he continues to teach at the Catholic University of Lublin and spends two hours every day in his chapel, writing at a desk before the Blessed Sacrament. To the intense chagrin of the communist authorities, he pursues a relentless, sophisticated, and increasingly vocal defense of religious freedom: demanding church-building permits, defending youth movements, clandestinely ordaining underground priests for work in Czechoslovakia.

"Invited to preach the papal Lenten retreat in 1976, he prepares a series of meditations in which Holy Scripture, St. Augustine, and the German philosopher Heidegger are the first three references. Two years later he is elected the 264th bishop of Rome, the first non-Italian in 455 years, and the first Slavic pope ever. KGB leader Yuri Andropov warns the Politburo of grave troubles ahead, and is vindicated when the Polish pope returns to his homeland in June 1979 and sets in motion the revolution of conscience that eventually produces the nonviolent revolution of 1989, the collapse of European communism-and the end of the Soviet Union Andropov served.

"The Slav pope revamps the practice of the papacy through pastoral pilgrimages to every corner of the world and through a magisterium that addresses virtually every large question involved in the ongoing implementation of Vatican II, to whose completion he has pledged his pontificate. Surviving an assassination attempt, he redefines the Catholic encounter with Judaism, invites Orthodox and Protestant Christians to help conceive a papacy that could serve them, preaches to sixty thousand raptly attentive Muslim teenagers in a Casablanca stadium, and describes marital intimacy as an icon of the inner life of the Trinity.

"After a bout with cancer and sundry other medical difficulties, the world press pronounces him a dying has-been; within the next six months, he publishes an international bestseller translated into fifty-five languages and gathers the largest crowd in human history in Manila, shortly after changing the course of the Cairo World Conference on Population and Development. When he addresses the United Nations in October 1995, the world, whether it likes what it hears or not, knows that it is listening to its moral leader. Two days later, the irrepressible pontiff does a credible imitation of Jack Benny during Mass in Central Park and the preternaturally cynical New York media loves it....

"Man of the Century?"

"As I say, the story, as fiction, is simply too much. But it is not fiction. All of this really happened. But what does it mean? What truth about the human condition, the Church, the modern world, is disclosed by this extraordinary personal epic?

"It is difficult to imagine a twentieth-century life more fraught with dramatic tension than that of Karol Jozef Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II. Jonathan Kwitny, in a new biography, dubs the pope 'the man of the century' — and Kwitny is right about this, if wrong about many, many other things. But to grasp the kernel of Wojtyla's life and papal project (the two are intimately related), it has to be understood that John Paul II as 'man of the century' is not a matter of Catholic special pleading. John Paul II is not the man of the Catholic twentieth century; he is the man of the century, period."

For the rest of this captivating article, check it out here.

George's Thoughts on Schiavo

Recently, National Review interviewed Princeton professor of law Robert George, who is a member of the President's Council on Bioethics. He spoke to issues of justified killing and particularly to the issue of denying Terri Schiavo food and water. Here are some of his thoughts:

"It is pointless to ask whether Terri Schiavo had somehow formed a conditional intention to have herself starved to death if eventually she found herself in a brain-damaged condition. What's really going on here — and I don't think we can afford to kid ourselves about this — is that Terri's husband has decided that hers is a life not worth having. In his opinion, her continued existence is nothing but a burden — a burden to herself, to him, to society. He has presumed to decide that his wife is better off dead.

"Even if we were to credit Michael Schiavo's account of his conversation with Terri before her injury — which I am not inclined to do — it is a mistake to assume that people can make decisions in advance about whether to have themselves starved to death if they eventually find themselves disabled. That's why living wills have proven to be so often unreliable. One does not know how one will actually feel, or how one will feel about one's life and the prospect of death, or whether one will retain a desire to live despite a mental or physical disability, when one is not actually in that condition and when one is envisaging it from the perspective of more or less robust health.

"Consider the case of a beautiful young woman — an actress or fashion model perhaps — who is severely burned in a fire. Prior to actually finding herself in such a condition, she might have supposed — and even said, if the subject had come up in a conversation — that she would rather be dead than live with her face grotesquely disfigured. But no one would be surprised if in the actual event she did not try to kill herself by starvation or some other means, and did not want to die.

"In any event, it is clear that the only reason for Michael Schiavo's decision is that he considers Terri's quality of life to be so poor that he wants her to be dead. He claims that she would want that too, which I don't grant, but even if he's right about that, we should treat her like anyone else who wants to commit suicide. We rescue, we care. We affirm the inherent value of the life of every human being. Our governing principle should be always to care, never to kill."

In responding to the criticisms of intervention by the government, George said:

"The other thing that Congress is being accused of is interfering in a family decision. Now look: Terri Schiavo has been abandoned by her husband. Michael Schiavo took a vow to be faithful to Terri "in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, 'til death do us part." But he has not been faithful; he has not forsaken all others. He has set himself up in a marriage in all-but-name with someone else, a woman with whom he already has two children. He has disrespected Terri and, indeed, forsaken her. Now he is seeking to bring about her death by starvation. Notice something wrong with this picture? Terri's parents and siblings, by contrast, have never abandoned her. They are prepared to shoulder all the burdens, including the financial burdens, of caring for her. They want to provide the therapy that many medical people who have observed Terri, whether at the bedside or by videotape, believe can help her. No one expects a full recovery, but it may be possible for her to make genuine progress. That possibility will be foreclosed, however, if she is killed by deliberate starvation before it can begin."

Terri Schiavo and Christ's Passion

Yesterday was a sad day for America. Terri Schiavo's killing began. And it began partly because of a judge.

A court in this once-great land issued a death warrant, an order to kill, and since she is an innocent person, an order to murder. To take away food and water, basic goods, from someone who has not verifiably expressed such a wish is to violate her basic rights. Added to that is the fact that there are so many questionable "facts" and issues related to her case only makes the request on behalf of her husband all the more suspect. She has not even had the appropriate testing done to see if she is in a persistent vegetative state (pvs). The judge will not listen to reputable doctors who disagree with the husband and the judge's own death-oriented views.

It is no coincidence either that this happened on the Friday before Holy Week. As Terri is starved, she will undergo increased pain and suffering. She will truly be walking with Christ as Good Friday approaches. And if she dies as expected, if her murder happens when they think it will, she will have been killed on or around not only the day we remember the death of Christ but ... appropriately enough ... the Resurrection of Christ. May she be comforted in His Grace as she is slowly murdered and may her suffering and eventual death be redemptive. Her family ... or I should say her "loved ones" because not all her family is apparently loving her ... will need the comfort of this to persevere through the mayhem that continues in their lives.

I recently read the above letter to the editor in The Tidings (March 11), the newspaper of the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, that utterly misrepresented the Ten Commandments and Christian moral tradition.

Well, here are my thoughts (which The Tidings chose not to publish ... for whatever reason):

Letter writer Mike Wisniewski (March 11) betrays his own ignorance of the Ten Commandments as he tries to criticize other Catholics for what turns out to be their deeper and more accurate understanding of God's Word. Wisniewski says "there are no exceptions listed with" the fifth commandment. However, what he apparently does not understand is that the commandment to "not kill" literally says "Thou shall not murder." (Check your Hebrew.) Since there is a difference between murdering and killing, i.e., since not all killing is murder, this commandment actually does suggest an exception to killing. This commandment says one should not murder, and thus allows for continued and justified forms of killing. For proof of this, check out the second command God gives in the Bible, a command before he has formed the people of Israel (and thus not one subject to claims that it only applies then and to them): Genesis 9:6 says "If anyone sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed for in His (God's) image did God make man." God actually commands humanity to put to death those who murder. This is one reason why the Church will never condemn outright the moral justification of the death penalty, however limited she says its use should be.

Now, I am not saying that the death penalty is perfect nor am I saying that we should not find other forms to punish and keep murderers from the rest of society. The only point is that advocating the death penalty is not "hypocritical" for Catholics, for as things turn out these proponents actually have a strong case, both biblical and moral, for advocating such a measure, however limited they would like to see its application.

As well, Wisniewski suggests that war is counter to the fifth commandment. Well, since not all killing is proscribed, resort to war may still be justified. When we look at the evil of the Nazis, what other measure does Wisniewski suggest to stop the atrocious terror committed by a strong and morally-bankrupt regime like Hitler's? With a name like his, Wisniewski should know better. War is not the answer? Well, sometimes it is. Sometimes it is the only thing that will stop evil men from continuing to pillage, rape, murder, and torture innocents around the world. Sometimes it is the only thing that will stop genocide. War is sometimes the answer, and therefore killing is sometimes justified. It is only too sad that people like Wisniewski not only are ignorant about the Word of God and their alleged faith (especially when they are public about it) but that they also apparently have no gratitude for the sacrifice of thousands of men and women who have died fighting so that others could be free and live in relative peace and safety. As Mill said, yes, war is ugly, but what is uglier is the "decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war .... The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." I thank God for these men (and those who continue such sacrifices). Without them, if we survived, we would all be speaking German! 

Jesuits and False Teaching?

In a recent article in First Things about his entrance into the Catholic Church, R. R. Reno recalls one of the problems with Catholic universities, and education in general (at least in the sense of common sense and any positing or even honest consideration of an objective morality and for lack of a better word "traditional" or conservative political thought):

"The Catholic Church did not deliver me from apostasy and false teaching. I teach at a Jesuit university [enough said?!], so I am not naive about just how insouciant about orthodoxy priests can be."

Terrorists amongst Us

In an interview with National Review, Barbara Newman, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, reveals some startling info about the continued threat of terrorism, this time not so much from al-Qaeda as from Hezbollah, the group responsible for murdering 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut back in 1983 all through one "suicide" bomber. She is the co-author of the new book Lightening Out of Lebanon: Hezbollah Terrorists on American Soil.

Some of Barbara Newman's responses:

"I almost lost my breakfast Thursday, which luckily I hadn't eaten yet, when I saw the New York Times page-one report today that Kofi Annan is encouraging the acceptance of Hezbollah as the preponderant power in Lebanon and the United States is thinking of yielding to this and France's pressure to do just that.

"But the unvarnished truth is that Hezbollah is the most dangerous terrorist group in the world. It has about 25,000 armed members and as we saw in the pro-Syrian march in Beirut, it can muster a million in the streets.

"The Iranian Revolutionary Guards started training what became Hezbollah in Baalbeck in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon in 1979, right after Khomeini came to power in Iran. Iran supports Hezbollah with about $100 million a year but Hezbollah has enough businesses and is a powerful fundraiser in its own right. Iran helps Hezbollah by putting at its disposal its diplomatic prerogatives, letting Hezbollah use its security apparatus for communications and shipping of equipment.

"How can we forget the fact that in 1983 a Hezbollah suicide driver crashed a one-thousand-pound bomb into the Marine Barracks in Beirut and killed 241 of our best and brightest? What about the hostages they took and tortured? What about the CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley who they kidnapped and slowly drowned to death by forcing a pipe down his throat and flooding him with water? They made tapes of his agony and sent it to the CIA. I'm told that former CIA Director William Casey almost went crazy when he heard them, and this propelled him to Iran-Contra, to try to free the hostages.

"Hezbollah has been operating inside the United States. Since the 1980s, the FBI has deported hundreds of members and had dozens of cases. Mostly, in these years, the Hezbollah cells were busted for criminal activity such as insurance fraud, credit-card fraud, counterfeiting clothes such as Levi jeans, phony marriages which they arranged to get green cards, and cigarette smuggling. Though these are sort of under-the-radar crimes, they raised millions of dollars which were sent to Hezbollah coffers in Beirut and in some cases used to buy highly sophisticated 'dual-use' equipment in Canada such as very sophisticated computers, cell phones hooked up electronically to be capable of remotely controlled explosions, and intelligence drones.

"They have not hit us here but the FBI and CIA thinks if we push them to the wall, cut off their ability to raise funds, get tough with them in Lebanon, they easily could hit us here.

"Remember, they are very tough and sophisticated. Their soldiers don't do solo operations. Think of them as a pistol aimed at our head, which can be shot at will."

What Daniel Pipes Says They're Saying

Just found this from the website of Daniel Pipes:



Caught My Eye An occasional series of noteworthy quotes, in reverse chronological order.

__
Victor Davis Hanson: "Imagine a world in which there was no United States during the last 15 years. Iraq, Iran, and Libya would now have nukes. Afghanistan would remain a seventh-century Islamic terrorist haven sending out the minions of Zarqawi and Bin Laden worldwide. The lieutenants of Noriega, Milosevic, Mullah Omar, Saddam, and Moammar Khaddafi would no doubt be adjudicating human rights at the United Nations. The Ortega Brothers and Fidel Castro, not democracy, would be the exemplars of Latin America. Bosnia and Kosovo would be national graveyards like Pol Pot's Cambodia. Add in Kurdistan as well - the periodic laboratory for Saddam's latest varieties of gas. Saddam himself, of course, would have statues throughout the Gulf attesting to his control of half the world's oil reservoirs." ("The Disenchanted American," National Review Online, January 9, 2005)


Josef Joffe: "Imagine that Israel never existed. Would the economic malaise and political repression that drive angry young men to become suicide bombers vanish? Would the Palestinians have an independent state? Would the United States, freed of its burdensome ally, suddenly find itself beloved throughout the Muslim world? Wishful thinking. Far from creating tensions, Israel actually contains more antagonisms than it causes." ("A World Without Israel," Foreign Policy, January/February 2005)


Natan Sharansky, ex-Soviet dissident and Israeli politician, describing his November 2004 meeting with George W. Bush: "I told the President, ‘You don't look like a politician. You look like a real dissident, because politicians always look at what polls say, but you believe in democracy and freedom… Even when your colleagues in Europe tell you that democracy is impossible, you go ahead with it. You are a real dissident'." ("Peace Will Only Come after Freedom and Democracy," Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2005)


George Jonas, columnist: "Attempts to spread Western values around the world haven't been entirely unsuccessful [but] … in the realm of values, the balance of trade hasn't favoured the West. … We haven't exported tolerance nearly as often as we've imported intolerance. We haven't strengthened individual liberties in other regions nearly as much as we've reduced them at home. Today, we're less free to speak, associate, do business, choose pastimes or lifestyles than we were 50 ago (except in matters having to do with promiscuity or sexual preference)." ("Exporting freedom, importing intolerance," National Post, Dec. 27, 2004)


David Kershner, Los Angeles, in a letter to the editor: "Since when did it become the civil-rights lobby's mandate to preclude me and my loved ones from having every precaution taken to ensure our safety? … My suggestion is that the civil libertarians license their own airline, where no security check is required, no identification needed, and the pilot and airline are absolved from legal responsibility for any catastrophe resulting from a terrorist incident (understanding that the plane will be shot down if it deviates unannounced from its pre-determined flight path). The rest of us will provide fingerprints, driver's licenses and any other proof to lessen the risk of being blown to bits." ("Civil Liberties Zealots Need Their Own Airline," The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 13, 2004)


Muhammad Shahrour, a Syrian writer on Islam: "When you take the political Islam, you see only killing, assassination, poisoning, intrigue, conspiracy and civil war, but Islam as a message is very human, sensible and just." (Neil MacFarquhar, "Muslim Scholars Increasingly Debate Unholy War," The New York Times, Dec. 10, 2004)


Maria Margaronis: From London, "the most frightening thing about Bush's victory is the prospect of a world divided between warring fundamentalisms, with Europe in the middle struggling to hold on to its Enlightenment legacy." ("Fears of a World Divided," The Nation, Nov. 22, 2004)


Stephen H. Balch, president of the National Association of Scholars: "Our colleges have become less marketplaces of ideas than churches in which you have to be a true believer to get a seat in the pews. We've drifted to a secular version of 19th-century denominational colleges, in which the university's mission is to crusade against sin and make the country a morally better place." (Quoted in John Tierney, "Republicans Outnumbered In Academia, Studies Find," The New York Times, Nov, 18, 2004)


Jonathan S. Tobin: With the death of Yasir Arafat, "the policy wonks at the State Department, the Council on Foreign Relations and the ‘Middle East experts' at major American newspapers (The New York Times' Thomas L. Friedman, The Philadelphia Inquirer's Trudy Rubin, etc.) are commemorating Arafat's passing in the way they have reacted to virtually every piece of news that comes out of the region: calling for more U.S. pressure on Israel to revive the peace process." ("Conventional Wisdom Rides Again: Arafat is buried, but the usual foolish policies rise from the dead," Jewish Exponent, Nov. 18, 2004)


Max Boot: Colin Powell "traveled less than any secretary of State in 30 years. It was not entirely a coincidence that the U.S. image in the world sank to new lows while Powell busied himself at Foggy Bottom. Telephone calls and meetings with foreign ministers in New York and Washington are fine, but they're not enough to win the battle for hearts and minds. We need a secretary of State who travels incessantly to explain and defend American policies. In the age of satellite television, no nation can afford to have striped-pants diplomats whose activities are limited to cocktail parties. The model should be Oprah Winfrey, not Dean Acheson." ("Dearth of a Salesman," Los Angeles Times, Nov. 18, 2004)


Simon Henderson: "A new seven-star hotel is nearing completion in Abu Dhabi, only the second such rated hotel in the world; the other is in Dubai." ("The UAE after Sheikh Zayed: Tensions between Tribe and State," PolicyWatch, Nov. 12, 2004)


Gal Luft, executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security: "the U.S. finds itself in the position of financially supporting both itself and its enemies in the ‘War on Terror.' … Every time an American goes to a gas station, he is sending money to America's enemies." ("Ending America's Dependence on Middle East Oil," Middle East Forum Wire, Oct. 27, 2004)

Institute on Religion and Democracy report on U.S. liberal Protestant church activities: "for every one criticism [by the churches] of any other nation in the world, one criticism would also be made of the United States and one would be made of Israel." (Erik R. Nelson and Alan F.H. Wisdom, Human Rights Advocacy in the Mainline Protestant Churches (2000-2003) Sept. 27, 2004)


James at outsidethebelway.com, responding to the unmasking of Dan Rather's use of false documents on CBS: "Individually, any of the major press outlets have a big advantage over any blog in covering the news. They've got more resources, more access, more manpower, and so forth. But, collectively, the blogosphere simply overwhelms the MSM [mainstream media]. We've got thousands of law professors, former military officers, political scientists, historians, and so forth looking at things through the lenses of our vast combined experience. There's simply no way a traditional media outlet could be expected to compete." ("60 Minutes Bush National Guard Docs Forged?" Sept. 9, 2004) This goes far to explain the James O'Shea quote below, at Aug. 24, 2004.


A news item in the Jerusalem Post: "Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was left home alone Tuesday when his entourage, including a large Secret Service security dispatch, left his residence for the Knesset without him. Sharon's Shin Bet guards had assumed the Prime Minister was present in one of the cars of the motorcade. Sharon, who had stopped off at his Jerusalem residence on Balfour Street on his way from his Sycamore Ranch home, was left behind with a small group of personal bodyguards. Not before the convoy reached the Knesset was the omission noticed." ("Secret Service forgets PM at home," Sept. 2, 2004)


James O'Shea, managing editor of the Chicago Tribune: "There are too many places for people to get information." (Quoted in Joe Strupp, "Editors Grapple With How to Cover Swift Boat Controversy," Editor & Publisher, Aug. 24, 2004)


John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge: "Most Americans do not realise how extraordinary their brand of conservatism is. The American left — unions, academics, public-sector workers — have their equivalents overseas; but [its young, activist conservatives], Focus on the Family, the angry taxpayers and the militant gun-owners are distinctly American. ("America's revolution," The Sunday Times (London), Aug. 22, 2004)


Edward Bernard Glick: "Events in both Israel and Iraq prove that the winning-hearts-and-minds approach to ending wars and insurrections has the same success rate as getting rain by praying for it. If it were indeed the key to victory, armies would have exchanged their weapons for public relations kits ages ago." ("Crush or be crushed," The Jerusalem Post, Aug. 3, 2004)


Christopher Caldwell: "There are few societies in which the veil and the cocktail dress coexist for long. One usually drives the other out." ("The Turkey Paradox," The Weekly Standard, July 26, 2004)


Mark Steyn, columnist, on John Kerry: "His default position is the conventional wisdom of the Massachusetts Left: on foreign policy, foreigners know best; on trade, the labour unions know best; on government, bureaucrats know best; on defence, graying ponytailed nuclear-freeze reflex anti-militarists know best; on the wine list, he knows best." (The Daily Telegraph, "He was complacent, arrogant and humourless. How they loved him," Aug. 1, 2004)


Alex Saleh, an Arab-American attorney from Michigan who says he was a conservative Republican before the 2000 presidential election, but "after four years of Bush, I now consider myself a very liberal Democrat." (Alex Barker, "Arab-Americans turn against the president," July 16, 2004)


James Bennet: "Private investment has all but vanished [from the Palestinian Authority]. But donors stepped in, doubling their contributions, to a billion dollars a year, an amount equal to one-third the Palestinian gross national product last year of $3.1 billion. That works out to roughly $310 a person, more aid per capita than any country has received since World War II" – or, more aid per capita ever. ("A People Adrift: In Chaos, Palestinians Struggle for a Way Out," July 15, 2004)


Mohsen al-Awaji, a Saudi lawyer who says he has abandoned his extremist past and considers himself a moderate Muslim, has an original plan for dealing with Saudi terrorists: if they do not want to lay down arms, the authorities should instruct them that "there are lots of occupied territories that require resistance," such as Afghanistan, Iraq, the Palestinian Authority and Chechnya. "If someone decides to go, we wish him luck. He's going to die anyway, so let him die there while achieving something, not die here and kill innocents with him." Aren't we glad al-Awaji is a moderate? (Donna Abu-Nasr, "Terror Wave Persists in Saudi Arabia," Associated Press, June 1, 2004)


Larry Bird, a basketball star, commenting on the spectacular performance in a championship game in 1986 by his arch-rival Michael Jordan, right after Bird's team beat Jackson's: "That was God disguised as Michael Jordan." (Michael Mandelbaum, The Meaning of Sports, New York: PublicAffairs, 2004, p. 268)


Daniel Johnson of The Daily Telegraph, reflecting on his neighbor, the notorious Islamist Abu Hamza al-Masri, finally being arrested by the British police: "The fact that he has remained at liberty is a testimony to the almost impossibly high standards of proof required by our courts before they will incarcerate even a man who is alleged to have declared war on everything Britain has ever stood for." ("Living next door to Abu Hamza," May 28, 2004)


Specialist Jennifer Marie Bencze, a U.S. soldier in Iraq: "Our mission is to rebuild this country, but the thing is, the bad guys won't let us do. At the same time we've got engineers rebuilding schools, fixing roads, doing all the humanitarian projects, we've got infantry fighting the bad guys. So the mission is really confused." (Edward Wong, "Divided Mission in Iraq Tempers Views of G.I.'s," The New York Times, May 17, 2004)


Thomas Donnelly, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute: "of the more than 2.5 million personnel nominally under arms in Europe, at most 3 percent are deployable. Roughly 85 percent of U.S. forces are deployable—and sustainable—at any moment." ("Learning to Live without Europe," May 2004)


Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis, the commander of the First Marine Division, addressing his troops after they left Fallujah without any fighting: "We did not come here to fight these people, we came here to free them." (John Kifner, "The Marines Enter Falluja, With Peace Their Aim," New York Times, May 11, 2004)


Film star Fernando Poe Jr., a high-school dropout turned movie idol of the poor, a man of 64 who has never held public office, is the chosen candidate of Imelda Marcos and her cronies from an era when the Philippines was more a private fiefdom than a country. Says Marcos about him: "You can trust him because not only has he the heart but the soul as well. If a man has soul then that's all that matters." (Michael Sheridan, "Al-Qaeda threat casts shadow over Philippine election," Sunday Times (London), May 9, 2004)


In an article on the tensions in Hamtramck, Mich., as large numbers of immigrants arrive and retain their customs, Bob Golen, 68, asks: "Why are you in the United States of America if you don't want to become an American?" (Stephanie Simon "Muslim Call to Prayer Stirs a Midwest Town," Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2004)


Ibrahim Moiz, a friend of Army Capt. James Yee, the chaplain who was arrested on spy charges but then released: "You can't be a true American and a Muslim at once." (Geneive Abdo and E.A. Torriero, "Spy charges dropped, but fear remains," Chicago Tribune, May 3, 2004)


Did I read this right? As part of a diplomatic offensive to shore up its reputation for concern for the Palestinians, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice "last week called some Arab countries that were behind in making payments to shore up the Palestinian Authority." (Glenn Kessler, "Gamble on Sharon Goes Awry for Bush," Washington Post, May 3, 2004)


Phillip Longman: "Today, the average woman in the world bears half as many children as did her counterpart in 1972." ("The Global Baby Bust," Foreign Affairs, May/June 2004.)

"In its propaganda war Israel has spread many lies particularly using Palestinian children, and it is amazing how gullible some Western media are when it comes to Israel over and over again. … their latest invention is that Palestinians are using their children to carry explosives and commit suicide bombings." (Ali Kazak, "Palestinian children and Jewish state," Khaleej Times, April 27, 2004)


"Lt. Col. Ayed Al-Luqmani, commander of the [Saudi] Passports Department's patrol officers, … said that it was very important to have women officers in order to make sure that those in women's clothes are indeed women." (Mahmoud Ahmad, "Terrorists Take to Abayas to Escape Dragnet," Arab News, April 26, 2004)


Abdelaziz Raikhan, a maintenance man for the Saudi security forces, surveying the damage – abandoned shops, blasted apartment buildings, twisted cars, chunks of rubble – from the suicide bombing of a police headquarters that killed at least 5 people and wounded 148 on April 21: "They're mentally ill. … There's not one American in this entire area. Not one! What kind of jihad is this?" (Megan K. Stack, "Jihad Hits Home in Saudi Arabia," Los Angeles Times, April 25, 2004)


According to "one gentleman playing backgammon at a coffee shop in Old Cairo": "The difference between the Arabs and the rest of the world is that we don't go around randomly killing innocent people." (Yasmine El-Rashidi, "Scent of despair," Al-Ahram, April 22, 2004)


Tom Wolfe: "Very little of what [Sigmund] Freud had to say has survived the scientific scrutiny of the past half-century. In hindsight, we can see that he was a brilliant philosopher of the old school who happened to live in an age in which only science was accepted as gospel truth. So by night he led his philosophical speculations in through the back door of his clinic, and in the morning he marched them out the front door as scientific findings." ("McLuhan's New World," The Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2004)


Khaled Abu Toameh: "Following the missile strike [by which Israeli forces killed Abdel Aziz Rantisi], Hamas spokesmen were too busy issuing threats to avenge the killing of than to discuss the issue of who would succeed him as Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip." ("Funeral of slain Hamas chief Rantisi sets out in Gaza," The Jerusalem Post, April 18, 2004)


Dick Polman: "They just can't let it go. The front-line soldiers of Florida politics remain so fixated on the 2000 postelection imbroglio that they're starting to sound like those Northern Ireland Catholics and Protestants who still haven't gotten over the 1690 Battle of the Boyne." ("Fla. parties, stung by ‘00, obsess over next time," The Philadelphia Inquirer. April 18, 2004)


George Will: "The United States government is not a speed reader, but after 37 years of reading U.N. Resolution 242, the government finally read it accurately on Wednesday. The government saw what is not there—the missing definite article, ‘the.'" ("Mapping Survival," The Washington Post, April 18, 2004)

Interpreting the "Silent" Gadamer

"... reflecting on Gadamer’s epigraph to his own academic memoir of 1977, Philosophical Apprenticeships: 'De nobis ipsis silemus'—about oneself one must keep silent. Perhaps there was more to that than just modesty."


From First Things journal some time ago, a generous take on the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer:

"It is reasonable to be dubious about biographies of philosophers, even when they are good. For what, after all, is the life of a philosopher? How much a novelist lived the events he or she wrote about (did Dostoevsky know a Zosima?) seems a natural point of curiosity, irrelevant though it may be to the novels. But could you wonder that about a philosopher? Philosophy concerns ideas, and do ideas have an obscure connection to everyday life? What, for example, can the life of the fellow with the wool ties and Teutonic humor tell us about what was most vital and central to Hans-Georg Gadamer, the German philosopher who died almost two years ago, on March 14, 2002, at the remarkable age of 102. As Gadamer himself noted, philosophers 'are thinkers and their identity is to be found in the continuity of their thought'—'biography' is thus 'marginal.'"

"Gadamer dubbed his work 'philosophical hermeneutics' to distinguish it from hermeneutics proper: that is, biblical exegesis and, in a broader sense, interpretation itself (as opposed to reflection upon it). But philosophy was not its point; philosophy was its means. The point was life, always the affair at which Gadamer’s hermeneutics was aimed. Though you cannot gather it from his academic style, life is the stage for Gadamer’s work the way life looms behind the music of Gustav Mahler (of whom Gadamer was fond). A Mahler symphony seems to want to guide you through birth, death, joy, melancholy, and illness in an altered frame of mind. Gadamer doesn’t offer that guidance: only the voice of Being can give it. But you have to hear that voice, and Gadamer wants to help you to hear it. 'What I am describing is the mode of the whole human experience of the world. I call this experience hermeneutical.' But there has been 'a fateful change in the relationship of humans to the world.' We have become masters. 'We are not at all ready to hear things in their own being.' That deafness means we cannot find our way home; it means a fundamental 'homelessness.' Awakening us to the voice of Being was the issue of all Gadamer’s work."

United Nations ... as usual ... while genocide continues. 

Democracy in Action. 

More Iraqi Fingers, More Iraqi Voters 

The Finger 

Many Women, Many Votes 

One Woman, One Vote 

Democratic Victory! 

Happy Iraqis 

Reading for (and from) St. Thomas Aquinas

Here are some words from the Angelic Doctor himself. They are taken from the Liturgy of the Hours, a book of prayers for each and every day of the year.

From a conference by Saint Thomas Aquinas, priest

The Cross exemplifies every virtue

Why did the Son of God have to suffer for us? There was a great need, and it can be considered in a twofold way: in the first place, as a remedy for sin, and secondly, as an example of how to act. It is a remedy, for, in the face of all the evils which we incur on account of our sins, we have found relief through the passion of Christ. Yet, it is no less an example, for the passion of Christ completely suffices to fashion our lives. Whoever wishes to live perfectly should do nothing but disdain what Christ disdained on the cross and desire what he desired, for the cross exemplifies every virtue.If you seek the example of love: Greater love than this no man has, than to lay down his life for his friends. Such a man was Christ on the cross. And if he gave his life for us, then it should not be difficult to bear whatever hardships arise for his sake. If you seek patience, you will find no better example than the cross. Great patience occurs in two ways: either when one patiently suffers much, or when one suffers things which one is able to avoid and yet does not avoid. Christ endured much on the cross, and did so patiently, because when he suffered he did not threaten; he was led like a sheep to the slaughter and he did not open his mouth. Therefore Christ’s patience on the cross was great. In patience let us run for the prize set before us, looking upon Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith who, for the joy set before him, bore his cross and despised the shame. If you seek an example of humility, look upon the crucified one, for God wished to be judged by Pontius Pilate and to die.If you seek an example of obedience, follow him who became obedient to the Father even unto death. For just as by the disobedience of one man, namely, Adam, many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one man, many were made righteous.If you seek an example of despising earthly things, follow him who is the King of kings and the Lord of lords, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Upon the cross he was stripped, mocked, spat upon, struck, crowned with thorns, and given only vinegar and gall to drink. Do not be attached, therefore, to clothing and riches, because they divided my garments among themselves. Nor to honours, for he experienced harsh words and scourgings. Nor to greatness of rank, for weaving a crown of thorns they placed it on my head. Nor to anything delightful, for in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

Santa Claus and the Dumb Ox (St. Thomas Aquinas)

Today is the feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas. Here is a bit of his writings:

Demonstration of God's Existence

I answer that, The existence of God can be proved in five ways.

The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act. For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality. Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood, which is potentially hot, to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it. Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects. For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e. that it should move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.

The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.

The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence--which is absurd. Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary. But every necessary thing either has its necessity caused by another, or not. Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.

The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But "more" and "less" are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.

The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.

(Summa Theologica, I, q. 2, art. 3)

Here is a spoof, of sorts:

THE FIVE WAYS OF PROVING SANTA CLAUS*
(from Joseph Magee's Thomistic Humor Page)

Whether Santa Clause Exists

We proceed thus to the third article:

Objections

It seems that Santa Claus does not exist; because Christmas gifts are able to be given by good elves. Therefore, Santa Claus does not exist.

Further, if Santa Claus did exist, there would be no narrow chimneys. But there are narrow chimneys, and sometimes there are no chimneys at all. Therefore, Santa Claus does not exist.

On the contrary, Kay Starr says: "I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus underneath the mistletoe last night."

I answer that, The existence of Santa Claus Can be proved in five ways.

The first and most manifest way is that taken from Christmas trees. It is certain and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are Christmas trees. Now no pine tree becomes a Christmas tree unless it is trimmed. Now to be trimmed means to receive ornaments from another. But this cannot go on to infinity in the trimming of Christmas trees. One must come to some first untrimmed trimmer; and this everyone understands to be Santa Claus.

The second way is from the nature of Christmas gifts. We see that in the world that Christmas gifts are given and received. Whoever, then, gives Christmas gifts either receives them from another or makes them in his workshop. If, however, no one makes Christmas gifts in his workshop, they are not given nor received. Therefore it is necessary to posit some first giver of Christmas gifts, who everyone calls Santa Claus.

The third way is taken from plastic images resembling Santa Claus. At all stores we see things of plastic that represent Santa Claus. These things are of such a quality that they are representations according to Santa himself or according to other images of him. But, it is not possible to proceed to infinity in images. Therefore, it is necessary to posit something which is resembling Santa Claus and hence Santa Claus exists.

The fourth way is taken from the grades which are found in Christmas spirit. Indeed, in this world, among men there are some of more and some of less Christmas spirit. But "more" and "less" is said of diverse things according as they resemble in their diverse ways something which is the "maximum." Therefore there must be something which has the most Christmas spirit, and this we call Santa Claus.

The fifth way is taken from the behavior of children. When Christmas day approaches, we see from their being good always or frequently that children, who lack understanding, are moved because of an end. But children would not be good because of the Nativity of Christ unless there were someone who strengthened them so that they were good. And this someone is known by all to be Santa Claus.

Replies to Objections:

Good elves, since they receive Christmas gifts from another, should be named the highest helpers of Santa.

It is not impossible that Santa Claus should use the door like everyone else.

NOTE
* Also known in various places under the name of Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, etc.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Martyr to Liberty

In honor of today's holiday, I thought I would recall an essay I wrote back in college for the student newspaper, San Francisco Foghorn. If only we kept to the principles advocated by the reverend.


15 Jan 95

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr: A Martyr to Liberty

I have a dream ...

Thus spoke a man of the cloth, a martyr of liberty, delivering one of the greatest speeches in American history. As the country recognizes the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with a national holiday, it is important to reflect upon what drove this man. What laid the seeds that grew and sprouted a dream which rang the bells of freedom? What kept the flame of this dream alive as it endured, burning throughout the showers of injustice, prompting this man to recognize that “social change cannot come overnight,” and at the same time persevere as he hoped it would cause “one to work as if it were a possibility the next morning”? What we find is a side, perhaps a deeper, more personal and spiritual side, to a man many may not truly know.

Through a reading of King's writings, we are led to the door of Truth and the Truth shall set us free. This door opens on the fundamental source of enlightenment for King. He tells us that this source is a law that binds all men. He appeals to this subjection to a law outside of man as he quotes Gandhi's affirmation that endured suffering will outlast inflicted suffering: "And in our winning freedom we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process." Whether one believes in God or not, it does not matter, for the law which he speaks is knowable to all men. Apostle Paul wrote that "what this law requires [of men] is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness." (Rom. 2:15)

It is this conscience that leads men to two civil actions: obedience or disobedience. The Reverend King believed in obedience to laws that were rooted in “the moral law and the law of God.” What to do if laws are not so rooted?

King writes that disobedience is morally justified since “there are two types of laws: just and unjust laws.” Our conscience is not the standard and authority on such a matter, only the medium. How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? King answers, "A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law." He quotes St. Thomas Aquinas by stating that "an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law." In addition, he praises measures taken by Christians who are “called to obey God rather than man.”

Understanding the necessity of law, King explains how and when one is to break an unjust law. He writes, "One who breaks an unjust law must do it openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law." (Emphasis added.)

He was disappointed, however, by Christians who didn't heed the call. He urged a return to the traditional Judeo-Christian ethics. His warning was strong as he observed, "If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century."

The nonviolent civil disobedience that King advocated was nothing new. He tells how "it was 'illegal' to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. But I am sure that if I had lived in Germany during that time I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers ..."

This extremism, of sorts, was also nothing new. King identifies his brand of extremism—civil disobedience—with Jesus, Amos, Paul, John Bunyan, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson. The question, King says, "is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be." If a man is not willing to act on his love, then is it love? "To suffer in a righteous cause is to grow to our humanity's full stature." To what point do we struggle? King tells us that if a man "has to go to jail for the cause of freedom, let him enter it in the fashion Gandhi urged his countrymen, 'as the bridegroom enters the bride's chamber'—that is, with a little trepidation but with great expectation."

Without such love, there can be no struggle resulting in joy and liberty. "There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church; I love her sacred walls. ... Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists." His deep love is not only for the church and ethics set down by the two Covenants but for humanity and natural rights (especially those reaffirmed in our Constitution and Declaration of Independence).

Phaizon Wood, Director of Multicultural Student Services, recently reminded us in USFnews that Reverend King was deeply concerned "about a capitalism without a moral center." A moral center? Yes, King did profess a strong belief in what he deemed "the moral way." Such a way is pursued through dreams. Not unattainable dreams, but dreams that take us to the mountaintops. Dreams that cause us to look from the heights of the land into the stars and proclaim, as King did, "I've seen the promised land." It is a dream that, despite the conditions and limits of man, is limitless. It is like a rock that stabilizes the passions and frustrations of a people as they see around them a world parading liberty, while the homeland of such a possession floated in the pools of injustice saying, "Wait." King voices this frustration from a Birmingham jail as he reminds “fellow clergymen" that "the nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter."

It is a dream that, amongst the strife, tension, and injustice of his day, instilled a happiness with no worries: "But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. And I see God..." As the Psalms sing of trust in God despite the wickedness of man, "I praise your promise; in you I trust, I do not fear. What can mere flesh do to me?" so does King, "I'm not fearing man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

Without these dreams rooted in the "moral way," our ethical center rots. If we separate ourselves from the center, from what King called "the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage," then we will, as other societies who have neglected such permanent things, fall into "a descending spiral ending in destruction for all.” Whether intentional or not, King here reminds us of a vision from Yeats:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

King calls on us to reclaim our center: to wake from our moral slumber, break out of the nightmares of immorality, and carry forward the dream of our forebears, "a dream deeply rooted in the American dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed--we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

King’s dream contains a "promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." A dream that yields "a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

It is a dream that "the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all flesh shall see it together." This glory is manifested in the faith that instills in man "a stone of hope" transforming "our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood." "With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning--'my country 'tis of thee; sweet land of liberty; of thee I sing; land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride; from every mountain side, let freedom ring;--and if America is to be a great nation, this must become true."

King's remembrance of the bells of freedom stirs what he says is a people "seeking to save the soul of America. They are taking our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers," as these "architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence."

This ringing, which resonates a thundering sound of sweet liberty through the hearts and souls of all men, is grateful not to a law, not to an ideology, not even to man, but to God Almighty:

And when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants—will be able to join hands and to sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last, free at last; thank God Almighty, we are free at last.’

Global Warming Games

Games people play. Or perhaps I should say, "Games others play."



(Click picture to see in larger format.)

Sometimes, others will go out of their way to fool the rest of us. As Thomas Sieger Derr has recalled, there are those in the global warming fear-mongering crowd who will do just about anything to fool the rest of us. Stanford University's Steven Schneider is one such character. He is on record (in Discover magazine, 1989) as acknowledging:

To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. (Emphasis added.)

Being honest is an option? Being effective is a justification for lying?

Good thing so many of us trust scientists as much--or as little--as we do.

For more on this and further problems with the arguments that suggest/proclaim "global warming" is a real threat to humanity, check out this article, "Strange Science."

New WMD's: Global Warming?

Whose on trial? Humanity? Are we really "attacking" the earth? Or is this just another episode of life in Bizarro land?




An article by Duncan Maxwell Anderson, aptly named "The Emperor's New Climate: Is Global Warming Real?," counters many of the charges brought against humanity--including one by a Brit scientist who says that global warming is "a weapon of mass destruction"--and highlights some of the many problems with the unfair and in all likelihood ineffective Kyoto Treaty.

Peggy Noonan: Writer, Mom, Person

Peggy Noonan.

One of the best writers and essayists around.

Here is a great article with and about Peggy Noonan, one of my favorite essayists.

She was a speechwriter to President Reagan and, prior to that, wrote for CBS's Dan Rather.

Here is a taste:

And then, miraculously, the White House, writing speeches for the president she so admired: the Challenger speech (“We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’”), the D-Day anniversary speech (“These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent.”) and many others.

Enjoy the rest of the article by going to Crisis Magazine.

As well, check out some of her books:

When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

On Speaking Well

A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag : America Today

What I Saw at the Revolution : A Political Life in the Reagan Era

"Kierkegaard for Grownups"

I recently came across a helpful article on Soren Kierkegaard. It is written by Rev. Richard John Neuhaus. A good intro to Kierkegaard's thought and significance.

Here is the intro paragraph (I like the O'Connor reference):

That extraordinary writer of stories about the "Christ-haunted" American South, Flannery O’Connor, was frequently asked why her people and plots were so often outlandish, even grotesque. She answered, "To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you have to draw large and startling figures." I expect Søren Kierkegaard, had he lived a century later, would have taken to Flannery O’Connor and would have relished her affirmation of the necessarily outlandish. But then he would immediately be on guard lest anyone think that he does not really mean what he says, that he is anything less than utterly, indeed deadly, serious. He exaggerates for effect and witheringly attacks his opponents who suggest that his exaggeration is anything less than the truth of the matter. He writes, as he repeatedly says, for that one reader—the singular individual who has the courage to understand him—while at the same time describing in detail, and often with hilarious parody, the many readers who refuse to take him at his word. Kierkegaard was keenly (some would say obsessively) attentive to the ways in which he was misunderstood, even as he persistently and defiantly courted misunderstanding. This, as readers beyond numbering have discovered, can be quite maddening. It is also at least part of the reason why Kierkegaard is so widely read.

24 24 Jack's Back 24 24

Jack's back. That's right. The best television show on the air is back. Tonight is the season premiere of 24, the show which set new standards for television drama.

Jack has been fired, but when terrorists strike, can Jack let it go? Can Jack stay away? I don't think so. Jack is back. And he is back with a mostly new cast. New boss. New U.S. President. New love. No more daughter (who always seems to get herself kidnapped). New agents. But the same annoying Chloe working at CTU.

Since he was fired for drug addiction, how does he make it back in?

Terrorists strike. Islamist terrorists strike and threaten more. Remember the Nick Berg slaughter? Well, these Islamist terrorists threaten a similar evil.

See it tonight, Sunday, at 8 pm. See more tomorrow, Monday, at 8 pm.

That's right. Two hours tonight. Two more hours tomorrow.

Thereafter, 24 will be on Mondays at 9 pm.

Sick Loved Ones and How To Help

There has been a lot of illness and sorrow in some lives lately. Two men are in need of prayers, my dad Leon and a friend Tom (who is still in ICU). Each time I pray I am brought back to the story of the Healing of the Paralytic. You can find it in a few of the Gospels. Here is Mark's version (RSV):

Chapter 2
1 And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. 2 And many were gathered together, so that there was no longer room for them, not even about the door; and he was preaching the word to them.

3* And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. 4 And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and when they had made an opening, they let down the pallet on which the paralytic lay.

5 And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "My son, your sins are forgiven."

6 Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, 7 "Why does this man speak thus? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?"

8 And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, "Why do you question thus in your hearts? 9 Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say,' Rise, take up your pallet and walk? 10 But that you may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins"--he said to the paralytic-- 11 "I say to you, rise, take up your pallet and go home."

12* And he rose, and immediately took up the pallet and went out before them all; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, "We never saw anything like this!"


Now, what strikes me each time is signified by the choice of words. This choice on Jesus' part displays utter beauty and mercy on his part. And, let's add, a reason to hope. What am I talking about?

A man is paralyzed. Does he suggest going to Christ? No. His friends do. Man is sick. Friends take him to Christ. Simple. However, they can't get in. The house is packed. The place is full. Do they give up? Do they say, "Well, we tried"? No. They persist. Without ceasing, they--in a sort of prayer--continue to get their friend to the One they believe in. Does the friend say anything? Does the friend say he wants to go to Christ? No. The friend is sick and paralyzed. For whatever reason, he is quiet, as if he cannot talk, as if he is too sick to communicate his desires or voice his protests. Yet friends are friends. They will not be turned away. They will continue to do for a friend, for a loved one.

The friends raise the paralytic up to the roof and lower him down through an opening, which they had to make on the spur of the moment.

Now, the key, the word that always grabs me: "... their ..."

And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "My son, your sins are forgiven."

We all remember that Jesus forgives the sins of the paralytic. As well, he soon heals the man of the paralysis. That is rather what we have come to expect from Jesus. But why? Why did Jesus do it?

Why did Jesus heal the paralytic? The text reveals the answer: "And when Jesus saw their faith, ..."

Their faith.

Jesus saw their faith and was moved. Jesus saw what they had done. Jesus saw that a group of believers in him loved a friend. Jesus saw that this group did not let crowds or a full building get in the way of transporting their friend to him. Jesus saw that this group risked to get their friend to him. They raised him up to the roof, made an opening, and lowered their paralyzed friend down into Jesus' midst.

They hoped for a healing. They got that and so much more.

Jesus was moved by "their faith." Because of their faith, he turned to the paralytic and forgave the man his sins. Jesus did not forgive him because of anything he (the paralytic) had said or done. No. Jesus forgave the man because of the man's friends. More precisely, Jesus acted because of the faith of the man's friends.

So, a group of believers took a sick or injured friend to Jesus and because of their faith, Jesus forgave the man his sins and then physically healed him.

Because of their faith, Jesus poured forth his mercy and graces upon the sick and injured.

We can help our friends and loved ones by carrying them to Jesus, not letting obstacles of whatever sort get in the way. Find another way when blocked. Find another means when things hinder you from bringing someone to Jesus. Raise him and then lower him onto the lap of Jesus. Lower him into the presence of the Lord. There, because of your faith, may Jesus see the sick and injured. May Jesus see and have mercy. May he save the sick and injured brought to him. May he even hear our prayer for physical healing. We may not get that one answered in the way we would like and when we would like, but in the end all mysteries will be made clear. On the more important note, Jesus has forgiven and saved the injured and sick brought to him by friends or loved ones who believe in his power, who believe in his mercy, who believe in his compassion, who truly and wholeheartedly trust and believe in Him.

Thus, we truly become "co-workers" with the Lord. We bring to him those in need of his grace. We bring to him and thus help him in the work of salvation, in the work of saving souls.

This is his beauty, his goodness, his mercy.

For those unable to do so on their own, Jesus leaves the sick and injured with friends and loved ones to intercede on their behalf, to be "co-workers" with him.

Because there are those who are unable to seek him on their own, Jesus leaves the sick and injured with us, with you and with me. To work, to pray on their behalf.

When petitioned out of hope and love, Jesus sees the faith of friends and loved ones who bring to him someone in need of the Lord's care. Because of this, "their faith," Jesus--we pray--will turn to the sick and injured, those who cannot come to him on their own because of their weak and frail state, and he will forgive them their sins, saving them, and then--in all hope and yet acceptance if it does not happen--he will once again utter those sought after words, "I say to you, rise, ... and go home."

Please pray for my dad Leon and friend Tom as they both struggle and fight to recover from serious illnesses, that they both may soon rise and come home. May God bless them and their families in these difficult times.

Ethical Living, Week 1

Finished week one in The Book of Jewish Values. (See below.) Well, it is a good read and recommended. Some highlights that I have not shared as of yet:

"What Would God Want Me to Do?" Day 4

"... Jewish tradition teaches that offering one's time and one's heart represents the highest type of giving.

"... be on the alert for opportunities to perform deeds of kindness. Do you see a frail person in the street carrying a package that seems too heavy for the person to manage? Have you come across an acquaintance who seems upset and distracted, and is in need of someone to speak with? Do you spot a neighbor who is recuperating from an operation and needs a companion with whom to take daily walks to build up her strength? ... before you rush away, ask yourself the question, 'What would God want me to do?'" (8-9)


"Be Generous Even When Your Instincts Are Lazy" Day 5

"Withholding goods from others because of laziness is selfish." (9) Where are all those old clothes?


"When You're Tempted to Cheat" Day 6

This one speaks for itself.

"Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov ... once hired a wagon driver to take him to a nearby town. The two men soon passed by a field filled with luscious produce.

"The driver stopped the wagon, turned to the Baal Shem Tov--whose identity he did not know--and said, 'I'm going to get us some good vegetables from that field. You be the lookout. Call out if you see anybody coming.'

"As the driver bent down to pick up some vegetables, the Baal Shem Tov screamed, 'We're seen! We're seen!'

"The frightened man ran back to the wagon and raced away. After traveling a short distance, he turned around and saw no one behind them.

"'Why did you call out like that?' he angrily castigated the rabbi. 'There was nobody watching.'

"The Baal Shem Tov pointed to the heavens. 'God was watching. God is always watching.'" (10-11)

Plato?! How was I supposed to know?

Aside from my daughter's cards, this is one of the best birthday cards (Off the Mark cards) I have received. Thank you, J. It so fits me, though let's hope I'm one with a book.

Hmmm? Wonder what happened to the other funny cards.

Saw this in the paper the other day and, since I have been trying to come up with a finalized essay for a philosophy class, I thought it kind of captured my mental state as of late. ... Or does it...? 

Go USC! Go Oklahoma!

Now that undefeated Auburn has won (albeit not as convincingly as I had hoped), it is time for USC and Oklahoma to tie. Why? So that the BCS is shown to be inadequate, once again. Get rid of it. Have a playoff or return to traditional bowl games. BCS cheated Texas the past few years. This go around, it cheated Auburn out of a chance to play for the so-called "national title."

And if someone is going to win, let it be the team from Pac-10, the west coast, California: USC.

Being Honest

In The Book of Jewish Values,

Week 1, Day 2
Monday

"'Let Your Fellow's Money Be as Precious to You as Your Own'"

Rabbi Telushkin comments upon an often neglected aspect of honesty. The point he makes here is that we should be honest in our dealings with other people. Honesty is so important it is compared to observing the Bible itself: "honesty in one's dealings with others is equated with observance of the whole Torah." (p. 5)

In fact, he points out, Jewish tradition teaches that "the first question one will be asked by the heavenly court [for judgment] after one dies is not 'Did you believe in God?' or 'Did you observe the Jewish holidays?' but rather 'Did you conduct your business affairs honestly?'" (5)

Was I just? Did I give what was due the other person? Did I give what belonged to him? It either belongs to him because of his nature as a human or it belongs to him because of some agreement or arrangement. Either way, it belongs to him. Did I cheat someone? Or did I treat him honestly? Did I treat him the way I would want to be treated?

How we treat our neighbor is important. It is not just what we say we believe or make ourselves do as far as religious observances are concerned. It is those, but it is also, perhaps moreso, how we treat others. This command is so important, one rabbi offers the following guideline: "Let your fellow's money be as precious to you as your own...." (5)

Why is money so important? It is not a good in itself. As P. J. O'Rourke says, you can't eat it. You can't drink it. You can't wear it. (Well, maybe I'll leave that one alone.) It is a tool. It is used for other things, to get other things. Moreover, it is used for productivity and increasing more wealth. Anyhow, before I get too far off course, let's close that parentheses.

How we treat others in dealings is very important. Do we cheat them? Do we give them the same respect we would want? Do we let them know what is really going on? What the true value is of something we are exchanging with them? Do we give good reason for the warning, caveat emptor?

Do we return money when we find it and we know whom it belongs to?

Dealings with money are so important that one rabbi concluded, "Only he who is reliable in money matters may be considered pious." (6)

Don't Mess with TEXAS

Just in case you did not catch the news item of the weekend: University of Texas Longhorns outlast Michigan to win the Rose Bowl in their first appearance in Pasadena. With the game coming down to the final seconds, Longhorns field goal kicker hit the ball just hard enough and without too much curve to take the lead from Michigan and win the game, 38-37. Like the folks say, "Don't mess with TEXAS."

Living Ethically

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin has a book called The Guide to Jewish Living. It is a "Day-by-Day Guide to Ethical Living." I am enjoying it immensely. There is an entry for each day of the year and a special one for Shabbat of each week as well as a helpful glossary of Jewish terms.

Week 1, Day 1 (Today)
"On Hearing a Siren"
What do you do when you hear a siren? Rabbi Telushkin, in citing other rabbis, suggests we say "a prayer that the ambulance arrive in time. ... that the [fire] trucks arrive in time to save the endangered people and home. We should also pray that no firefighter be injured. And when we hear police sirens, we should implore God that the police respond in time to the emergency." (p. 3)

Why pray? Basically, he says, it makes us better persons, partly by developing empathy. "Furthermore, imagine how encouraging it would be for those being rushed to a hospital to know that hundreds of people who hear the ambulance sirens are praying for their recovery." (3)

Recalling a time he suggested this in a talk, Telushkin comments about one particular woman who was moved by what he had said. "When she was ten, she told me, she had been awakened from a deep sleep by passing fire trucks. It was almost one in the morning, and now, twenty-five years later, she still remembered her first response: it was so unfair that her sleep had been ruined.

"The next morning she learned that her closest friend, a girl who lived only a few blocks away, had died in the fire. Ever since, she told me, whenever she hears fire trucks go by, she prays that they arrive at their destination in time." (4)

There is much wisdom in the practical situations Rabbi Telushkin discusses. It is not just for Jews either so don't fret because of the title. It is a good book, especially one to start today, the first day of the first week of this new year. Rabbi Telushkin is a good author who knows how to write for the everyman. He has many books, one of which I like a lot (Ten Commandments of Character) and another (Jewish Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say About the Jews) I hope to read soon.