LET’S FACE IT: DEMS ARE REGICIDAL AND SUICIDAL.

         They Want 2% of All Taxpayers Punished for Success…They Look Anti-Patriotic, Anti-Semitic, Anti-Catholic, Anti-Christian, Pro-Muslim.

       Whom Have They Not Alienated: Vegans? Nudists? Gypsies? Buddhists?

        In the space of one day…last Thursday…the Democratic majority in the House rejected a proposal by voice vote in caucus might well have  jumpstarted  the economy, hiked employment and with $400 billion in tax cuts provided more stimulus than federal misspending and conceivably have reelected Obama.  But it didn’t do so because it was determined to punish the 2% who have scored economic success and who are paying 87% of the taxes…while a prominent Dem lawmaker used the “f” word to describe Obama….all this done in the morning…

      …while in the afternoon the heavily Dem-controlled Senate nixed the “Dream Act” because the small GOP minority rebelled and also failed to repeal don’t-ask-don’t-tell proving to be a party suffering such a serious nervous breakdown that it cannot muster adequate support even for its liberal fantasies...due to constituent disapproval.  Public support is running out on the Dems’ plug-ugly favorite issues.

        Last Friday for three hours the Senate was tied up with a semi-filibuster against the compromise tax package by Bernie Sanders the free-wheeling old-line Socialist….yes that’s right Socialist: he’s rejected the label Democrat but caucuses with them.  Sanders, 70, a Flatbush radical whose wispy hair stands on  end—resembling actor Christopher Lloyd playing “Dr. Emmett Lathrop Brown,” the pop-eyed scientist in the 1985 film Back to the Future.  Sanders, the son of a Poland Jewish émigré practiced Marxist politics at the University of Chicago and bummed his way to Vermont as a hippie.  He ran and lost many times as a Socialist until he was finally elected mayor of Burlington…and as Vermont filled up with refugees from New York city finally won enough votes to go to Congress as congressman-at-large and now is a senator.  He’s so far Left he’s almost ready to tip off the edge of the planet.   His rumpled slept-in-looking suits and frizzy uncombed white hair which gives off the frenetic  look of derangement, is fast becoming the modern look of the Democratic party.

        But last Friday was the denouement.  While liberals fumed, Barack Obama ill-advisedly turned his news conference over to former president Bill Clinton while the 44^th president  stood by looking like the rookie he is….before he finally excused himself saying—believe it or not—he was expected by his wife so they both could go to a White House Christmas party!  Glad to have the podium of power back at long last in the Briefing Room, Bill Clinton stayed on answering press questions for 20 minutes, using neo-conservative writer Charles Krauthammer’s newspaper column as reason for the Dems to support the compromise, calling Krauthammer “brilliant.”!

       If you can believe this….and as one who watched Democratic presidents swagger for two generations…this is the chaotic jumble that party showed the world.   I’d be overcome with schadenfreud except that our foreign enemies watching this debacle would have every right to decided that now is the time to attack America given such a shaky, amateur performance put on by the mystery man president.

       All the while the Democratic party’s continuing under a heavy cloud, the Dems are viewed properly as the party that has freed terrorists from Gitmo of which an estimated 20% have returned to terror…that was bamboozled into freeing the Lockerbie bomber under the ruse he was dying…put a Private 1^st class emotionally damaged kid in charge of all incoming and outgoing confidential cables which he promptly  turned over to WikiLeaks…bobbled a
sure-thing-appearing trade agreement with South Korea by not wrapping up the details until Obama’s arrival when the deal torpedoed…engineering the new START treaty which limits our right to protect ourselves from nuclear attack…allowed Mid-East negotiations to flounder because of a spat with Israel over Jewish settlements in of all places Jerusalem… supports Muslims building a Mosque near the 9/11 holocaust of 3,000 as an upraised middle-finger to America…that pits America against the only democracy in the Middle East in favor of Muslims who hate our guts…and that pushes anti-family legislation strongly contrary to the Christian ethic.  

      One more time: Whether you regret killing the tax compromise, cheer the demise of “Dream” and laud the DADT ban as I, rue the anti-U. S. stance on the Mosque, despise our punishment of Israel and are appalled at the single-minded liberal drive for abortion and homosexual “rights”… one thing is clear.  The Democratic party is veering off the rails and on a suicidal cumregicidal bent—and is thus unable to govern. 

      When Joe McCarthy said in the 1950s it was a party that did not have the best interests of the United States in mind, he was justifiably rebuked by my own boss, the ranking Republican on House Foreign Affairs… because he was lumping State Department lefties with millions of voters who elected Harry Truman with his Point 4 program, aid to Greece and Turkey, NATO and the Marshall Plan. 

        Could he be rebuked today if he made the same charge against not just a few unearthed State Department pinkos but governance of the national Democratic party?   I don’t see how when majority Democrats in power positions seem to be willfully opposing  the best interests of the United States—economically, militarily, internationally and socially--and then when their president effects a workable tax compromise assails him.

         It’s pursuing regicide and suicide.  Their bible is The New York Times whose publisher Arthur [Pinch] Sulzberger, Jr. in a fight with his patriotic father Arthur [Punch] Sulzberger, Sr.,  said he supports the killing of American troops when they are engaged in war on somebody else’s turf.   Today that paper has careened leftward from the glory days when Abe Rosenthal ran it as executive editor. 

           Frankly  I have never seen the Democratic party in worse shape than it is today.  Years ago there were the Henry Jacksons, the Paul Douglases, the Hubert Humphreys, the Walter Georges, the Sam Nunns, the Daniel Patrick Moynihans.  Where are people of this patriotic stripe today?  They are in the lower echelons but not the leadership of the Democratic party.

            Should I cheer this situation because I am a Republican? Not really.  The demise of the nation’s oldest political party is a tragedy—brought on by its own excesses.  I long for return of the era when both parties were animated by patriotism—but the ultra-liberal godless ideology of secular relativism controlling the Democratic party blocks this.

        What we should hope for is a split within that party by the Left, allowing conservative Dems to reorganize and the radicals to pursue whatever course they wish….maybe following the aged Ralph Nader who yesterday attacked Obama or the duplicitous billionaire Mike Bloomberg.  I think that without a doubt a split….starting with a divisive presidential primary and ultimate cell reproduction eventuating into a much weaker assemblage—not a party--is likely.     

II: Ask Me Some Questions and I’ll Tell You No Lies.

         Q.  Are you struck with the overnight “canonization” of Elizabeth Edwards by the media?

          A.   I am indeed.  No one takes away from her the anguish she faced with the death of her son….the emergence of breast cancer…the public infidelity of her husband and the humiliation that caused…the grave worsening of the cancer and her calm reserve as she faced death. All these things are to the good.  But I am mystified by her failure to mention God in any way in her last words written for her Facebook.  Of course in this ultra-secular society this nihilism has aided in her “canonization” as you put it.  But when you evaluate her totally from a lot of things written about her, there is a reason for it.

          Q.  –which is?

          A.   Long story.  The first ones to mention “Saint Elizabeth” were the co-authors of probably the best book written about a presidential campaign—one that even exceeds Theodore White’s The Making of the President series for 1964, 1968 and 1972.  It’s Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilmann a writer for New York magazine and Mark Halperin of Time.

          They and no one else imagined that John Edwards would crash the way he did in the arms of a veritable flower-child but even then the writing duo saw Elizabeth savoring the spotlight in the campaign and actually disparaging her husband as a kind of pretty-boy Know Nothing which of course is exactly what he was.   But all the same they were stunned at the bitterness with which she described his shallowness to people around her—which eventually got to the press.

           Later when she came down with breast cancer and John Edwards fell ingloriously as adulterer, there was the aura of “Saint Elizabeth” which they wrote about with some tongue in cheek.   This is not to disparage her but her sudden “canonization” by the media crested just yesterday. Amazing.

          Q.  She never mentioned God or Jesus Christ or religious faith throughout the ordeal?

          A.     Not really. For more detail read David Gibson, a very liberal religious reporter for Politics Daily.  I don’t fancy Gibson because he’s  a far-left National Catholic Reporter type Catholic convert.   But I’ve double-checked him on Elizabeth’s expressed views on God and religion and he’s very right.

        He writes that in her written farewell ‘…she seemed to carefully evade a mention of God or Jesus or things eternal.”   He quotes a guy who comments “Being anti-religion is so cool so Edwards’ non-theological theology gets props…. Still at her death bed and giving what most folks are calling a final goodbye, Elizabeth Edwards couldn’t find it somewhere down deep to ask for His blessings as she prepares for the hereafter?  I guess the nihilism I’ve been discussing reaches up higher into the hard-left precincts than I thought.” As you know, Elizabeth was always to the Left of her candidate husband…supporting same-sex marriage and a whole lot of other things. 

            Elizabeth expressed the mixed-up views that fits a Hemingway hero   Writing in conversation with liberal women bloggers a few years ago she said this: “I have, I think, somewhat of an odd version of God.  I do not have an intervening God. I don’t think I can pray to him—or her [sic] to cure me of cancer…I appreciate other people’s prayers for that [a cure for her cancer] but I believe that we are given a set of guidelines and that we are obligated to live our lives with a view to those guidelines. And I don’t believe that we should live our lives that way for some promise of eternal life but because what’s right.   We should do those things because that’s what’s right.”

        This goofy nihilism of course led her to quote the ultra-nihilistic Bill Moyers who put out a TV special on the Book of Genesis…and if you can figure this out, please drop me a line and explain it to me will you?   “You get the God you have, not the God you want.”

          

II: Ask Me Some Questions and I’ll Tell You No Lies.

         Q.  Are you struck with the overnight “canonization” of Elizabeth Edwards by the media?

          A.   I am indeed.  No one takes away from her the anguish she faced with the death of her son….the emergence of breast cancer…the public infidelity of her husband and the humiliation that caused…the grave worsening of the cancer and her calm reserve as she faced death. All these things are to the good.  But I am mystified by her failure to mention God in any way in her last words written for her Facebook.  Of course in this ultra-secular society this nihilism has aided in her “canonization” as you put it.  But when you evaluate her totally from a lot of things written about her, there is a reason for it.

          Q.  –which is?

          A.   Long story.  The first ones to mention “Saint Elizabeth” were the co-authors of probably the best book written about a presidential campaign—one that even exceeds Theodore White’s The Making of the President series for 1964, 1968 and 1972.  It’s Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilmann a writer for New York magazine and Mark Halperin of Time.

          They and no one else imagined that John Edwards would crash the way he did in the arms of a veritable flower-child but even then the writing duo saw Elizabeth savoring the spotlight in the campaign and actually disparaging her husband as a kind of pretty-boy Know Nothing which of course is exactly what he was.   But all the same they were stunned at the bitterness with which she described his shallowness to people around her—which eventually got to the press.

           Later when she came down with breast cancer and John Edwards fell ingloriously as adulterer, there was the aura of “Saint Elizabeth” which they wrote about with some tongue in cheek.   This is not to disparage her but her sudden “canonization” by the media crested just yesterday. Amazing.

          Q.  She never mentioned God or Jesus Christ or religious faith throughout the ordeal?

          A.     Not really. For more detail read David Gibson, a very liberal religious reporter for Politics Daily.  I don’t fancy Gibson because he’s  a far-left National Catholic Reporter type Catholic convert.   But I’ve double-checked him on Elizabeth’s expressed views on God and religion and he’s very right.

        He writes that in her written farewell ‘…she seemed to carefully evade a mention of God or Jesus or things eternal.”   He quotes a guy who comments “Being anti-religion is so cool so Edwards’ non-theological theology gets props…. Still at her death bed and giving what most folks are calling a final goodbye, Elizabeth Edwards couldn’t find it somewhere down deep to ask for His blessings as she prepares for the hereafter?  I guess the nihilism I’ve been discussing reaches up higher into the hard-left precincts than I thought.” As you know, Elizabeth was always to the Left of her candidate husband…supporting same-sex marriage and a whole lot of other things. 

            Elizabeth expressed the mixed-up views that fits a Hemingway hero   Writing in conversation with liberal women bloggers a few years ago she said this: “I have, I think, somewhat of an odd version of God.  I do not have an intervening God. I don’t think I can pray to him—or her [sic] to cure me of cancer…I appreciate other people’s prayers for that [a cure for her cancer] but I believe that we are given a set of guidelines and that we are obligated to live our lives with a view to those guidelines. And I don’t believe that we should live our lives that way for some promise of eternal life but because what’s right.   We should do those things because that’s what’s right.”

        This goofy nihilism of course led her to quote the ultra-nihilistic Bill Moyers who put out a TV special on the Book of Genesis…and if you can figure this out, please drop me a line and explain it to me will you?   “You get the God you have, not the God you want.”

          

Ask Me Your Questions and I’ll Tell You No Lies.

       Q.  In your recent article praising Francis Cardinal George and the Illinois Catholic Conference’s Bob Gilligan for their advocacy and energy opposing Civil Unions you should have added the Illinois Family Institute.

       A.   Right. I did point out the great work done by Ralph Rivera and Rev. Bob Vandenbosch but neglected to say that they were working in connection with the Illinois Family Institute which does a fantastic job supporting traditional family values—and which launched the Protect Marriage petition drive back in 2006.   The burden of my story dealt with the Catholic effort because of the Quinn-Bishop Paprocki exchange and the Church bashing by Ms. Marin.

       Q.  Your reaction to the death of Elizabeth Edwards?

       A.  Poor woman.  Poor-poor woman.  We should all say a prayer for her…undergoing such a trial with cancer and having to put up with that duplicitous lying lout of a husband.  I suppose now he’s going to be the Chief Mourner at the funeral.  She endured her suffering with grace and calm reserve.  RIP. While we’re at it we should offer a heartfelt prayer of gratitude that we didn’t end up with John Edwards as president…which we could very well have since he was a definite front-runner in two presidential contests. 

       Q.  Now-now, did you ever hear the statement “let him who is without sin cast the first stone [John 8:7]?”

       A.    Sure have.   But for its proper interpretation I rely on Ernie [the late Fr. Ernest Kilzer OSB], my favorite professor-philosophy-theology at Saint John’s University, Minnesota [1946-50]:   “Gentlemen, this phrase has been misused by many on occasion….and I hope it will not be by you… to shrug away all responsibility for sin under make-believe `tolerance.’ When they say `let him who is without sin cast the first stone’ cynics know that since none of us is  without sin none should condemn--thus all sinners are free of guilt.   Not so.  Not even remotely so.

     “Remember the circumstances. Jewish law under Deuteronomy [17:7] and  Leviticus [20:10] states that the person who first witnessed the sin of adultery were to throw the first stones. The  Pharisees asked Christ to comment on the legal aspect. He instead raises it beyond the legal but  to the moral. As Augustine has said  [In Ionn. Evang. 33, 5-6] -- He has come to save that which has been lost—not to invalidate the legal. The Old Law on stoning was and is a horror which must be supplanted by the New Law.  But the time had not yet come for that.  So He interprets the Old Law rightly and postulates  the New.

        “None of her condemners saw the act so His point is not to give her a pass as you would say, but to testify that if she is to be punished she should be so not by sinners; let the law be applied but not by its transgressors.

      “The crowd shrinks away starting with the oldest, leaving the woman with Christ.  Augustine then with some poetic license imagines she is terrified because she is alone with a sinless One who as God knows all things could well initiate the stoning. 

         “But as He first demonstrated the inexorable measure of justice to the crowd, He now applies mercy.  He asks her ‘Has no one condemned you?’ She replies, `no one, Lord.’ He says, `Neither do I condemn you.” Then the most important words: `Go and sin no more.’ Meaning that He knows of her sin as of course He would have to as He is God and far from dismissing the sin or condoning her action directs her to avoid it.

        “This is the point of Christ’s confrontation with the Pharisees.  Not for you to apply it to yourselves, gentlemen, by saying as you are sinners you wish to give yourselves a pass…or that you cannot in fairness condemn sin…and thereby absolve yourselves as we are all sinners—allowing you to go your free and merry ways and continue over-drinking at Andy Hamm’s  [a St. Cloud watering hole frequented by students].   Wouldn’t that be nice—you saying  `what the heck, we’re all sinners! Let him who is without sin cast the first stone!  Bartender, another beer please!’ 

        [Then Ernie imitated pouring beer into a glass and simulated drinking heartily, raising the non-existent glass to his lips—concluding by wiping his lips and exuding the word  “ah!” to the laughter of the class.]

      “No, gentlemen, sinners we all are but if—not when—if you exceed the limit we must confess and after absolution make firm purpose of amendment and then in His words `go and sin no more.’ At Andy Hamm’s the virtuous men I expect you to always be  will follow The Philosopher: `Moderation in all things!”

            Q.  Your view of the likely outcome of the dissension within the Democratic Congress and President Obama over the tax compromise.

            A.   I think the compromise will pass but one cannot dismiss the reaction of the Left exhibited in words of The Daily Kos: Mr. Obama’s Chamberlain Impersonation. Comparing the tax compromise okayed by Obama as equivalent to the sell-out of Czechoslovakia and Poland.

Obama’s Compromise: 2 Scenarios—for His Defeat or Victory.

         President Obama’s agreement to compromise on taxes…which in  large measure is a GOP victory…could either push disaster for him in 2012 or success depending on which way the cookie crumbles.

         The “compromise” was pretty much a Republican victory. First, he agreed to extending for two years expiring income tax cuts for all Americans, including the rich.  Mark that a plus for the GOP.  Doubly so since the extension will go through 2012.  Democratic strategists wanted the extension to end before the next presidential election so they could use the slogan “stop continuation  of tax cuts for the rich” as a slogan.  They got clipped on that one.

        Second, Obama won extension of jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed without paying for them with spending cuts.

         Third, the compromise included a one-year reduction in Social Security taxes—from 6.2% to 4.2% which would  substantially increase take home pay during that time.  This has been billed by the media as an Obama “surprise” which purportedly took the GOP by surprise—but it has been part of a Republican package and advanced by prominent members of the party for as long as the recession has been with us. I call it a Republican surprise notch in the belt.

         Fourth within a package of tax breaks for lower income earners and the poor such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit is a plum Republicans want—easing of the so-called “death tax.” The first $5 million would pass over to heirs tax free, anything over that taxed 35%--a real boon.  Dems wanted a $3.5 million threshold with a 45% tax on everything higher. Advantage: GOP.

           Americans should give credit to Obama who shucked off the impression he has given thus far in his term—that he is an ideologue Lefty and unwilling to compromise.  The compromise squares with the reality of a divided government—House GOP, Senate marginally but not overwhelmingly Dem.

           What’s the likely impact of the compromise on 2012?  Two scenarios.  The first could be victory for Obama.   If the compromise stabilizes markets and starts a slow push to an improving economy and employment, it may add numbers to his sagging popularity which together with his rehabilitated image could either win reelection or make him much harder to beat than has been surmised heretofore.

             The second depends on Obama’s hard-Left base with much turning on white liberals who believe passionately that the rich should pay more taxes.   Labor will probably stay put.  Blacks are an indentured Democratic class that will stick.  Hispanics will stick. But the reaction of the neo-Marxist affluents such as moveon.org and the Daily Kos which have direct tug on the media will decide 2012.

       Already there is much grumbling with moveon.org We’ll have to check Kos today to see how it plays.   A brief look at Ed Schultz’s stormy face on MSNBC last night told me Obama’s got some hefty work to do.  The statement from Mitch McConnell after the compromise was exultant;  Harry Reid’s was so terse and low-key you’d suspect it was put together by committee.

              If the Left dissents…as is likely given its now rising discontent with Obama…it would seem inevitable that the president would attract serious primary opposition.  Probably not from Howard Dean but from Russ Feingold, the defeated Wisconsin senator, who could well fill the role played by Eugene McCarthy against LBJ in 1968 where McCarthy not only lost but was beaten by Johnson as a write-in….but the size of McCarthy’s vote was so trumpeted by the Leftwing media this caused Johnson to forfeit.   Feingold would be the ideal candidate for the Left.  

         It would be highly unlikely that a Feingold challenge could prevent Obama’s re=nomination  but could do one of two things…cause Obama to call it a day and announce he’s out of contention…or so weaken him that he’ll lose the election.

              I think a wounded Obama, surviving a primary challenge, can only be defeated by a relatively calm, steady Republican challenge.   That would mean something like a ticket of Romney and Barbour.   Boring you say?   To which I respond: You betcha!  Which brings to mind the former Alaska governor.  Exciting she may be…like a Calamity Jane in Buffalo Bill’s circus but not here, friends and not now.

           Not Palin, definitely not Palin.  We wouldn’t need a Fall 2012 with the media covering the indomitable Sarah clubbing a wriggling salmon to death after which Bristol holds its still beating pathetic heart in her cupped hands as she did on Sarah Palin’s Alaska, where after close inspection of the throbbing organ Palin herself pronounced: “weird!”…or the ex-governor counseling a sobbing Bristol after yet another broken love affair—which looking at the saucy, cavorting, unrestrained Bristol in seductive net stockings I imagine could well be in the cards.

MARIN OUT OF CONTROL! How Dare Quinn’s Bishop Correct Him! How Dare Vatican Guard Its Theology From Being Free Lanced!

            Feminism Spurs  Political Reporter to Catholic Bashing.             

       Passage of Civil Unions in Springfield has been greeted…as expected…by media with a veritable ticker-tape parade.   I say “as expected” because what we have here is, with some notable exceptions, a largely irreligious journalism craft.  It’s adopted liberalism as its civil religion.  It rejects natural law and moral dogma (indeed its education is so deficient it does not know what natural law is).  

      For example, major portions here salutes abortion as a “right” but passionately supported getting rid of Chief Illinwek—the fictitious symbol of the University of  Illinois-Champaign-Urbana since 1926. Why?   Because it was an alleged offense to native Americans aka Indians.   It’s this faux “morality” lite that was adopted as an absolute after Judeo-Christian ethics were dumped. Proving if mankind dispenses with God it has to invent its own  theology…which in this case is relativist materialism.

       We are living in an era of political correctness gone riot.  People who aren’t the least concerned with the killing of unborn babies yet bleed for homosexuals’ rights to live together with all the benefits accrued to the married….and to marry.

       Which brings us to Carol Marin.

       Yesterday in her Sun-Times newspaper column she chastised Gov. Quinn’s bishop…Thomas Paprocki originally from Chicago who was Cardinal Bernardin’s chancellor and Cardinal George’s auxiliary… for   intruding on Quinn’s prerogatives as an elected civil servant…not mentioning that Quinn brought it on himself by declaring his support for Civil Unions because “my religious faith [Catholicism] animates me to support this bill.”  I’m not going to append Marin’s column here else I spread her Catholic insults  for her but you can read it by going to chicagosun-times.com and scrolling down to her column for Sunday, Dec. 5.

         It was only after Quinn identified Civil Unions with Catholicism that Springfield Bishop  Paprocki entered the fray, reminding Quinn that Catholicism “animates” nothing of the sort.  To which Marin countered that Paprocki has no right to invade  secular precincts of the governorship because Quinn holds a civil office.

       But this begs the question outrageously. It was Quinn, not Paprocki, who  opened the door by stating Catholicism supports his views.   And it is Paprocki’s duty to correct this misapprehension.

      One more time:  It  was Quinn who brought Catholicism into the matter maintaining his religion—Catholicism—animates Quinn’s support for Civil Unions.

        Then Marin sounded off on some bishops’ failings to protect children from pedophiliac priests—hugely regrettable occurrences that are the worst scandals in modern church history but which Paprocki had nothing to do with.  It’s clear Marin wants to use them as a cudgel to silence and intimidate prelates from opposing Leftish moves Marin cherishes including the next drive…already advocated by her…for same-sex marriage. 

          Continuing, she attested  with exuberant ego that the admitted failing of the bishops demolish any credibility for a bishop to admonish a member of his congregation.   This is a stunning and an unwarranted intrusion by a political commentator into a theological area in which she has no competence nor right to use her byline to assault a church.  (But of course it is not her intrusion alone; her colleague Neil Steinberg has brayed his own variant of Catholic bashing for years with hearty editorial page guffaws). 

          Finally Marin denies the right of the Vatican consistory composed of bishops appointed by the Church’s pontiff to determine whether certain nuns—consecrated for the purpose of supporting Catholic theology—are in fact actually advocating authentic doctrine!  Bishops have no right to do this wrote Marin: a stunning formulation.

          Here it can be assumed that Marin’s feminist ideology takes over because she has said and written often that there should be women priests. Popes have maintained they cannot change it because they insist that the  Church’s founder, Jesus Christ, set the pace by ordaining twelve apostles—all men—to institute the sacraments.   This displeases Ms. Marin highly.

        The point is that her rebuke to Bishop Paprocki was unjustified and has gone far-far afield.   Moreover it has taken her media vehicles…the Chicago Sun-Times…NBC-TV Channel 5 Chicago…and WTTW-TV public television…with her into a theological dispute with the Catholic Church and the exclusively male nature of Holy Orders which she has no theological qualifications to debate given that the Church insists they follow the design of Christ.  

      Marin’s excursion into Catholic bashing and bigotry is a personal ego trip.  It remains to be seen if her employers want to be dragged with her into a controversy that includes a wide variance of insults and recrimination that comes close to religious hatred and wanton interference by a media person into the governance of the Church…including the right of duly ordained bishop to correct false interpretations of its doctrine such as Quinn’s false statement  Catholicism “animated” his support of Civil Unions…added to which is Marin’s denunciation of the Vatican’s right to determine how its theology is to be expressed by nuns or anyone else.

      Attendant to this is the utter ridiculousness of a political commentator becoming a critic of Church theology, a subject in which she is ill-equipped to promulgate.   What will we have next…Rick Telander of the sports pages slamming the Church on maintenance of clerical celibacy?...Wanda the TV Weather Bunny assailing the Church on the need for GeneralAbsolution?...Sneed leading a drive to make Sister Joan Chittister OSB the first woman priest?  

       It is high time that readers of this website write to The Chicago Sun-Times  insisting that enough is enough and that mischievous and extreme feminist excursions into anti-Catholic bigotry involving insults hurled at an authenticist Catholic bishop be ended….else your subscription to the paper will.  And get others to do the same.

       

Springfield’s Bishop Paprocki Corrects Old Watery Eyes.

     Cardinal George, Bob Gilligan’s Courageous Fight Outstanding.

          The column I did yesterday about usage of the “Fundamental Option” dodge…the heresy that one can go ahead and do whatever he/she wants on moral questions and escape guilt if the sinner does not abjure God…is illustrated vividly today by Catholic Gov. Pat Quinn.   He said on passage of civil unions “my religious faith animates me to support this bill.” Indeed?  He also supports abortion in its many forms to equate with the current decadent tastes of liberal, rudderless politicians who do everything possible to be elected.

         Therefore it was heartening to see Quinn’s Springfield bishop, Thomas Paprocki, counter with this statement: “If the governor wishes to pursue a secular agenda for political purposes, that is his prerogative for which he is accountable to the voters.  But if  he wishes to speak as a Catholic, then he is accountable to Catholic authority and the Catholic Church does not support civil unions or other measures that are contrary to the natural moral law.”

         Regarding Quinn’s declaration that “religious faith animates me to support this bill,” Bishop Paprocki said wryly, “he did not say what religious faith that would be—but it is certainly not the Catholic faith.” 

         The battle over civil unions which passed House and Senate and awaits Quinn’s signature which he has said he would supply—earning him standing applause from the Democratic-controlled legislature—has been one of the finest hours not just for Francis Cardinal George but for an unsung hero of the fight—the Illinois Catholic Conference’s Robert Gilligan.   I was a lobbyist himself—27 years in Washington for The Quaker Oats company—and I have never, ever,  seen a staffer with better acumen on strategy combined with an eloquence of statement to the media.  Consistently Bob Gilligan has been foremost in public as well as private advocacy, pointing out in testimony and to the media that the legislation threatens to substantially alter the legal definition of what constitutes a family, predicting that future generations might have to learn harsh lessons about the unintended consequences of social engineering.

        He has pointed out that while individuals may enjoy this lifestyle and maintain that it is a  “right,” a culture cannot sustain itself by approximating homosexual or heterosexual  shacking-up with marriage—the consequences leading to a European model of living and ultimate diminution of lifetime commitment, leading to chaotic coupling that provide a shrinking population and family breakdown.

       Gilligan’s fine work has been duplicated by other pro-family lobbyists such as Paul Caprio, Ralph Rivera and the Rev. Robert Vandenbosch—but for the purpose of  this website which concentrates on Catholic advocacy,  Bob Gilligan’s attainments are noble and eloquent. 

      It is instructive to see how sectors of the relativistic Left in the
Church have responded to Paprocki-George-Gilligan in emails to websites.  I’ll show a few to demonstrate how Catholic training in theological verities have declined:

       “If the majority of Catholics support this belief [passage of civil unions], which they do, then it is a Catholic belief. The beliefs of a few old men carry no more weight than any similar number of other Catholics and certainly these pseudo celibate old men cannot claim to speak for God.” Meaning that moral law is what a majority say it should be.

       “Sounds like the Bishop is a right-wing Republican.  Maybe such unions are natural.   If they are, the law would seem to accord with the  Natural Law.”   In essence both comments proclaim that  whatever you do that seems natural is the Natural Law. 

         That whirring you hear is Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine and the entirety of philosophers of the Judeo-Christian Westspinning in their graves.

What Does the Gay Lobby Want?

          Tolerance?  That’s yesterday’s agenda for the Gay Lobby. And tolerance they have, by and large, received.   No, what they seek now is approval. 

         If holdouts do not demonstrate approval, they are labeled…by the Lobby and its passionate supporters in the media…bigots.   And the best hurler of spit-balls telling reader all opponents of civil unions are dolts and bigots…a  guy  who to the uninitiated…those who yearn to belong to the Smart Class… the guy who really has his finger on cool is one Edward McClelland who writes for the  NBC-TV blog “Ward Room.”

        McClelland ruled finis to the mayoral candidacy of Rev. James Meeks yesterday because Meeks voted “no” on civil unions, in retaliation for which McClelland,  who was hired to sling political gossip, not theocratic law from an eschatological perspective,   said the pastor “may have blown up his mayoral campaign”—because wanna know why?  Because he “places what he believes are eternal moral principles above his ambition to hold a temporal office for four years.”

            Gee, that would be normally a spectacular recommendation.  But McClelland says Meek’s church “runs a haunted house that depicts a homosexual couple burning in hell.”   Does it?  A “haunted house” like in Hallowe’en?  Readers of “Ward Room” have to take McClelland’s word for it.  I would doubt it but no matter.  The important thing is this: Then McClelland, writing for a publication of NBC-TV Channel 5 dusts off Meeks’ hopes as  finis with these words:

         “But you don’t have to vote for him.”   Nobody said you do and we understand that McClelland the sophisticated political writer hasn’t just discovered the obvious.  No, it’s a well-used colloquium that means: don’t vote for him.   Believe me as one who has read and written political commentary and analysis for 57 years when I say this comment  is no piece of political analysis;  it is writer’s short-hand—something you shouldn’t find in analyses put out by NBC but something that belongs in a work of hard-shell political advocacy….as in The Nation, the venerable left-wing publication to which Edward McClelland been a signed contributor and to which he probably has been too busy to write for given his duties at NBC and his authorship of the laudatory book Young Mr. Obama: The Making of a Black President at your booksellers now. 

            Remember since the topic is bigotry, the sin is not Meeks’ but McClelland’s.  Meeks’ views of sinful homosexual practice didn’t spring from his head as his own divination.  They are adhered to by the 22,000 members of Salem Baptist and beyond that to American Baptist Churches USA composed of 1.4 million adherents arrayed in 5,659 churches.   They believe “the Bible is the inspired word of God”…and “final authority on earth.”   And what does the Bible teach? 

       In Genesis (19:1-11) and Leviticus (18:22, 20:13)  the word of God pronounces that homosexuality is condemned in the story of Sodom, that Paul inveighs against the practice in Corinthians (6:9), Romans (1:18-32) and in the first chapter of his first letter to Timothy.   Some theological revisionists have said the passages pertain to other evils but one has to grunt until his eyes bug out to adjust to that formulation.  The important thing is that Meeks, his church and overwhelming number of Baptists subscribe.   Pronouncing their beliefs anathema to Meeks’ mayoral election is a startling overreach by McClelland and a clear-cut sanction of what may well be religious bigotry by NBC.

         And of course this scriptural condemnation is not only subscribed to by Baptists but the overwhelming number of Christians including by my own Catholic Church. Catholic Rick Garcia may well…as he advertised to same-sex-marriage advocate Carol Marin (a part-time commentator for NBC-TV)…go to pray at the grotto of the Our Lady of Lourdes on South Ashland. Ah, good for him. 

        But Catholic Garcia probably  knows…as the likely theologically illiterate nominal Catholic Marin does not… that the trick used since biblical reading circulated via Gutenberg is an ingenious self-deception utilized to soothe one’s conscience, is the heresy called “Fundamental Option.” Condemned for centuries but misuse of which was formulized as heresy ona Humana [1975].

      According to it the slick “Fundamental Option” no mortal sin can be committed unless a person completely and absolutely rejects God or completely closes himself to the love of others.   It is as old as murder’s rationalization by Cain and as recent as my time at St. John’s (1946-50) by the slickest of the slick theologians, Godfrey Diekmann OSB.     My roommate came whistling into our room after a Diekmann lecture saying “hell, it means I can make out with my girlfriend in St. Cloud and not commit mortal sin since I don’t reject God.  I don’t reject God, would never reject God—so, Roeser, I’m covered!” (He didn’t use the term “Fundamental Option” but described it as his personal salvation, healing balm, a springboard to seduction.  I later learned its name from a scholarly friend.) 

       Well let me tell you, I raced down the corridors to find Ernie.   Fr. Ernest Kilzer OSB professor of philosophy and theology.   He was praying his Office but we asked him the next morning.

       The unmatchable Ernie told us no-no-no we hopeful carnal spirits weren’t covered by what I later learned as “Fundamental Option” since it was heresy.   Ernie said:  “Gentlemen, please! It is wrong, heresy, to say that particular acts are insufficient to constitute mortal sin.  The point is that there are serious sins—murder, adultery—because the actions themselves  are gravely wrong.  Believing to the contrary would upend the whole moral order since the essence of mortal sin is the deliberate choice of an action known to be gravely forbidden by God.”

          But “Fundamental Option,” the perversely brilliant heretical legerdemain in the mind of “Catholic” lawmakers exculpates and salves them who support abortion, homosexuality and any other practice, sexual or non, serving (they hope) as an escape hatch allowing them to receive the body and blood of Christ each Sunday  confident they were told something by a “confessor” who schmoozed their conscience…or somebody who passed along the spurious “theology” they read in McBrien’s  Catholicismunauthorized by the Church that all is okay if one doesn’t out-and-out reject God.   It is this feel-good interpretation that has made Fr. Greeley the fans he has had (until his late tragic accident).

          Now to return to the central  topic:

         The fact is that McClelland’s initial estimate of Meeks as a man guided by eternal verities is right and his sly “report” that by living up to the teaching of the Bible he has committed political suicide…this larded over with the whimsical statement “but you don’t have to vote for him”…is the essence of soft  bigotry…the intent of which is clear.

         It’s high time for the Gay Lobby to come clean and acknowledge that what it seeks is not tolerance…which to an overwhelming degree it has and deserves …but approval…approval that can only come from those who forsake the Judeo Christian moral tradition. 

         And with this I go to bed, murmuring a prayer that I had as theologian Ernie not Godfrey who later led a group of loudly dissenting theologians opposing Humanae Vitae.   

Cardinal George’s Lobbying Against Civil Unions…

                             The Cardinal’s Brave Advocacy.

     The other day a lobbyist friend was with a state legislator when his secretary came in and gave him a note.   “It’s Cardinal George,” he said to my friend.   “Pardon me while I take it.  It’s the third time he’s called me—against civil unions.  Persistent guy.”

        As the lobbyist waited outside the office he was edified—and after he passed this word to me so am I.  One might askwhat’s so courageous about a Cardinal advocating what the Church has espoused for its lifetime?   Oh but I can tell you in these days it most definitely is.

       For one, having the state’s top Catholic prelate on the phone urging lawmakers to vote “no” on an issue supported by the abjectly politically correct is a sea-change from his predecessor who was noted for watering down pro-life to just another issue in the public square under the “seamless garment” ethic, along with such non-related topics as…oh…nuclear freeze…anti-capital punishment—and to which some other liberals hitched up no-cruelty-to-animals for PETA cum vegetarianism and no-first-strike nuclear pledge in international relations. 

         But then pretending this jumble-pack of inequitables were identical in the moral law  was the cagey Cardinal Joseph Bernardin’s intention—to link killing of the unborn with the whole glossary of leftish favorites that could be strung out on the clothes line.  You see you equate the legal crushing an unborn’s skull with a forceps to sparing the life of Richard Speck who remorselessly killed one-after-another eight Filipino nurses for the carnal pleasure of watching them wriggle in agony until death…all pertain to life, you see?...thus allowing Walter Mondale in the 1984 presidential campaign to say on a vote of 5 issues to 1, he was more pro-life than Ronald Reagan (which Mondale in fact did in their first debate: gratias Brother Joseph!).

        “You can call that forensic masterstroke  crafty Italianate” I was told in those days by someone inside the chancery, referring to Our Brother Joseph’s brilliant stratagem to get his favorite party off the hook. A  Bernardin appointee, the late Little Bob McLaughlin, the russet-haired longtime rector of Holy Name cathedral, in conversation with me even appended environmentalism to the “seamless garment” then stretched by the Left to ripping point.

      “Yes, the environment” Little Bob insisted, “in that protection of the air and water from pollutants diminishes the risk of cancer and thereby saves lives—ranking with protection of the unborn, don’t you see?”

       Yes, I did see…the duplicitous,  deceitful stratagem worthy of the master magician who in obedience to his dying wish was serenaded into the Great Beyond by the Gay Men’s Chorus…just as he received his final spiritual consolation in life from…who else?...Eppie Lederer aka Ann Landers, an abortion supporter who also espoused legalized prostitution.

       In that mode…with Landers at his death bed and with the male homosexual voices ringing in serenade over his bier…did we hope Our Brother Joseph proceeded to the blessed company and mutual love of the glorified Christ, the Virgin Mary, the angels and saints.    

       I say hope. Of course we cannot say.   But some of us can say…as I do here…that Francis George is an immense improvement…and may his advice brimming with wisdom, first of the Gifts, delivers to the legislature the light to perform the good work and the strength of will to  carry it out—the defeat of “civil unions” whose very nomenclature typifies what the Apostle has called “the mystery of iniquity.”      

One-Sentence Comments: Wall Street Journal…Michael Voris…Political Losing as Necessary Enema. More.

      

            It was no surprise that The New York Times, the Axis Sally of our media was available with its mouth watering for the WikiLeakdump of 230 stolen million documents from federal files that jeopardized U.S. security and endangered American lives while the Wall Street Journal and CNN turned the pro-terrorists down.

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            One of the very best things to happen to the Catholic Church has been the courageous commentator-scholar Michael Voris who will appear at the next Catholic Citizens of Illinois luncheon forum Dec. 10 at the Union League Club—where I hope to see you, the meeting’s details on CatholicCitizens.org.

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           It doesn’t really matter to Mike Madigan that the Dems control the legislature since his own party is not enough—his craving being that a handful of Republicans support an income tax hike to give him political cover.

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           Not surprising that some dumb pundits say the Tea Party’s success is “mixed” because some candidates like Christine O’Donnell didn’t win….when unlike Vince Lombardi’s football comments…politics is a game where winning is not everything.

                                                      ***

         Just as  Gene McCarthy’s 1968 losing New Hampshire primary race  to LBJ’s write-ins (which would normally be called  a Johnson triumph) convinced him not to seek another presidential term Christine O’Donnell’s defeat of  namby-pamby pro-abort Mike Castle in the Delaware GOP primary was a well-needed enema and a net-plus for party and country—proving that politics occasionally transcend mere electoral victory.

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         Authentiicist Catholics shouldn’t rejoice too much about Archbishop Tim Dolan’s defeat of Bishop Gerald Kicanas judging from the closeness of the vote (17)  and Dolan’s increasingly embracing the least common denominator—“God, He, She, It” rather than Jesus Christ- in describing his theological views on secular TV.

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       A high-point of my Sunday radio show was guest Don Rose, an icon of the Left, describing Rahm Emanuel as being “a man without a moral core” and at the same time adjudging that a Mayor Carol Moseley Braun could turn Chicago into another Detroit with surprising ease…hinting (to my mind anyhow) that Emanuel would be a gamble the city might have to take.

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       A low point of running a radio program where I am moderator and traffic cop between two well-equipped competitors from Left and Right is that occasionally I hear from irate conservatives “why didn’t you jump in and rip `im [meaning the Left]?” which would be akin to a football ref joining a team and running downfield with that ball—precisely why I begin each show with “…and if you want to know what I really think go to tomroeser.com,” a concept foreign to some who expect me to rant, forgetting that I did this solo for some years, neglecting to understand that my role on the current show is to be a clarifier and questioner—oh well.