A Roundup . . .

A few stories -- some dated, others recent -- which caught my eye in the past several months . . .

• Bishop Doran on . . . Everything. Amy Welborn's Open Book - a discussion of the column by Bishop Doran of Rockford, IL, and the now-famous excerpt:

  Many of the issues that confront us are serious, and we know by now that the political parties in our country are at loggerheads as to how to solve them. We know, for instance, that adherents of one political party would place us squarely on the road to suicide as a people.
  

  The seven “sacraments” of their secular culture are abortion, buggery, contraception, divorce, euthanasia, feminism of the radical type, and genetic experimentation and mutilation. These things they unabashedly espouse, profess and promote. Their continuance in public office is a clear and present danger to our survival as a nation.
  

  Since the mid-1940s we have been accustomed to look askance at Germans. They were protagonists of the Second World War and so responsible for fifty million deaths. We say, “How awful,” and yet in our country we have, for the most part, allowed the party of death and the court system it has produced to eliminate, since 1973, upwards of forty million of our fellow citizens without allowing them to see the light of day. They have done their best to make ours a true culture of death. No doubt, we shall soon outstrip the Nazis in doing human beings to death.

  
  
• Fr. Martin Fox (Bonfire of the Vanities) asks: Can the Church excommunicate pro-abort pols?:

  . . . So, I got thinking: if the bishops together -- or a particular bishop -- were to do this, how would it work? (Can anyone tell me if any bishop in the U.S. has actually done this? I mean, actually excommunicated anyone over a public policy position, such as abortion or related issues?)

  
  
• Hope vs. Despair: Remembering Terri Schiavio, by Fr. Rob Johansen. National Review Online. March 31, 2006.
  

• Maggie Ghallager on "Why electing Rick Santorum matters" TownHall Oct. 18, 2006:

  Here's the one thing I know about Bob Casey: I don't know much about what he would actually do, because that's the way Bob Casey likes to run his campaign.
  

  Here's the one thing I know about Rick Santorum: Nobody in America has earned the undying hatred of the hard left for his courage in standing up and fighting for basic American values, whether it's the value of every single human life, or the importance of marriage as the union of husband and wife.

  
  
• A fake-"Catholic Voter Guide" has been published by the Democrats, reports John-Henry Westen for LifeSiteNews.com:

  An attempt to recapture the Catholic vote has been launched by Democratic supporters. A new 2006 Voter Guide has been put out by "Catholic in Alliance for the Common Good" (CACG) a group headed up by Alexia Kelley who in 2004 worked as a religion advisor to John Kerry in the closing weeks of his campaign. . . .

  Jay Anderson (Pro Ecclesia) has compiled a roundup of posts on the 'Dueling Voting Guides'.
  

• From Michael Liccione (Sacramentum Vitae):

  Bishop Thomas Olmstead of Phoenix has published online a new booklet entitled Catholics in the Public Square, the first of a series on various hot Catholic topics to be published by major American prelates. Here's the first line of the Zenit story where I learned about this: "All Catholics have a duty to bring faith to the forefront of political debates..." (Giving Politics a Faith Lift Zenit News Oct. 15, 2006)

  
  
• Cardinal McCarrick Continues to Conceal Rome's Insistence that Pro-Abort Politicians Be Denied Communion - Part I; Part II, by John Henry Western. LifeSiteNews.com Oct. 23, 2006. Western takes aim at McCarrick's "habitual" neglect of Cardinal Ratzinger's letter to the US Bishops, pointing out that obstinately pro-abortion Catholic politicians, after being duly instructed and warned, "must" be denied Communion.
  

  McCarrick, who headed a USCCB commitee to investigate the matter (which deliberated for several years ), revisited the issue recently in an October 17th address to Canadian bishops:

  The "Communion issue," Cardinal McCarrick told the Canadian bishops last Tuesday, "became ground zero in the struggle to identify 'the real Catholic Church' in the United States." A significant portion of his speech was devoted to the "attacks" bishops on either side of the debate received.
  

  Without mentioning its name, Cardinal McCarrick singled out the largest Catholic pro-life group in the US, American Life League (ALL). "I was a target of some of this criticism. At first, it disturbed me when a full-page ad was taken out in a local newspaper attacking me," he said of an ALL ad campaign. He added: "A short time later, however, at the time of one of the USCCB general meetings, a full-page ad appeared attacking all of the Bishops of the United States for not uniformly denying Holy Communion. At that point I felt that I was in good company. Finally, the same groups publicly attacked me together with the then Cardinal Ratzinger, which made me even more convinced I was in good company!"
  

  In an interview with LifeSiteNews.com ALL President Judie Brown responded to Cardinal McCarrick's allegations. "His spin is very interesting because none of our ads have attacked him or any other bishop," said Brown. "We simply asked them and continue to repeatedly ask them to enforce canon law 915. That isn't an attack, that's their job, and asking a bishop or a cardinal to do their job is not an attack." Speaking of the ad which included Cardinal Ratzinger, Brown explained, "The ad that put him in the 'company' of Cardinal Ratzinger, simply asked a question of the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, which of these men is presenting the truth."

  The document which the US Bishops task force headed by Cardinal McCarrick finally put out called Catholics in Political Life had some very good points and received praise from the pro-life community. (see coverage: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/jun/04062102.html) The document also was acceptable to the Vatican and then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote the US Bishops Conference to note that the document was "very much in harmony" with his general principles.

  
  

Barone on House Elections

Here is the link to the Michael Barone Blog. Barone, as regular readers of my blog know, is my favorite political analyst (he also has a Michigan connection since he grew up in the Detroit suburbs). Barone sees a close House election with ultimate control resting on turn-out and possibly--quite interestingly--on some conservative Democrats refusing to vote for a Speaker Pelosi. I wouldn't be surprised to see some conservative Democrats switching to Republican if the results are very close. So two practical things to consider: first, go out and vote Republican and remind other pro-life voters to make sure they vote Republican on November 7th, and, second, don't believe the liberal media hype about a Democrat "wave" election. Most important of all: pray that the pro-life party retains control of all of Congress.

What Some "Catholic" Universities Allow (Warning: Graphic Language; Don't Read If You Don't Want to be Upset)

With great reluctance, I reprint a portion of an opinion column by David Brooks that appeared in the Op-Ed section of the N.Y. Times on Thursday, October 5, 2005. I say great reluctance because I have a strong distaste for the vulgar. But I also have a strong distate for denial. Catholicism in America is shot through with great denial of many highly dysfunctional realities. That's why we got the explosive scandals that, in my opinion, have been addressed internally only because of the financial pressure of lawsuits. You could write a treatise and a research project on the roots of this strong strain of psychological denial in U.S. Catholicism.

For years now, several Catholic colleges and universities have hosted the performance of a pornographic play by Eve Ensler called "The Vagina Monologues." Most famously, Rev. John Jenkins, the current president of Notre Dame University, viewed the play and decided to let it continue to be shown on campus. Here is a description of the situation at Notre Dame from the school's own website:

In February [2006], Jenkins attended a student performance of “The Vagina Monologues” and a student-faculty panel discussion that followed. “These panels taught me and perhaps taught others that the creative contextualization of a play like ‘The Vagina Monologues’ can bring certain perspectives on important issues into a constructive and fruitful dialogue with the Catholic tradition,” Jenkins wrote April 5. “This is a good model for the future,” he said. “Accordingly, I see no reason to prohibit performances of ‘The Vagina Monologues’ on campus, and do not intend to do so.” The permission for future performances drew immediate criticism from Bishop John M. D’Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend who said he was “deeply saddened by the decision.” He had previously asked that performances be ended.

From Notre Dame University website at this link: http://newsinfo.nd.edu/content.cfm?topicid=16904 (from an article dated April 14, 2006).

Other "Catholic" colleges and universities, including D.C.'s Georgetown University (the oldest Catholic college in the U.S.), also host the play (see this April 3, 2006, article [PDF file] in Catholic World Report). You need to know what these so-called Catholic institutions are hosting. If you don't want to be upset, stop reading this post now. Here is the description of the play, with no further comment by me, straight out of the nation's premier daily newspaper:

[The play includes an approving scene about a predator,] a secretary, who invited a 13-year-old girl [the play has since been revised to make the girl 16 years old] from her neighborhood into her car and kissed her. Then she invited the girl up to her apartment, gave her some vodka, took off her underwear and gave her a satin teddy to wear. Then she had sex with the girl, which was interrupted when the girl's mother called. Then she made the girl masturbate in front of her and taught her some new techniques.

"A Tear in Our Fabric," by David Brooks, N.Y. Times, Op-Ed
Section, Oct. 5, 2006 (available free in print version only).

The Elections

I vaguely recall that Teddy Roosevelt once said something about being in the ring, about not standing off to the side, and instead joining the fray. Such a statement would have been characteristic of the ball of energy that was Teddy Roosevelt. Here is the full quote from the Theodore Roosevelt Association website:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

"Citizenship in a Republic," Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910.

I think we need more Teddy Roosevelts among Catholics and other Christians. The Church calls lay Catholics to be involved in politics. Such involvement means at least in part that we must pray about politics. It's time to start praying.

The media is now full of dire predictions about Republican losses in Congress in the upcoming Nov. 7th elections. I won't believe it until I see it. If indeed these great losses materialize--losses that the biased liberal media is panting for and actively campaigning for in its coverage and timing of its paid polls, then we know that God will draw a greater good out of them.

But in the meantime, I say again: start praying. Pray in your own words. I pray this: that the pro-life party, the Republican Party, may win and retain control of both the House and the Senate so that more pro-life judges can be appointed on the Supreme Court and on other courts and so that pro-death legislation relating to embryonic research can continue to be blocked. May they win so that the ambitious gay agenda can be blocked. May they win so that further restrictions can be placed on the hourly massacre on the unborn and partially born that is abortion. May they win so that we retain the will to fight the forces of evil out to destroy anyone who does not bow the knee to Islam. May they win so that those who want to spread the demonic contraception mentality of self-prostitution to more and more young people will not gain power.

As laity, we are obligated to be politically involved. Our greatest weapon is our prayer. But too often we have been deceived into thinking that, although many pray (sometimes even during the liturgy) for the victory of an athletic team, we cannot pray for the victory of a specific political party. Speaking for myself, I feel obligated in conscience to pray for the victory on November 7th of the Republican Party for all the reasons you already knew and that I have repeated above to remind us. As Teddy Roosevelt would have said, this is no time to adopt an Olympian indifference or air of distant, pious superiority.

The Democrats offer no sane alternative. They retain the pro-death, pro-promiscuity, pro-gay agenda they have embraced now for years. They are lying low and trying to win on the sly by not revealing their true agenda. Let's make sure they don't get the chance to start again the social engineeering that has gutted the national moral character of an entire nation since the late sixties.

Election Day November 7th

As a lay Catholic, I am ready to take a stand on the upcoming Congressional elections on Nov. 7th. Vote Republican. There is only one major party in America today that will protect the unborn, defy the "gay marriage" agenda, assist educational efforts to turn the tide against the contraception/promiscuity culture that is foisted on young people, embrace school vouchers (the most effective social justice , anti-discrimination, and anti-poverty program in America), and support faith-based social action programs against the epidemic of substance abuse in our country. In addition to these social justice issues (yes, the struggle against abortion, the contraception mentality, and the gay agenda is a social justice matter because justice demands obeying the truth about human dignity denied by abortion, the contraception mentality, and the gay agenda), as American citizens, we also face the threat of an Islamist war to destroy us. Only the Republicans will persist in fighting the enemy with whatever it takes at home and abroad. If you want a socially just domestic culture and taking the offensive against Islamic radicalism, then vote Republican.

There is no "social justice" agenda different from the efforts to take on the above social issues. What liberals offer is more of the same tired old social programs that keep people in dependency, many times in a dependency marked by substance abuse. What liberals offer is encouraging the current promiscuity among many by continuing to push the contraception mentality among rising generations. What liberals offer is a blank check to the gay agenda. Notice, incidentally, how the Democrats are not focused on the immorality of the actual behavior of the Florida congressman in the current House page e-mail/instant message scandal: the Democrats are just focused on trying to exploit the scandal for electoral purposes. The liberal Democrats will never condemn the "gay" fascination with pursuing teenage males. In fact, one Democratic congressman in the nineteen eighties was merely censured (reprimanded) by the Democratic-controlled Congress for engaging in sexual acts with a minor in the House page program. That Democrat, unlike the just resigned Republican congressman who apparently did not engage in sexual acts with a minor, kept his Massachusetts congressional seat for many more years thereafter after being protected by the Democratic congressional leadership in the eighties.

There is a focused, calculated media assault prominently led by the N.Y. Times to get a Democratic-controlled Congress. A Democratic Congress would be a disaster for the domestic health of the nation and for the offensive against Islamic terrorists. A Democratic Senate would be a disaster for future appointments to the Supreme Court. So, on Nov. 7th, vote Republican if you want to see your country not go further down the path of the benighted, secularized nations of Western Europe. If you don't want the U.S. to become another France addicted to domestic amorality and appeasement abroad, vote for the Republican candidate in your local elections on November 7th. Don't fall for the mainstream media campaign to distract from the real Democratic agenda of more secularization and of appeasement.