Personal Asides: Roeper the Bottom Feeder…Christ’s Passion Lecture in Theology Circa 1948 at the Old Saint John’s.

Roeper.

The liberal line on why the Church should not object to Barack Obama’s commencement speech at Notre Dame started with Catholic Carol Marin, filtered down through Catholic Mary Anne Ahern and ended up with the ultimate bottom-feeder recycler, Catholic Richard Roeper…the argument that since the Church didn’t handle pedophiles very well, it has no right to object to ultra-pro-abort Obama speaking at ND. It took about 10 days to trickle down to Roeper…par for the course when you’re waiting for him to comment on an issue.

Old Saint John’s, April 4 1948—Excerpts of the Passion Gospels.

I know I promised the class notes on Abraham’s willingness to offer up Isaac…but this is Passion Week and I’ll skip ahead. The assignment has been to read all four gospels on the Passion for discussion in Theology, with Fr. Gerald McMahon OSB (one of the very few Irishmen in the largely Germanic monastery).

Fr. McMahon: Take your seats, Mr. Hesch this means you. I know it’s a Spring day which we thought would never come but it will be waiting for you out there when you finish here. And Mr. Bede Hall I wouldn’t crack that window open if I were you. It hasn’t been cracked since I took theology here in 1932 and has been sealed shut. Let’s begin.

It was my assignment for you to read all the gospels of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ…Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I will spare you the exact citation but will rely on your reference to the exact Gospel.

Now an easy one. What happened at the Last Supper, Mr. Becker? Three things. You can only think of one? What is it? Yes, you’re right: the institution of the Eucharist and the inculcation of Jesus’ Real Presence in it. Why can’t you think of the additional two things, Mr. Becker? Stunningly disappointing, may I say. Mr. Cascalinda, the other two things. You say, what? Correct—the institution of the Catholic priesthood and now the last. What is it? Yes, perfect: the formation of the Mass. In an unbloody manner He brought forth His passion and death which has been reenacted ever since.

Now, if you performed this assignment, you have found some things you didn’t know…as for example the only time in the gospels when Our Lord sang…when He sang. Can you tell me when and where this was, Mr. Augustine…being that you bear the surname of a great theologian, I am sure you will respond correctly. When did Our Lord Jesus Christ sing, Mr. Augustine? When? That’s right! And where is it recorded…no, not the record company: the gospel citation [laughter]. Right again! You are well-named, sir. The occasion was after the Last Supper when Our Lord went out to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray and to ultimately meet His captives. “After singing the Pascal Hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives”—Mark 14:26.

Was it the first time they had gathered there, Mr. Roeser? No. And how do you know it wasn’t the first time? Right! In John. “Jesus had often met there with His disciples” John 18:2. Remembering that Judas had already gone to the city on his foul business of betrayal, how many apostles were left with Jesus? Mr. Arth. No, sorry: that’s wrong. Not eleven. Mr. Baron has the answer. Three: Peter, James and John. Eight of them were left near the entrance to Gethsemane. What other significant event happened before Peter, James and John? Let’s see…Mr….Mr. Ramier. Correct: Peter, James and John were His companions…no, wait on the follow-through you’re wrong! You said they were his companions at the Ascension. Not so, Mr. Ramier: read it again. They were His companions when He raised the daughter of Jarius and also when…more help: Mr. Burnett. Yes, exactly, at the Transfiguration not Ascension where His face is described interestingly…Mr. Etzell…how is His face described? Correct! When His face shone as the sun: Matthew.

All the while Judas was contracting with those who would apprehend Him. Here’s an easy one, Mr. Brusseau. The deal was consummated for 30 pieces of silver. Why that figure? You don’t know? Thirty shekels or pieces of silver was the usual price for selling a slave—so it is interesting that the price of a slave was the same price that Judas put on his Master.

When He went forth to pray, he told the three Apostles “My heart is ready to break with grief. Stop here and stay awake with me.” The proper gospel citation, Mr. Borgerding. Matthew. Why was His heart breaking? Nothing had happened to Him yet. Who has the answer. This is a test of your scholarly acuity. Who can help me? Mr. Weishar. No. Let’s see, Mr. Gavin. Yes. Isaiah had prophesied the plot—that there would be the confrontation so He was ready for it. In His fulfillment of that prophecy He tasted death for all of us and all of mankind to come, taking on the world’s guilt as if it were His own.

So in the Garden what did He do, Mr. Dooley? An Irishman like you I am counting on to help us, Mr. Dooley. What did He do? Yes, He prayed and what words did He use? Report to us as if you had been there, Mr. Dooley. His words were—what? Exactly: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Yet not as I will but as thou wilt.” Now remain standing, Mr. Dooley: I am not finished with you yet. Where do these words appear? Yes, Matthew…Matthew 26-39 to be exact. No-no, remain standing, Mr. Dooley I am still not through with you [murmured laughter in the class]. Notice His words. Not the words He used in the Our Father: “Our Father who art in heaven…” Now He says, “My Father.” What’s the difference? You say—what? Perfect…now you may finally sit down, Mr. Dooley. His two natures…Divine and human…were both involved in this prayer, thus He and the Father were unified. In the Divine nature He was superbly aware of His Father’s love. But His human nature recoiled from death as a penalty to sin—and rightly so since He was free of sin.

It is engrossing to see how the two natures of Christ interacted with this. His mental sufferings were far different than ours because He had Divine intelligence…just as our sufferings are more acute than an animal’s because we have human, rational intelligence. The smarter you are the more you appreciate what you have to go through.

It is quite likely that the Agony in the Garden caused Him more pain than even the crucifixion. Why, Mr. Steuber? Yes. Correct. Those of you who were in the war…raise your hands. [A forest of raised hands]. I am told my veterans who survived these encounters that the anticipation of likely danger is far worse than when you’re actually involved in the danger. Is that so? [Murmuring of assent]. Now you will remember that Jesus Christ had as a human nature an organism that was as nearly perfect as any organism created—therefore more sensitive to pain. Add to that the Divine nature. It is not unlike the distinction we can make between how humans manage pain and animals.

Many sentimental people believe animals suffer pain as we human do. Not so. They don’t suffer as we do because they don’t have a rational intellect. When a human suffers pain, he reaches back through his rationality. Take a cancer patient: he knows he has suffered several weeks and asks how many more will I have to endure? But he compares to the sufferings he has had and has heard about, and he’s traumatized. The animal does not do that. The animal does know enough to dread how much longer the suffering will be…that’s the problem of the rational intellect. Ergo: the animal suffers less than do we. Then with Our Divine Lord you have the Divine nature as well as a perfect human one…the suffering of which would be exquisite if I can use that word.

What Christ contemplated was this: not just the excruciating pain of the nails in his hands and feet but in addition, the fact that the world was about to spurn Him and the generosity of His father. And as those who suffer review the past and look to the future, He looked to the past and to all the sins that had ever been committed…all the way back to Adam who lost the heritage of God’s grace.

Some skipping of material here. Now we go to…

The Trial Before Pilate.

Here we contemplate the crooked nature of the trial against Christ. Christ appears before Pilate. They bring three charges against him. The first charge…Mr. Rooney? Yes. Exactly. “We have found this man subverting our nation, opposing the payment to Caesar and claiming to be Messiah, a king.” Where does that finding come from, Mr. Rooney? Yes. Exactly. Luke 23:2. You see, the first charge is sedition. And what is the second, Mr. Carmichael? Yes. The second, He was urging the people not to pay taxes to the king or to Caesar. And the third: He was installing Himself as a rival king to Pilate. Of course every charge was a lie. He didn’t oppose giving money to Caesar: render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesars. On sedition, Pilate hadn’t heard of it and if there had been sedition, Pilate would have. Now the third charge was not that He was king of the Jews but that He was challenging Caesar. That also was ridiculous: Pilate understood that if He were challenging Caesar, the gentiles would be on hand and in force to protest in favor of Caesar.

It was a rigged trial and Pilate knew it. Jesus had said His kingdom is not of this world. If it were, He would be like Judas the Galilean, the son of Ezechias who had fomented a rebellion against Rome 40 years before by rousing the people to oppose paying taxes.

The lecture continues but I will conclude it here. Have a holy and happy Easter.

Personal Aside: 2 Thoughts While Shaving.

1. Tony Blair.

The thing that gets me is why Tony Blair wanted to be a Catholic anyway. No sooner is he baptized than he talks about changes that must come in the Church vis-à-vis homosexuality: meaning more than tolerance i.e. not hatred or persecution…but downright toleration of the practice as co-equal with heterosexuality…which means that right off Blair’s challenged the entire structure of sexual morality that has been with the Church for 2000 years…the facts that are the bulwark of the faith such as—

--“God created man in the image of Himself, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. God blessed them, saying to them `Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it.”

--The sexual act in marriage is good and beautiful because God gave it a two-fold purpose: generation of children and expression of mutual love between the spouses;

--Sex within the marriage bond is essentially unselfish because it is directed to others: ultimately to the offspring God may give the spouses and proximately to one’s marriage partner;

--When sex is used for selfish purposes it is disoriented…when its ultimate purpose is frustrated by artificial contraception and as in adultery, masturbation and homosexuality which are objectively contrary to the will of God.

Why, tell me, did Tony Blair want to be a Catholic if going in he objects to these tenets? Then we get to abortion which I understand his wife, Cherie supports. Ok, what am I missing here? Why did he want to be a Catholic?

And what in the world was his priest…by the name of Fr. Michael Seed…thinking of, knowing Blair’s views? Just another flaky priest, I suppose.

2. Rotten Staff Work.

Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff to the president, explained why he didn’t get around to voting for Congress in his own 5th district…saying “I f----- up.” Really edifying, isn’t it? This guy is going to be out of there by next year. He’s a supreme disappointment. He’s the guy who handed over the job of building the stimulus package to Nancy Pelosi without any White House input.

Then no one tells Michelle that British protocol for 1,000 years holds that no one should touch a royal head of state. So Michelle, the sweater-clad gangling goof gives Queen Elizabeth a bear hug. And Obama is shown bowing low to the King of Saudi Arabia…breaking a tradition since 1789 when American officials do not grovel to foreign princes but shake hands straight out. I suppose we all ought to be grateful he didn’t curtsy. Believe me if George W. Bush did these things, Moosejaw Leno would never let him forget it.

Followed by the tacky gifts Obama gave to the British prime minister—from, ostensibly, the bargain counter at Osco: an armload of DVDs which don’t work in Britain—tying in rotten taste the curt return of the Churchill bronze that has stood in the Oval Office for years…and the rejection on the spur of the moment of the tradition of both president and prime minister holding a joint news conference which has been de rigeur for decades.

These things are what comes from having a chief of protocol somebody with no experience or training but who…as the first requisite…had to be a Chicago black…a Chicago black by all means…Desiree Rogers.

Personal Aside: Three Thoughts While Shaving.

1. Pro-Aborts Lose a Big One: But That’s Not News.

The news blackout on events that don’t please the liberal Chicago media continued last week. Nary a mention of the decision of the reigning pro-aborts in the House to pull the big Omnibus bill from the floor—which means a signal defeat for the Dems. You can bet your socks that if the bill had passed, it would occupy center stage in Chicago…in both major newspapers, on TV. But no: nothing.

Earlier the Illinois Catholic Conference under the superb leadership of Bob Gilligan organized a pilgrimage to Springfield where citizen-lobbyists contacted their legislators. Not a line in the paper nor on radio or TV. Then the denouement when old hatchet-face, Barbara Flynn Currie the Dem majority leader jerked the bill. Also on the bill was the reigning queen of Republican pro-aborts who’s in hock to Terry Cosgrove’s Personal PAC for getting her through the last election. Not a word in the media.

2. Newt Gingrich Becomes a Catholic. Try to Figure.


I don’t know how to fathom this one. Knowing Gingrich whom I first met when he was a backbencher, I don’t think anything he does…anything…can be separated from his all consuming ambition: to be president of the United States. Married three times in the past, telling Wife No. 1 he wanted a divorce when she was in the hospital for a cancer operation…marrying No. 2 but then conducting an affair with soon-to-be Number 3, a Catholic, at the same time Bill Clinton was undergoing the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Now becoming a Catholic—but what about Wife No. 3, herself a Catholic who certainly surrendered membership in her faith by marrying Newt. Now he’s a Catholic and she’s not.

Throughout the career of Newt Gingrich the only summation of him that I value came from Henry Hyde…who said Gingrich is 50% genius and 50% nuts. He’s a brilliant strategist…sometimes—and a braying ass sometimes: as when he took on the Speakership and decided at the same time to sell his books and a college course (after having raised the roof about a predecessor’s selling a book)…bringing the funding of the government to a dead halt which Clinton benefited from…then getting involved with a woman not his wife. And he still has the nerve to--. Incredible.

The best thing I can say is: listen to him for whatever good ideas spring forth but remember Hyde’s admonition and never…ever…consider supporting him for president.

3. Definition of a Catholic Sell-Out? Try the Sun-Times Editorial Page.


The phrase “selling out” almost always involves compromising one’s integrity or principles in exchange for success or personal gain. For a supposedly practicing Catholic, support of same-sex marriage is a no-no. Yet that is what Catholic Tom McNamee has done as editor of the “Sun-Times” editorial page—issued his support of a court action to duplicate Iowa’s.

Looking at the woeful state of the newspaper, it is a certainty that even with the most ignoble motives…which I don’t discount…support of same-sex marriage is not going to harvest new readers. It is not unlike the decision of Sir Richard Rich who was promised the attorney-generalship of Wales if he betrayed Sir Thomas More. More said there could be great rewards bestowed by the King in return for Richard Rich’s testimony…but, he added, “for WALES?” More went to the gallows—and Rich? Is he remembered except in the vilest way?

So I ask McNamee: “You urge same-sex marriage. Will it gain a floodtide of homosexual readers? Is that going to return the paper to solvency? You know the answer better than I. You’re rather pathetic, you know.”

Personal Aside: Bill Daley’s Weird Description of Catholic…The “Tribune’s” Stretching of Credulity…Carol Marin, Mary Anne Ahern and Sneed and More.

Won’t You Come Home, Bill Daley?

In an Op Ed published in the economically and intellectually bankrupt “Tribune,” Bill Daley, the mayor’s kid brother, criticizes Cardinal Francis George of Notre Dame by saying that the prelate widens the gap between “the church, its members and the rest of America.”

Aquinas would judge Daley’s as vincible ignorance. Meaning, of course, that Daley knows better but believes the Church should allow beliefs of all kinds and ideologies…all the better to accommodate the current state of his Catholicism which is exceedingly perilous. Daley is divorced from his wife Loretta with whom he fathered three kids-- and has announced he will shortly remarry. Divorce and remarriage ends formal Catholic affiliation unless one has secured an annulment…which because of prior abuses in this country…particularly Boston with the Kennedys and John Kerry. Kerry, the richest man in the Senate, owns the world cup for gigolo now that Virginia’s John Warner has retired. Once married to Julia Thorne a multi-millionaire heiress, Kerry found her bouts of depression tiresome. Now he has another heiress: the widow of John Heinz, mega-billionaire of the catsup family.

Teresa was a widow so her Catholicity was a-OK but Heinz was divorced. No one knows if lavish contributions to specific archdiocesan charities greased an annulment as they were rumored to do so with the libertine Kennedys…or if an annulment was ever granted…since the media is too decorous to ask—but every time H.J. Heinz stock rises, Kerry falls in love with billionaire heiress Teresa Heinz (she kept her old married name) all over again.

Similarly, if the local media could drop its old protective ways and be inquisitive again, they would inquire as to whether Bill will get an annulment—but it’s very doubtful since Loretta appears to be the innocent party.

Bill’s Divorce Problem.

As a man insatiably eager to scratch an itch but can’t reach it, Daley’s ambition for political office supersedes any other consideration with him. Events seem to be blocking him every step of the way. One was the supposed messy details of his divorced. He decided not to run for governor earlier against Blago in 2002 after Alderman Dick Mell…Blago’s then loyal father-in-law… threatened to go public with the details of Daley’s divorce—which caused Daley to rethink it. Mell evidently had the goods that would have turned the campaign into a referendum on Daley’s personal life so his plans fizzled.

Daley was ready to run for governor in 2010 when testimony exploded in the Al Sanchez trial with testimony that Daley was instrumental in starting the notorious HDO (Hispanic Democratic Organization) which served as a conduit for rigged political hires in city government. When asked Daley said he “could not recall” any such meeting. Uh-huh. Of course not: that’s Daley denial! Immediately afterward he decided once again to scrap running for governor—saying he wants to see how Pat Quinn does. Uh-huh. Without this latest embarrassment, Daley would have been ready to run and obviously in the campaign would continue to call himself a Catholic—which seems to be important to his breed even if he’s not one. He might even receive communion sacraments unworthily…in order to capitalize on his affiliation as do many others who are in denial. But divorce and remarriage is the toughest hurdle for one who, like Daley, wants to continue to cash in as a Catholic. Why? There’s an historic advantage to being one politically…not breaking with the Church formally which is a political no-no… even if you receive the sacraments in sacrilege.

The stumbling block is that in the Church’s eyes, marriage is a contract: not just a civil one but a sacred covenant by which God established marriage as the natural means of procreating and educating. The Church that Daley claims he belongs to…and may not in the future through his own choice…believes that when marriage is between two baptized persons, the contract becomes a sacrament. The partners have agreed to take each other as husband and wife and to continue taking each other through death. All this Daley knows but pretends he does not.

Thus because of his coming remarriage, it is very understandable that Daley calls himself a Catholic and advocates a much wider dimension for his church in his Op Ed. He is a very smooth, corporate board-room article…far different than his oldest brother…long ago separated the articles of his Faith from his political actions…beginning when he moved into the national political arena and took on a leadership role in behalf of Bill Clinton, a pro-abort in order to please the majority of the Democratic party.

At that time, former Pennsylvania Governor Robert Casey, a Democrat and pro-lifer, became a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President and wanted to address the 1992 Democratic convention but was denied permission to do so by the self-same Bill Daley, a Clinton operative who believed that Casey’s pro-life beliefs were inconsistent with the goals of the Democratic party and barred Casey by fiat. This is the same Bill Daley who wants the Catholic church to open its doors to those of broader beliefs on abortion and other issues…and be, well, “tolerant.” This is what Aquinas meant by vincible ignorance: vincible because it’s inconsistent.

Inconsistent—but then inconsistency is a jewel for Bill Daley as he pursues his vincible ignorance in other things. Now he preaches in the “Tribune” that Obama should be allowed to speak at Notre Dame because a majority of Catholics voted for him. Hmmm. He knows better than try to sell that. It’s an intriguing view of how to formulate moral law: count noses. A majority of Pennsylvanians voted for Bob Casey as auditor general and then as governor, too—but somehow those majorities didn’t affect Daley’s mind…even though Casey turned down overtures to become a Republican, staying loyal to the Democratic party.

In his Op Ed piece, Bill Daley worries that politics might somehow become intermingled with religion basis Cardinal George’s views. Good heavens we don’t want that to happen! That the ornate ceiling and walls haven’t fallen in on him in his office as Midwest Chairman of JP Morgan Chase is a tribute to the magnanimous mercy of Almighty God. The Democratic party here in Chicago entertains all manner of black preachers turning their pulpits over to the Democratic party on Sundays…as well as a blond-haired white Catholic priest, Fr. Michael Pfleger, who has made his pastorate at Saint Sabina’s a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic party…and who has threatened to split and start his own church-front church if he’s ordered out of Saint Sabina’s. And Daley worries that by objecting to the invitation extended to the most pro-abortion president in U.S. history by an ostensibly Catholic university purportedly committed to the teachings of the Church, Cardinal George has threatened to erase the line between religion and politics!

Bill Daley’s position is easy to understand. Again, it’s vincible ignorance, the quest which knows better, a quest for an apparent good over an ultimate good.

The Tribune Editorial.

Being lectured on matters of principle by the bankrupt “Tribune,” is like being called spineless by a gerbil. The paper has renounced any claim it had to its past intellectual integrity when it let its board of directors—business types with no ballast in the field of ideas—decide it should back Obama because he is black and a Chicagoan which would mean advertising dollars (which didn’t pay off)…and not to do so would generate too much heat on the paper’s sensitive backside.

Earlier the paper slid mushily to pro-abortion and pro-gay rights in order to placate the liberal mob. Now the so-called “editorial board”…a rudderless group of mostly liberals including a black woman who edited the paper’s cookbook…is headed by Bruce Dold, a Catholic, vincibly ignorant, knowing better but is a stenographer for his business department bosses and powerless to affect the paper’s editorial content. Dold or whomever he delegated to write the paper’s editorial did the usual journeyman job of stringing together irrelevancies.

It begins by saying the editorial page doesn’t “presume to tell a church how to practice its faith” but then proceeds to do so…right out of the old malleable Unitarian-cum liberal psalm book where majority—not principle—rules. It argues that by opposing Obama’s speech and honorary degree at Notre Dame was “rude” of George. It asks speciously whether Catholicism means one must refuse a president who doesn’t agree with all the beliefs of the Church. Then it recycles the Bill Daley argument: since Obama and Biden got a majority of the Catholic votes, Obama’s position should be honored by the Church. Then it concludes by simpering: “How many Catholics of the archdiocese do you think were moved to tears on Nov. 4 by the election of…[the] first African American president?” Sob-sob.

And then to ensure the tears continue flowing the page cites its once editorial editor, Don Wycliffe, a Catholic black, elevated by the editorial to a kind of Black Everyman…who feels good that another black is president: a wonderful reason to let Obama speak. For that inestimable service you can take the day off, Dold. Get some rest: It won’t be long before you start answering phones as an account exec at Edelman & Associates public relations.



Carol Marin.

Hers is a case of invincible ignorance…which absolves one for having to know better. Mal-educated and a prematurely orange haired 50ish matron with a yen for the `60s and her contact with the late Msgr. Jack Egan and his nun secretary. Egan, a Saul Alinsky revolutionary, was a throwback to the civil rights era who made damned sure that when he marched with King he…Egan… wasn’t arrested (while others who linked arms with him were). Egan convinced Marin that’s what the Church should be: women priests, elected bishops, a double-duty dispenser social benefits and a loud advocate of statism to get it done.

Once in Chicago when Alinsky’s people marched, a number of them …including a good friend of mine…were locked up for a time. Not Egan. He skipped beyond the paddy wagons and had a date with the City Council to speak with misty Irish eyes and timely weeping where he made headlines. The remainder of the group heard his testimony on the radio in jail.

Jack was a boozy old roman-collared blowhard who got himself sculpted in bronze free which rests on a pedestal at DePaul…really! As a literal gift from the MacArthur Foundation for his support of blessing its funding of “Catholics for Pro-Choice,” a letterhead group. He once told my audience in front of Andy Young that Young saved Jack’s life at Selma. When he left full of tears, Young looked at me wide-eyed and said to me privately, “who was THAT?” Young never met him before.

Fiction not fact constituted Jack’s almanac.

In memory of Egan, Catholic feminist Marin gnaws her fist in anger because the Church isn’t concerned solely with alms-giving instead of icky, sticky old male chauvinist moral dogma which makes everybody uncomfortable including Carol who wants to feel warm-warm-warm. So she interviews…guess who?...the retired provost of DePaul whom Marin describes apropos of its own brochure as “the nation’s largest Catholic university” without a solitary comma or parenthesis to observe the truth…DePaul violates the central rule of free inquiry…turning into an advocate to placate key lavender faculty members by conducting its infamous Queer Studies: 101 to young freshmen who themselves are insecure in their sexuality.

Marin believes she has the clinching argument as to why Obama should speak at Notre Dame. The Church faltered…stumbled all over itself on pedophilia…so it has no right to say or do anything now that would keep a pro-abortionist from receiving a Notre Dame honorary degree. Logical, no? She’s right about some of the hierarchy’s culpable conspiracy to protect pedophiles…right about the Church’s spiriting Cardinal Bernard Law out of Boston to Rome…but she does not care to record that all clerical abuses…by all clergymen not just Catholics…amounted to 4% of the total. Four percent is 4% too high and the micro-percentage that is Catholic clergy is a woeful number…especially in Chicago where complicity played a part in ordaining Dan McCormack… but Marin cannot bring herself to present the unvarnished truth—that most abuses of children in the nation come from public school teachers.

So she argues that this micro-fraction of Catholic clergy abuses and the lamentable past toleration of sexual practices should make the Church endorse Obama when he comes to Notre Dame. Her invincible ignorance prevents her from understanding that the inaccurate “Spirit of Vatican II’s” fraudulent sentimental braying ruined honest inquiry of thought and installed in its place culpable toleration of ideas that makes no distinction between good and evil, truth and falsehood—the unique tenet of rampant liberalism.

That led to toleration of misbehavior, the belief that somehow everyone has a right to express themselves sexually, to be liberated in whatever way…which led to child abuse and homosexuality which is the bane of the clergy. But Marin is forgiven: as former Texas Governor used to say in her southern twang: “Poor thing, she cain’t hep it!” Liberal toleration of right and wrong, truth and falsehood is something Marin is not equipped to understand.

Mary Anne Ahern.

When grimacing Joel Weisman orchestrated the Land of Nod on WTTW’s “Chicago Weak [sic] Review”…asking a slanted question about the Cardinal to which everybody on the panel nodded…NBC general assignment reporter Catholic, Irish-looking Ahern decided to make the most of the opportunity and did a self-promotion cameo for herself, echoing Marin’s “how do they square opposing Obama at Notre Dame when they let Cardinal Law go to Rome?” Ahern, who owes her life to Marin when Ahern choked on a morsel and Marin applied the Heimlich Maneuver to pop a chunk of food from her throat…echoed Marin with the “how do they dare block Obama when they let Law go to Rome!” A touching payback. Whenever Marin retires from the Channel 5 slot, one of her three jobs, Ahern should be first in line to become the station’s political editor…but they are so identical that nobody will know the difference.

Sun-Times Editorial and Sneed.

Michael Sneed, a several-times divorced and remarried, which very well may mean she is Catholic no more no matter how she insists. She writes a generally good gossip column for the “Sun-Times,” has good fed prosecutorial sources and has adopted a man’s name because she out-competed men in the newsroom and savors that she has all the guts and bravado of a man. Ergo: she is vinceably ignorant because she knows better. She writes in snippets so her comment was tied to Tony Blair’s conversion to Catholicism and his forthcoming speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (which used to be the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations) on “the fault lines of faith.” Fault-lines is right. Everything I read about Blair is that he is as pro-abort as is his cradle Catholic wife, Cherie—so that’s one big fault-line. Maybe the reason is that the priest who “converted” him is named Father Michael Seed. Seed, not Sneed. I kid you not.

Sneed reports George’s objection to Notre Dame’s invitation to Obama and says “gimme a break.” That means, I guess, Irish is as Irish does and Notre Dame’s graduating class which wants to tout a POTUS as speaker and honorary degree recipient is the central issue. Okay.

Meanwhile, the economically and intellectually bankrupt “Sun-Times” editorial under the stewardship of Tom McNamee, a Catholic, says Obama should receive the degree because of the electoral majority he received from Catholics. Then McNamee…about as malleable as his colleague Dold over at the bankrupt “Tribune”… ventures into theology: “The Catholic Church is pro-life. That is church doctrine. But the church is also so much more [sic]—a champion of the poor, for the oppressed, for love and peace.” Now we see. Social dispensation of goods means more than preservation of life for Mr. McNamee.

Continuing: “When the church reduces Catholic identity to unwavering allegiance to a single matter—opposition to abortion—it paradoxically erodes support for the pro-life cause while trivializing all the other excellent work of the church in Chicago and around the world.”

Hardly worth answering except to note that McNamee has raised alms giving and relief to a higher status than defense of human life…which means he’s well on his way to crafting a theology of his own. Eventually, who knows, he may be a parishioner at Fr. Michael Pfleger’s store-front church if the archdiocese ever musters the resolve to unhorse Pfleger?

Personal Aside: Two Thoughts While Shaving…In Opposition to Neil Steinberg Anent Notre Dame.

1. Media Support for FDR.



A reader…I don’t know how old he is but doubt he’s my age of 80…writes to contradict, saying that a large number of newspapers editorially opposed FDR in addition to Colonel McCormick’s “Tribune.” Indeed he’s right—but then as now, editorials were not heavily read. The overwhelming amount of news coverage…by working stiffs…was pro-FDR with the exception of the “Trib” and William Randolph Hearst’s chain (here in Chicago the “Chicago American”). But even here in Chicago these newspapers avidly supported FDR: the “Daily News,” the “Times” and Marshall Field’s “Sun” which amalgamated with the “Times” making it the “Sun-Times.” I talked to Walter Trohan about this some years ago. He was Washington editor of the “Tribune” during most of those years and died at the age of 100!

All the while, radio broadcasters were heavily pro-FDR including the CBS stable: Edward R. Murrow, Charles Collingwood, Eric Severeid, Winston Burdett, Robert Trout, Robert St. John, Gabriel Heatter et al. The only radio network to oppose, and then slightly, was Mutual Broadcasting, owned by the “Tribune.”

2. Cut Myself Re George?



Someone asked speculatively if perhaps I cut myself while shaving thinking of Cardinal George’s response to Notre Dame. No, I was delighted! I only cut myself when I disagree with someone. No cuts, no bruises: thank you.

Neil Steinberg.

Introduction: The ruckus over Cardinal Francis George’s rebuke to Notre Dame for its invitation to Barack Obama to make its 2009 commencement address and receive an honorary degree (testifying to the approbation of the university) is very fortunate for those of us who are defenders of the Church to make salient points on the true nature of theology and Catholic education. Today is Neil Steinberg’s turn on the griddle. Tuesday there will be a response to the Op Ed attack on Cardinal George’s action by self-described Catholics William Daley and Sun-Timers Michael Sneed; also to the “Tribune” anti-George editorial and to Catholic Carol Marin as well as answers to criticism from Mayor Richard M. Daley. .

Dear Mr. Steinberg: The 200 words or so in your “Sun-Times” column…on Catholics who like Cardinal George are fighting against the Obama invitation by Notre Dame not being very catholic … is a veritable fountain of ignorance. But take heart: Aquinas would define your ignorance as invincible: meaning that with your ignorance you can’t help it…and if you choose to overcome it, you need what he called supererogatory diligence…far more than the diligence needed by an average man to solve a crossword puzzle for instance. You’re mired in nihilistic relativism which is a hard addiction to break. However, it is worthwhile for me to try. Before telling you what Catholic education was founded to be, let me correct your faulty assumptions of my Church.

Let’s take the first statement: You say, “Has the Catholic Church gone back to the idea that all people, regardless of religion, must cleave to Catholic doctrine? Because they tried that, and it caused problems—the whole Inquisition thing—a while back.” Invincible ignorance for which you are forgiven.

Did the Church ever mandate that all people “must cleave to Catholic doctrine?” Its Founder, Jesus Christ, chose twelve apostles and sent them to teach, to serve and sanctify the assembly of believers wherever they found them. Did He insist they grab their audiences by the collar and say, “Join up”? No, He sent them out to the nation of Israel with the following instruction: “Whatever town or village you enter, search for some worthy person there and stay at his house until you leave…If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town.”

In fact, rather than oppress others, it was the Church which was the persecuted for many centuries. Did you ever hear of the trial by fire the early apostles and disciples faced at the hands of the Roman imperium? The life in the catacombs? The martyrdom of all the apostles save John? The singing crowds of Christians…men, women and children… marching into the Coliseum to meet death? Surely even you heard of these things, Mr. Steinberg.

Even when Constantine made Catholicism aka Christianity acceptable under Roman law he didn’t do it by force, He codified Christian practice, returned all Christian property confiscated during the persecutions, legislated that slaves no longer be killed at the masters’ whim.

Assuredly you mention the Inquisition “a while back.” Six hundred years plus is a long while back—in 1478 and in Spain. The hugely magnified story stems from one Juan Antonio Llorente, published in a book “The Critical History of the Spanish Inquisition,” who says he carefully examined the records under the Tribunal and found that 105,285 lives were taken under Torquemada, 51,167 under Cisneros and 34,912 under Diego Perez. He claimed he used official documents to get the tally but when confronted said he had purposely burned the papers on which he had relied. Then he was dismissed by the Spanish court for lying, inventing statistics and embezzlement. The most reasonable estimate made of victims between 1551 and 1600 were four a year. In Spain punishment was exerted on all sides. Saints Ignatius Loyola and Teresa of Avila were also called to punishment for their orthodoxy. Four a year is four too much—but stay for the further answer.

So the answer is yes, Catholic zealots reigned for a time in Spain but about the same as Protestant reformers in England killed Catholics: about 800 a year In Protestant Britain about 30,000 went to the stake for witchcraft [“History of English Civil Law” by Sir. James Stephens] under Cromwell and the puritans. These numbers don’t make the Inquisition right but underscores the fact that severity in punishment existed on all sides.

Did the Inquisition color the whole Church? Evidently you think it does--but you went to jail in your Northbrook suburb in 2005…which is more recent than a while back—significantly less than 600 years—for beating your wife of 15 years in a drunken rage…which was covered by the news media and which you explained in your true confession book “Drunkard.” Do you think that episode should color your whole career? Your marriage? I think not.

Would you allow that the formation of western culture created by the Catholic church more than overbalance the Inquisition? The Benedictine monks who conserved civilization during the barbarian era? The Benedictine monks who invented the universities? The universities which invented science…nurtured philosophy, poetry, architecture…literature and art including Shakespeare, born a Catholic who lived under the shadow of the Elizabethan persecutions? Universities which invented international economics? The origins of western law? The Benedictine monks who defined charity that changed the world? The charity of Francis and his formation of an Order that supplied the only charity and alms giving extant? Come off your pomposity, your high horse, Mr. Steinberg. You remind us frequently of your Jewishness. Blowing up the Inquisition into a major fictitious guilt trip on Catholics today is as much a calumny as we heralding back to Shylock and Fagin popping gold coins in his money bag.

No. 2. You say “Where in Catholic theology does it say that they [students] are not allowed to hear other perspectives?” The answer: nowhere. Invincible ignorance again. The nature of Catholic education from the monastic orders stipulated that all sides should be considered before judgment is made. That’s the latest anti-Catholic spawn of hatred you raise. As a Jew…although I don’t know how observant you are (it appears you are not--which again is invincible ignorance)…you should know that the concept of truth to Catholics comes from the Hebrew [emet] which among the Jews conveyed the idea of being firm, steady, reliable , trustworthy. Thus in the Pentateuch the “peace of truth” was a genuine, lasting peace; a “judgment of truth” was a decision based on facts. That concept entered what we call the New Testament. The Greek term “aletheia” or truth implies that those who speak the truth can be believed.

The nature of all sides being discussed which began at the ancient universities including Oxford (where I served twice as a Fellow at St. John’s College) through scholastic-style argument, developed from Aquinas’ “Summa Theologiae.” Ever read even a portion of the “Summa” Mr. Steinberg? Being invincibly ignorant, I didn’t think so. It’s an argument with equal weight given to both sides with Aquinas weighing them carefully and coming to his conclusion. In the medieval universities…which were all Catholic…the master would assign students to argue one or the other side of a question. To obtain an early degree the student was expected to determine a question by himself to the satisfaction of the faculty whereupon if he pleased his masters, he would be assigned a bachelor of arts degree. The process would take from four to five years. That was the Age of Scholasticism.

But the medieval process differs from today’s universities—secular and Catholic—Mr. Steinberg. I’ve taught at Harvard, Princeton, DePaul, Loyola, the University of Illinois-Chicago, the Wharton School of Finance, the Kellogg School of Northwestern University, University of Pennsylvania, Roosevelt University. Do you think they follow across the board the scholastic arguments of pro-and-con with synthesis of truth as ascertained by reason? I will say they did in my classes where I had advocates of many persuasions appear, sometimes debate, always answering questions. But otherwise in the broad overall? You better believe they do not.

And the “Catholic” universities where I taught were the worst—not because they dish up pro-Catholic theology? Gee, if they only would! Because they regurgitate straight from-the-bottle secular liberalism. To them, orthodoxy is all but unknown. DePaul teaches homosexuality (Queer Studies: 101) to freshmen, antithetical to Catholic doctrine. Loyola has instituted a session of Presentation Court with a Loyola faculty member as sponsor in its law school in favor of same-sex marriage without a smidgeon of advocacy for the orthodox side…and is proud of it. The “Jesuit” university Marquette has given a regular berth to Daniel Maguire, an ex-priest who teaches the virtue of abortion through all nine months. Notre Dame is the home of major theologian Fr. Richard McBrien, pro-abortion and hostile to orthodoxy in most things. In fact, orthodoxy when recognized or taught at all, is the counter-culture at major Catholic schools, Mr. Steinberg…which is why a number of us have supported alternative Catholic colleges where both sides are imparted: Christendom, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Wyoming Catholic, Ave Maria among them.

As a matter of fact, the best reception I have ever had as an adjunct professor, expounding the conservative view and facing advocates of the other side, was at secular schools Harvard, Princeton, Northwestern and Roosevelt University. At DePaul, my class in politics was picketed…invaded while instruction was going on…by those under the banner of “reproductive freedom” who sought to silence me. Great freedom of inquiry, right? You’re right—most misnamed “Catholic” universities have faculties that mandate students “cleave”…the right word for it…to doctrine—but it is the liberal doctrine of the secular state-run behemoth with little variation.

So the idea that Catholic universities are strait-jackets of orthodoxy exists only in your fervid, cliché-ridden journalistic mind…a mindset so fixed that it will require more than mere nescience to overcome like solving a crossword puzzle—but invincible ignorance which requires supererogatory i.e. praiseworthy diligence to overcome.

Most “Catholic” universities here and elsewhere are indistinguishable from secular universities—and just as intolerant of unpopular opinion. That is far different from what not just Catholic universities…but all universities…were invented to do.

What medieval universities—all of them Catholic-- were designed to do…was to organize knowledge around higher studies dominated by the technique of logical discussion—the `quaestio’ and public disputation which determined the form of philosophy. Nothing, wrote Anselm, is known perfectly that has not been masticated by the teeth of disputation. What made it possible for Western civilization to develop science in a way no other civilization has? It lies in the pervasive and deep-seated spirit of inquiry that began in the Middle Ages—and with university education which was totally Catholic run.

So, take it from one who has taught for decades…in Catholic universities and out…your bigoted dictum that “it speaks of the intensity of Catholic belief that they often confuse the particular dictates of their religion, which they feel compelled to follow [sic], for the eternal machinery of life that all must follow” is a bare-faced untruth, written by one who does not know in the faintest degree the habits and nature of education in Catholic universities—and who by your mind-set of invincible ignorance is incapable of wanting to find out. That’s why I cheered the Cardinal’s statement—even though it will have no effect…and think you’re invincibly and possibly irremediably stuck in the past believing “Catholic” schools are rigid when they are just the opposite: left-wing and rebellious to the concept that led to their founding.

Don’t you even read your own newspaper? The Cardinal remonstrated some years ago to DePaul to not advocate homosexuality as a course in practice and was greeted by the priest-president’s thumbing his nose at the Church? Where in God’s name were you living when this happened? Answer: right here—but…I imagine you agreed with DePaul since by this action its faculty stood for what you obviously believe: an ethical subjectivism under which the rightness or wrongness of any action is up to the individual. At the bottom of it, you just savor the idea of a university not as a laboratory of ideas but as a test-tube of positivist ideology that reflects your own…and to see Catholic universities follow this gives you a boot. Don’t give us that bunk about freedom of inquiry. The entire drift of your hostility to the Church in your columns is you pretend openness but literally support consensus akin to agnosticism.

Thus what disturbs you about the action of the Cardinal in opposing Obama speaking and being honored at Notre Dame is this: You pose as an opponent of an authoritarian university insisting its students frog-march to the same mindset. Then you should cheer for real diversity by supporting orthodoxy where it is not allowed to show its head. Actually, you’re temperamentally opposed to the idea that a religion should dare to assert that after all inquiry is made, truth is ascertainable by rational knowledge. Your idol Obama pits himself not just against Church teaching but…in the case of when life begins… against rationality. Some say life begins at conception, others when the child is born. But Obama has proven himself incompetent by declaring that the question of when life begins is “above my pay grade.”

By that measure alone…as a self-confessed cipher on the central moral question of our time…he has disqualified himself to address any university whether he’s president of the United States or not—but especially a Catholic one which is presumed to believe that it is the capacity of human reason to know objective truth and to know what is right and wrong.

As for you, with your invincible ignorance you have wrapped yourself in the same cloak of pseudo dialectical dishonesty as Obama has. You’re not fighting for freedom of inquiry—but for continuing the one-sided status quo. By your columns which I’ve read for years you tacitly deny man’s capacity to know anything beyond an empirical knowledge of individual things. I’ve read you too long not to know that you are enveloped in a cocoon of contradiction. Arguing that nothing beyond materiality is certain you are confounded by the argument posed against yourself. If nothing is certain, you have just disproved it by declaring the great dilemma of all secular-centered liberaldom that only uncertainty is certain.

Here’s praying for a burst of divine grace,

Sincerely,

Thomas F. Roeser

Personal Asides: 3 More Thoughts While Shaving.

1. Blago Indictment.

I hate to say “so what?”…but the indictment the media call “sweeping” has long been expected. Possibly the only real surprise is that the charges involve alleged wrongdoing Blago did even before he was inaugurated as governor. I think there’s still more to come including a separate indictment of Patti Blagojevich. The tissue of corruption may well extend to include some directors of state agencies.

One thing: Don’t dismiss the possibility that Blago may taint the jury pool so as to produce that one juror unwilling to convict. If that happens, the political fallout will be worse than if Blago gets convicted. There will be a wholesale run of recriminations in this state that will ruin the Democratic party in the short run. That’s just a thought to keep in mind. Blago is nuts but like a fox. He has been working on being the underdog for quite some time now. If he walks—watch out. Now to the Republican party.

As low an estate as the state Republican party is today, I think if its leaders can get together on the right candidate and spare the money waste in a fruitless primary, the party’s chances would be immeasurably enhanced. To my way of thinking, this would warrant a candidate of independent financial means who would not have to grovel in the sewer for contributions—a candidate who would be supported by donors of substantial financial means. This idea that it’s a poor man’s game is populist bunk. Unless the poor man is already a statewide figure who is extraordinarily well known…one who can attract funding from his own reputation…realism dictates that the candidate should be honest and wealthy, able to turn aside many unhealthy contributions because he has access to better resources.

Illinois is one state where despite the populist romanticism, a poor man will either be starved of funding or be forced to collect the contributions that will be tainted. It’s as simple as that.

2. The Ever Tiresome Judy-Judy-Judy.

It’s no surprise that Judy Baar Topinka is surfacing…from popping up in gossip columns mourning the death of her dog to catching a well-timed cameo appearance on Channel 7 at 6 p.m. in connection with the Blago indictment…to occasionally going to my church, Saint John Cantius at 11 a.m. Sundays on occasion and pro-abort, pro-gay rights or not, taking communion—which disturbs me not a little.

Once deemed “irrepressible” by her flack, she is an exceedingly old face now and eminently repressible. Just as when she ran for governor, she is idea-free aside of clichéd statements about how bad pay-to-play is.

More than anybody else, she should have been able to draw upon years of service as state treasurer to craft an alternative to Blago but that’s not her style. She’s as deep as a pie-tin. But conservatives should not fear she’ll run again for governor. Unless lightning strikes, she is aiming for a return to state treasurer. I don’t think she can do any harm there as a senior dowager pro-abort Catholic with a pathetic propensity to ride in gay rights parades. But my preference is Dan Rutherford for treasurer because he’s pro-life at least, is younger, far more vigorous and knows issues far more than does Judy who’s long in the tooth.

In fact I can see a pretty good ticket developing on the lower levels which include Paul Vallas as candidate for president of the Cook county board. Here’s what I would do.

I’d pick a prominent businessman/policy wonk for governor who can keep his personal pro-choice credentials if he would agree to oppose public funding of abortion and who has a latch-key sense of stringent economy with the determination to be unpopular as hell in pruning the budget…even if the union and teacher special interests burn him in effigy.

I’d pick as lieutenant governor a bright woman lawyer, mother who is acceptable to the pro-life movement…I’m thinking Kathy Salvi.

I’d run someone acceptable for comptroller but with the knowledge that he/she won’t beat Danny Hynes. If Topinka lusts for return as state treasurer…which is essentially a counting house job with no policy… okay--but Rutherford would be preferable: younger, more intellectually aggressive.

If Lisa Madigan makes a run for governor against Pat Quinn, leaving the AG slot open, I’d run Jim Durkin for it. If she sticks as AG as I suspect she may, forget it: run some bright young lawyer who’s dumb enough to think he can win but don’t let him in on the truth: that all it’ll do is get him some exercise.

Jesse White will be secretary of state until the state marks its two hundredth year in 2018 so forget it. But try Eric Wallace anyhow in hopes that the skies will part and 140,000 angels descend to work on his campaign. Even so, at age 84 White’ll win anyhow.

That leaves the U.S. Senate, doesn’t it? I’ve decided: count me out where Mark Kirk is concerned. He’s had to make abortion a sacrament in order to get elected in the 10th. Enough for me. This is where I’d like to see a primary with a good pro-life candidate. But who? Two points.

First. I’ve a feeling that Roland Burris’ challenger, Alexi Giannoulias, will lick Burris in the primary no matter how inestimably good Delmarie Cobb is…and she is an excellent political guru…just about the brightest political strategist I’ve met on either side in many years—but while the Dems will have their own primary struggle, we Republicans should have one as well. Kirk is much unloved…despised, actually… by the Republican base. I’d run Chris Lauzen for that spot and ensure that the GOP base would have two major reasons to turn out: Lauzen’s fiscal and social conservatism and Kirk’s hated record on abortion, embryonic stem cells and weasel-switching even on Iraq when the heat got turned onto George W. Bush before the surge worked: the one issue he assured us he was firm on.

Second, if Giannoulias gets the nod, his sleazy reputation as one who loaned dough to the mob from his family’s bank should do him in. If Burris wins the nomination, he will be running at a great disadvantage.

3. Obama May be a One-Termer.

Sounds implausible? Pay attention. Barack Obama needs expansive economic growth to justify his budget projections and to fund his surrealistically idealistic expansion of government. There is very little chance he will get that growth. Several reasons. One is “cap-and-trade” the program that would reduce emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere…but which is a Rube Goldberg creation—requiring all companies to participate in an auction to secure the right to emit the gas with the total emissions strictly limited.

It can’t work. Obama’s budget says the carbon tax will bring in $78.7 billion in 2012 but the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) also run by Democrats says $300 billion. Obama says by 2012 this tax will be the sixth largest source of revenue. Wildly speculative. Listen, the Obama budget foresees a furious expansion of economic growth from 2011-`13. And this will be enough to cut the deficit of $1.75 trillion in half as he expects? In Obama’s dreams. Cap-and-trade will stunt growth: John Steele Gordon says it will act very like a governor acts on a steam engine, “resisting any increase in revolutions per minute.” The supply of licenses to allow carbon dioxide to escape will be fixed, right? So the price of permits will inevitably rise as the economy starts to chug upward…meaning heightened demand will hike the price of energy which in turn will tamp down demand: as the economy tries to rev up, the harder the carbon tax will work to hold it down.

There’s a built in self-contradiction…as there is with hiking the tax on the rich who pay most of the taxes and who hire.

Can’t work, my friends. The only thing I worry about is that just as with Franklin Roosevelt, the populace will get resigned to low-voltage economy, shrug and say sluggish economy is inevitable. That saved Roosevelt…along with his undeniable charm…until World War II. But the same political determinants existing now were not present in Roosevelt’s time. The media in Roosevelt’s time…aside from Colonel McCormick and a few others…were overwhelmingly in his camp. Not so today with Fox News, talk radio and the Internet.

Personal Aside: 2 Thoughts While Shaving.

1. The Enormity of Obama’s Pro-Abort Record.

I was thinking that aside from the most glaring blotches, I had not seen the full record of Barack Obama’s atrocious anti-life public record. I checked it out and discovered this:

March 28, 2001: Voted No to the Born Alive Infants Protection Act in the Illinois State Senate Judiciary Committee.

March 6, 2002: Voted No to the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act in the Illinois State Senate Judiciary Committee.

April 4, 2002: Voted No to the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act on the Illinois Senate floor.

March 13-14, 2003. Voted No to the Born Alive Infants Protection Act in the Illinois Senate after voting for an amendment that made it identical to the federal law of the same name (which passed).

2005-2008: Compiles a 100% pro-abortion record in the U.S. Senate.

July 17, 2007: Tells Planned Parenthood, “well the first thing I’d do as president is, sign the Freedom of Choice Act” which would wipe out all state laws regulating abortion.

Sept. 2, 2008: Obama campaign releases an ad putting abortion at the center of its effort.

Nov. 7, 2008: Names Rep. Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff, holder of a 100% pro-abortion voting record in the House.

Nov. 22, 2008: Names Ellen Moran, White House communications director, former executive director of Emily’s List.

Nov. 24, 2008: Names Melody Barnes domestic policy adviser (she previously served on the boards of Emily’s List and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

Dec. 1, 2008: Nominates Sen. Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards praises the appointment on abortion grounds, saying “Sen. Clinton understands that women’s quality of life directly affects the major issues confronting the globe: national security, environmental sustainability and global poverty.”

Dec. 11, 2008: Nominates Catholic pro-abort former Sen. Tom Daschle as Health and Human Services secretary. Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) Pro-Choice America says, “we appreciate his [Daschle’s] efforts to help defeat two abortion bans in South Dakota. We had a good working relationship with him.”

Dec. 12, 2008: Appoints Jeaqnne Lambrew as deputy director of the White House Office of Health Reform. Planned Parenthood says “She is one of the leading health policy experts in the countruy and someone who is an advocate for” abortion.

Dec. 17, 2008: Names pro-abort Catholic Colorado senator Ken Salazar Interior Secretary.

Dec. 17, 2008: Names pro abort Catholic Iowa Gov. Tim Vilsack agriculture secretary.

Jan. 5, 2009: Appoints David Ogden, deputy U.S. attorney general, expert on defense of pornography vis-à-vis 1st amendment “rights” who opposed the Children’s Internet Protection Act and has also defended Planned Parenthood.

Jan. 5, 2009: Appoints Dawn Johnson assistant U.S. attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, the former legal director for NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Jan. 5, 2009: Appoints Catholic pro-abort Thomas Perrelli associate attorney general. He was counsel to Michael Schiavo who sought and received permission to starve and dehydrate his wife Teri to death during Holy Week 2005.

Jan. 23, 2009: Reverses the Mexico City Policy, allowing taxpayers’ dollars to go to organizations performing and promoting abortions overseas. Gallup poll shows just 35% approved the action making it his least popular move as president thus far.

Jan. 23, 2009: Releases statement pledging to work with Congress to restore funding to the UN Population Fund. In 2002 Secretary of State Colin Powell requested Congress halt the funding, tying it to China’s “program of coercive abortion.”

Feb. 4, 2009: Signs into law the SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) reauthorization after Senate rejected amendment extending health benefits to the unborn (as senator Obama voted against the amendment). Under SCHIP states have the authority to decide which health plans and services can be offered to children.

Feb. 12. 2009: Names Catholic pro-abort Leon Panetta CIA director who as congressman co-sponsored the “Freedom of Choice” act.

Feb. 27, 2009: Signs stimulus bill into law which fundamentally changes the standard that Medicare follows in paying for medical care and in so doing places seniors at risk of not receiving necessary, life-sustaining care.

Feb. 28, 2009: Nominates Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas to head the Health and Human Services department, a pro-abortion Catholic who had been publicly rebuked by her bishop and had ties to Kansas abortionist George Tiller.

March 5, 2009: Holds health care summit. Planned Parenthood and Human Rights Campaign attend but no pro-life groups invited.

March 6, 2009: Creates new position of ambassador-at-large for women’s issues and names pro-abort Melanne Verveer to the post with the responsibility to promote abortion and overturn pro-life laws in nations across the world.

March 9, 2009: Overturns President Bush’s restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research, allowing taxpayer money to go to scientists to do fatal research on human embryos that were created for this purpose and at the same time stops Bush preference for proven, adult stem-cell therapies.

March 10, 2009: Obama’s Health and Human Services department opens 30-day review period with an eye to challenging freedom-of-conscience rights protecting Catholic doctors’ rights to opt out of practices they deem immoral.

March 17, 2009: Nominates David Hamilton as judge for the 7th circuit, a former ACLU leader who blocked pro-life legislation as a Clinton-appointed federal judge.

2. Barney Frank’s Fannie [sic] Mae Boy Friend.


Most conflict of interest experts raise questions about intimate sexual relationships between Congressmen who run pertinent committees and the recipients of largesse from such committees. Not in the case of Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) who calls himself America’s only left-handed, gay, Jewish congressman. To which I add: who looks not unlike a frog…if you can imagine a frog with a lisp. I guarantee you that if a heterosexual Republican chairman of the Financial Services committee had a wife or girl-friend in a top position on Fannie Mae, a public-private corporation funded by the feds which the congressman has played a major role on, there’d be a full-scale journalistic investigation.

Not so with Frank who is vociferous in cowing the press which shrinks from allegations that they are homophobic and so have refrained from making this notation.

Anyhow, Frank’s love interest is Herbert Moses, a senior executive. Better than Frank’s earlier love interest who while Frank was spending his days on the Hill turned Frank’s Capitol Hill condo into a bordello…for which Frank declined to apologize saying that the stories that circulated while accurate were homophobic-inspired.

Personal Aside: Wobbly Wycliffe Defends Notre Dame—No Surprise, Always a Company Man…Four Thoughts While Shaving.

Wycliffe.

Not long after I attacked Mayor Daley in a “Tribune” Op Ed for living a contradiction as Catholic and a pro-abort…which somehow got in the paper…its editorial page editor, Don Wycliffe, the first black to hold the post, a Catholic and ostensibly a pro-lifer called me on the phone and in his soft voice, conducted in a hushed whisper that makes you think he is covering the receiver with his hand, said:

“Er, uh, how are you today?”

Okay.

“This is just to tell you…er, ah, as we have been, er, reexamining…or rather examining our list of writers we…that is those…or no—what I mean is we…looked at our outstanding commitments and the editorial board…well in a sense the editorial board but also others…they decided that we tend to feel…at least the tendency is to feel--.”

Get to it Mr. Wycliffe: I’m on the way out the door. You’re trying to say that my Op Ed services are no longer needed, is that it?

Er, ah, yes.

Earlier…several years earlier…we had lunch as he was asking me to write for them…where he said:

“I…well actually not I…but it is my sense that it would be advantageous…if not advantageous a decided plus—a plus in the sense that it would be a positive…to have a conservative write some Op Eds…if the conservative would observe the—well, not observe, but if he or she as the case may be, would write decorously—not necessarily embracing conservatism you understand—but write with a sense of--.”

You want a conservative who--.

“Rather like Doug Kmiec.”

Oh. The Notre Dame law school professor. You went to Notre Dame, Don, didn’t you?

“Yes.”

Kmiec writes about the law in such a way as--.

“Not unduly, that is not to overstate, he writes with a point of view that is--.”

Balanced?

“Balanced. That’s it.”

Later an old line “Trib” staffer translated.

“He’s very cautious,” he said. “He was picked because of affirmative action. They think it’s neat to have a black who is conservative. But before he got the job he was put on a leash. Don’t change the editorial board’s pro-choice position. Also he was told `remember, not too conservative, now, Donald. Not too conservative.’ You know how the paper is now…it has all the guts of the Hinsdale country club.”

Right he was. You couldn’t tell a conservative Catholic pro-lifer ran the editorial page. Any more than today. I called him once after he ran a viciously anti-Catholic Op Ed by Robert McClory who was labeled a journalist. I recommended that since McClory is an ex-priest who left the church with great bitterness, his former job as a priest ought to be cited. He agreed. But since Wycliffe left, McClory is back being called a journalist and an adjunct journalism lecturer at Medill—which is what he trades on: not ex-priest.

Later, after his stint as editorial page director was completed, Wycliffe became the newspaper’s ombudsman or as they termed it “Public Editor.” Not just the first black to be Public Editor, the first Public Editor period. The “Public Editor” is one who dishes out self-scrutiny and bare-faced gutsy criticisms of the newspaper’s handling of certain issues. The greatest Public Editor ever to serve any newspaper was Daniel Okrent, who served two years for “The New York Times” starting in 2005. The normal term is two years. Okrent had never worked for “The Times” so he had no litany of old friends there. The first column he wrote for the paper said: let’s face it—this is a liberal newspaper: a very liberal newspaper and the news is often shaded to reflect its biases.

As my first editor used to say, “Holy S---!” I would say that same explective whenever I read Okrent. He was magnificent, brilliant and pulled no punches. He was very unpopular. Since then they’ve had Public Editors who merely correct misconceptions. But still not as bad as was Wycliffe as Public Editor of the “Tribune.”

When Wycliffe became Public Editor he approached it another way. That is, er, uh, he…well it doesn’t serve anyone…any person…to be nasty. So when people wrote him to criticize the newspaper, he answered them as a Company Man. He broke tradition only once: when he criticized the paper for giving two stories headlines after pro-lifers won elections as “Anti-Choicers Win.” I don’t know how that criticism rattled in the Tower but soon after, Wycliffe returned to being a Company Man. And not long later he was on his way to Notre Dame to teach journalism and to be a p. r. flack for the president. There he was a true Company Man with integrity because he was paid to be one.

He left Notre Dame some time ago. Yesterday, writing an Op Ed in the “Tribune” Wycliffe was a Notre Dame Company Man again, asking Notre Dame “not to go wobbly” and reconsider its invitation to President Obama to be its commencement speaker. The notion of Don Wycliffe telling anybody not to go wobbly is a howler. He begins his article by admitting he didn’t remember his own class’ commencement speaker. His father reminds him: Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Moynihan who I knew fairly well when he was a Nixon aide sold out his Catholic heritage to be a senator from New York, supporting pro-abort legislation throughout with the exception of partial birth when even Moynihan’s well-conditioned stomach started to regurgitate. Moynihan just happened to be a nominal Catholic Irishman, that’s all who obeyed his Dem media guy, the same one who told Mario Cuomo that being a pro-lifer wouldn’t do: the now sainted Tim Russert, late of happy memory.

Notre Dame has been on the Moynihan-Russert pro-Irish pro-choice road for a long time. Even Wycliffe can’t remember when it began.

Still, in his Op Ed yesterday he made it sound reasonable: the job of the university is to be even-handed and picking a commencement speaker like Obama doesn’t mean it endorses his views. But of course as a Company Man he didn’t bother to report that Notre Dame is also going to give Obama an honorary degree which symbolizes the warm approbation of any university.

Then the Great Wobblier overreached. He wrote that by not extending the invitation Notre Dame would demonstrate its lack of self-confidence…unlike Jesus Christ Who had great self-confidence, reproving His followers who wished to defend him, who said “Do you not think that I cannot appeal to my Father and He will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” When you finally recover from exasperation at this infantile view of theology without losing your lunch, you’re ready to say this:

Sorry, Wobbler but He didn’t say this to express the self-confidence of His human nature but the fulfillment of His divine. As He said in the next sentence (which you decided not to quote): “But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” Meaning He was giving Himself up out of His own free will, saying later once again, “all this has taken place so that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.”

Insofar as Notre Dame has a spiritual mission any longer or a soul…which is questionable…it is to examine all sides of issues, yes, but primarily to educate students to understand the end of man, the ultimate goal of our existence, which is beatitude which can only be beatitude with God and a sharing in His own beatitude—in essence to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next. The selection of Barack Obama aside from transferring worldly “prestige” to the university (which it is willing to sell off its integrity to bask in) is not even an intellectual feat since Obama has determined the question when life begins is “above my pay grade”—life’s beginning which despite his lamentable ignorance he has been eager to arbitrarily end, as in the snuffing out of infants born live after botched abortions, deprived by Obama’s ruthless, irresponsible King Herod-like actions of (a) their lives, (b) nutrition while they suffer in inexpressible pain, and of (c) human nurture such as you could like to give a dying animal.

Tough words, Don but by that weasel-worded Op Ed you have shown yourself a spiritual and inhumane ignoramus, citing Christ’s mission wrongly as one of His human “self-confidence”…missing His divine nature essential in achieving our redemption…and utterly self-blinded by your chauvinistic zeal to see the first black president sacrilegiously honored at the old school.

That’s really what it’s all about, Wobbler, isn’t it? Obama’s black.

My advice to you, O Wobbly One, is to contact Notre Dame and ask for your tuition money back…and then go to confession. You’ve been defrauded by your school and misled by racial chauvinism into neo paganism.

Thoughts While Shaving.

1. The fact that the New York special 20th district congressional race is too close to call in a district which while originally Republican supported a Democrat (who was named to the U. S. Senate to replace Hillary Clinton)…is, let’s face it, exciting for Republicans. It presages a roaring return in the 2010 off-year. When last I looked with all 610 voting precincts reporting, Democrat Scott Murphy was leading Republican Jim Tedisco by only 65 votes out of more than 154,000 cast with more than 10,000 absentee ballots still to be counted. Whooeeeee!



2, The drive to condition us to accept the homosexual lifestyle continues so subliminally we aren’t supposed to notice. Last February the long-running daytime serial “All My Children” showed the longtime protagonist, Susan Lucci, a Catholic pro-abort who played the role of Erika Kane for 36 years beaming with joy as her daughter married another woman. ABC is the gayest network. In its 2008-09 lineup of the four major networks there are 35 repeater homosexual roles, of which 15 come from ABC.

3. ACORN wants to help the Census count how many Americans there are. During the past few months it has been signing up some of the 1.4 million temporary workers required to take the 2010 census. Skew the numbers with skill and it will affect congressional redistricting in the future.



4. This business about liberal Democrats…the ones who want to penalize the rich and spread the wealth around…stiffing the feds on their taxes is becoming serious enough for a psychological study. Now the latest offender is the Health and Human Services nominee Kathleen Sebelius (nee Gilligan), a Catholic pro-abort and daughter of a former Ohio governor, pro-abort Catholic John Gilligan. She just “discovered” that she and her husband, Gary, a federal magistrate judge in Kansas owed a total of $7,040 in back taxes and $878 in interest from 2005 to 2007. Add her to Tim Geithner who’s in charge of collecting our taxes but who was in arrears in paying his own and Tom Daschle Obama’s first pick for HHS secretary and you wonder this: if they weren’t named by Obama originally, would they have gotten away with not paying sufficient taxes? I mean, Sebelius is the governor of Kansas for crying out loud. Answer: all of them probably would.



Which is another confirmation to me of the old cliché “liberal phony.” Liberals are notorious…from Al Gore on down…for not kicking in much more than peanuts from their own pockets to charities. They’re notorious for insisting that the poor send their kids to substandard public schools in the inner city while they…ala the Obamas…send their children to private schools.

Personal Aside: A Very Interested Reader in Rome.

As many of you know, I publish a weekly column in “The Wanderer,” the oldest national Catholic weekly in the United States. A priest who just returned from a decade of service in the Vatican tells me the newspaper has a very interested reader in Rome…one who after his Mass sips kaffee und koogan and reads U.S. periodicals…adorned in white, wearing a matching skull cap…one who speaks German as his first language but who is also fluent in English, Italian, French, Spanish, Latin, ancient Greek and biblical Hebrew. If he kept to his reading habits last week and perused the paper thoroughly…as he is wont to do…this is what he read about America’s politics and president:

For the first time last week, it became obvious that the American public is now struggling with a bi-polar notion of Barack Obama.

America Bi-Polar on Obama.

In the sensory hemisphere of the public brain, Americans are clearly enjoying the sensation of being seduced by his undeniable charm. On The Tonight Show Starring Jay Leno, the president of the United States was brilliant: relaxed, chatty, witty, silken…and awful. Awful at comparing his poor bowling score to what could be compiled by Special Olympics bowlers composed of physically and/or mentally impaired individuals. But the slobbering pro-Obama media minimized it and finally whooshed it all away. If George W. Bush had said that, there’d be a ring of wheel-chaired invalids circling the White House howling at his insensitivity.

On Leno he co-mingled mastery of economic jargon with enough command of numbers to impress viewers and tossed in hip allusions to Simon Cowell and Kevin Eubanks. Who are they? Cowell is the acerbic Brit critic who appears on American Idol. Eubanks is a black jazz guitarist who leads Leno’s studio orchestra who habitually slumps in leisure clothes as he strums…often the butt of Leno’s jokes on marijuana use, and porno viewing. Obama, riffing about Cowell and ribbing Eubanks for wearing a suit and tie (for the first time on TV) clearly pleased his strongest demographic (after blacks) kids 18 to 29.

This sensation-tingling hemisphere of the public brain loves him.

But the second hemisphere of the public brain, rationality, is terribly worried about the economic fate of their nation and the carelessness with which a majority believes spending and spiraling debt are being managed. No hint of the seriousness confronting the nation came through from the president on Leno but did a few days later on 60 Minutes—but from the CBS interviewer, not Obama. Once again Obama sprinkled his discussion of the most serious economic nature with jokes and one-liners reflecting blithe lack of concern and nonchalance. It prompted veteran liberal interviewer Steve Kroft to exclaim: “Are you punch-drunk?” The giggling stopped. It was clearly the most insolent question I can remember being asked by a reporter to a president.

Still, Kroft had a point. Increasingly, many Americans are worried that for all his charm, Obama may not have the depth to handle the job. It was probably this reason that Obama decided to go dull and non-charismatic in his second news conference where the teleprompter was replaced by a huge flat, TV-like screen which rolled his initial remarks.

The AIG Bonus Flap.

Seemingly everyone, last week…Congress, the president and the media…professed outrage with bonuses paid by federal funds to executives of AIG’s financial products division who caused the meltdown. But the bonuses were not a surprise to Treasury, Obama or congressional leaders because they sprang from a firm contract made months ago which was publicly reported in Bloomberg and Barron’s weeks ago.

Both White House and congress knew they were concluded with a firm contract between Tim Geithner, now treasury secretary, then New York Fed president, and AIG for a very good reason. Only those who inadvertently created the mess have the expertise to get AIG out of it and were they to leave, both AIG and the Fed would have a devil of a time unwinding it. Although a huge p. r. gaffe as we approach off-year elections, the bonuses amount to exactly 1/18,500th of the $3.1 trillion federal budget. This recession was not caused--nor is it being worsened—by such bonuses. The recession is caused by lack of credit spawned by dearth of confidence produced by no plan (at least until now) to detoxify the banks.

Far worse than the bonuses themselves was the media smokescreen the president and a coalition of senators whipped up to dodge blame. The president says he was “stunned” to discover the bonuses in the bill he signed and neither he nor his staff read fully. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) suggested bonus recipients should return the money and then commit suicide, citing imperial Japanese tradition when one is caught in dishonor—a statement for which he has refused to apologize (of course, he’s up for reelection next year).

Demagogues in the Senate hatched a plan to reclaim the money by unconstitutional confiscation. It involves violating the constitution’s Article I, section 9, clause 3--through specially onerous taxation: 90% for those getting the bonuses. This is nothing less than a Bill of Attainder …an act of a legislature declaring persons guilty of some crime ex post facto, punishing them without a trial and confiscating their money by taxation applicable only to the supposed offenders. The bill is on hold as New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo works his way down the list “convincing” bonus recipients to pay it back. He’s extracted by force…threatening to release to the public the recipients’ names…$50 million thus far—thuggery which qualifies him for a role in The Godfather IV if one is made.

By staging the phony uproar the Congress hoped to divert public anger from the pols to AIG. But…for me anyhow…the measured response from an exec veep of the company’s financial products division published in “The New York Times” made a lot of sense that these guys have been made the goats. Three denizens of Congress who were particularly repulsive last week: Barney Frank, of course, the lisping, swarthy tub of lard with a boyfriend at the appropriately named Fannie Mae…Charles Grassley who suggested AIG bonus recipients should return the money and commit suicide…and, of course, the most pompous bore, Chris Dodd.

Also, showboat Dems and Republicans capitalized on the public outrage over the bonuses to barbecue an innocent guy who had nothing to do with the bonus awards: Edward Liddy, the public-spirited Chicago executive, former Allstate CEO and G. D. Searle CFO who volunteered to run the company for $1 a year pro bono after it ran into trouble. Shouting mad lawmakers who had just given themselves a raise of $4,700 a year to their $175,000 salaries constituted the most flagrant hypocrisy in modern memory, even by Capitol Hill standards.

Worsening Budget Woes.

Breaking at the same time as Obama’s appearance on 60 Minutes was news from the Congressional Budget Office (now run by Dems) showing the Obama budget will produce $9.3 trillion in red ink from 2010 to 2019—a full $2.3 trillion worse than the White House had predicted. The CBO says deficit under Obama policies will never dip below 4% of the economy’s size—figures most economists see are unsustainable over the long run. Moreover by the end of the decade the deficit will likely exceed 5% of GDP, a seriously dangerous level.

Still Obama indicated he will not cut back on the original tenets of his budget including energy, health care and education. Of course not. Rahm Emanuel has applied his bare knuckled Chicago style to the problem, saying “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. It’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” Accordingly, Obama is using the emergency to enact the most revolutionary upheaval of society in the country’s history--enormous spending and federalization grabs in energy to “find new sources” and clamp on a cap-and-trade tax (not utilizing the Arctic Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf) in health care heavily nationalize it and in education to nationalize it with universal access to college as the goal.

Also last week came the long awaited Geithner plan to bailout banking’s toxic assets, aimed at unclogging the nation’s credit system. A coordinated effort by Treasury, the Fed and FDIC, it depends on a mix of federal and private funds to do the job. Commented University of Illinois law professor Larry Ribstein in probably the best surmise of the plan: “So now we have an elaborate shell game. The government subsidizes private equity companies to buy the assets at inflated values…[but] buyers are exposed only for the minimal payments they’re making on these hugely leveraged deals…[and] taxpayers who provided most of the money will bear most of the loss.”

If the Geithner plan works, Obama can riff his way through his first term without much worry. But if it doesn’t, get ready for a real pitchfork brigade composed of activists from left as well as right. The budget is so expensive Obama may not be able to sell this to his own Democrats. This is what has led no less a liberal prognosticator as Charlie Cooke to reason on ultra-liberal Obama idolater Chris Matthews’ MSNBC’s Hardball last week that the public may well be feeling buyer’s remorse, believing it made a grave mistake in giving unchecked power to the Democrats in Congress last year while electing Obama. When Dem apologists Cooke and Matthews shake their heads, something powerful’s afoot.

2010 Will be the Reckoning.

People are gravely concerned that in the words of Will Rogers, the Democratic Congress doesn’t seem to pass administration spending measures anymore: it just waves as they pass by. Obama handed over to ex-`60s hippie Nancy Pelosi of all people the important stimulus bill and it came back laden with non-essential liberal wishes, including repeal of the welfare reform legislation okayed under Clinton…which Obama cavalierly signed into law without reading.

Those midterm elections can easily do to Obama what midterms did to FDR whose high-powered New Deal suffered setbacks in 1938 when the Depression and unemployment didn’t abate. Then the GOP didn’t need to win a majority, or anything like this to do it: in `38 the congressional ground game changed with only one upset--the election of Robert A. Taft. Taft energized a coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats that spared the country from the New Deal’s worst excesses, managing it as uncrowned leader of the Senate until his death in 1953.



In 2010 vital conservative candidates will challenge wheeler-dealer (and liar to boot) Chris Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who is long overdue for retirement. There will be a hot primary that could well dislodge wily old Republican Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania. Even if a Democrat wins the general, it will be a welcome draft of fresh air to get rid of that ancient turncoat.

Even impregnable Democrat House members can be great fodder for other congressional races. The names Charlie Rangel (D-NY), John Murtha (D-Pa), Maxine Waters (D-Calif.)—all serious ethics violators--are all well known across the country. They’ll replace the names of Jack Abramoff the fixer and Cong. Mark Foley (R-Fl.) listed as horrible examples in 2006 used by the Dems to wrest control. And Speaker Nancy Pelosi who has called federal interference with illegal aliens “un-American” can be a wonderful campaign aid for the GOP.

Then there are some favorable demographics for the Republicans. Off-years almost always show a slackening of voter turnout in behalf of an administration. Catch these numbers: whites who supported McCain by 55% to 43% were 74% of the electorate last year but they constituted 79% in the last off-year of 2006 and will likely top it next year. Voters ages 18 to 29, Obama’s biggest age group last year, ranked at 18% last November but amounted to only 12% in 2006.

One bit of good news about the economy has to do with social issues many authenticist Catholics are interested in. With so much on Obama’s plate and his need to attract coalitions for his programs, he’s not likely to move aggressively on FOCA (Freedom of Choice Act) or to tamper with the “conscience clause” affecting Catholic hospitals. He doesn’t need to alienate everybody all at once.

So don’t despair. All I can do is quote Bette Davis’ immortal line in 1950’s classic All About Eve: “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

Notre Dame’s Commencement Speaker.

Erupting for authenticist Catholics last week was the latest Notre Dame outrage. Disregarding the counsel of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the university invited Barack Obama to deliver the 2009 commencement…yes, that Obama who as state senator personally strangled the Illinois Born Alive bill twice in the legislature, voting to deprive babies born from botched abortions to receive nourishment or comfort…and yes the same Barack Obama puts as top priority passage of FOCA…the self-same Obama who diverted money from adult stem cell research where cures are achieved to fund the murder of human embryonic cells where cures aren’t and who called it taking politics out of science…a diabolical U-turn in logic.



In fact, Notre Dame along with many other big name behemoth schools of learning is not a Catholic university but a Catholic-in-name-only university (CINO). That includes Georgetown, DePaul and Loyola here in Chicago and many, many others across the country.

What happened to them? Three things: (a) changes in the schools’ bylaws insulate faculties from head office accountability…(b) changes in boards of trustees from those devoted to Catholic education to big donors, many non-Catholics but also Catholics unacquainted with articles of the faith…and (c) secular-style marketing that has deemphasized Catholicism for widespread secular appeal to get more students and grants for big bucks which pay for exorbitant salaries going to some supposed “big name” professors.



This means that in most large CINO universities, the president is not much more than a figure-head, fund-raiser and faculty recruiter. The two big constituencies that pull much more weight are (a) the faculty and (b) the trustees (composed of big donors, well established ex-pols with clout to get federal or state grants, and tokens: blacks, Hispanics, women et al).

As one who has taught part-time at many, let me tell you the object of the game is prestige which lures the money. Recruit big name professors, pay them a ton of money and they will attract the students. And for commencements, get a big name. Obviously there is no bigger name than the president of the United States (or POTUS). To land a president is irresistible to hefty donors, the faculty, the media and the graduates who say “my school had a bigger celebrity than your school” meaning “my degree is more prestigious than yours is—nyaa-nyaa!”

You can write letters of protest to the Notre Dame president to ease your own blood pressure (his name: Father John Jenkins, CSC) but all you’ll get is a nice letter back.

What, then, to do? You can lobby big donors and alumni to protest…but often big donors are ill-educated on Catholic matters and alumni are often too engrossed in making their livings to care much. In my estimation when all fails, it is best to beg the local bishop to consider applying the nuclear option.

The Nuclear Option.

It starts by petitioning the local bishop to consider withdrawal of the Catholic designation from the offending university. The bishop could start off by making the threat at first privately, then publicly in the media. If he has the inner resolve to carry it out, there’ll be some personal suffering on his part. Assuredly the media will make him look like Tomas de Torquemada (the Spanish inquisitor-in-chief 1420-98) and the offending school will be lauded as a “champion of academic freedom.” But make no mistake, for a bishop to even suggest publicly he is considering removing “Catholic” would stress the seriousness of the matter. And if only one Ordinary is serious, it could cause an earthquake that could make changes. An Archbishop Raymond Burke now in Rome would have been the type of courageous individual who could make that announcement…and failing favorable negotiations…make it stick.

And if the school allows its Catholic designation to be stripped? My feeling is this: it’s far better to have only Catholic universities which do not violate their covenant than to have big name ones which mock Catholicism. Many CINO-run schools run roughshod over values, morals and traditions. DePaul in Chicago where I part-time taught advertises itself as the “largest Catholic institution of higher learning in the country.” It actually foments training in the homosexual culture for freshmen with a minor in so-called Queer Studies. What value is DePaul to Catholicism? The same with Loyola of Chicago where I was an adjunct professor.

In my view, nothing…even being libeled as a Torquemada…is as bad as allowing false teaching that contradicts the reason these schools…our country…and our Church… were founded.

Personal Aside: Mary, Mary Quite, er What?...Lavender Clergy Stunts Catholicism’s Growth…and Two Thoughts While Shaving.

Mary, Mary…

With superb liberal self-righteousness…brimming with much fervor as advocate herself …“Tribune” columnist Mary Schmich is thrilled that Loyola’s law school has allowed a panel to support same-sex marriage with evidently no formal contrary views represented by a contradictory speaker. The forum was conjured up by a group that calls itself “OUTlaw.” Schmich’s heart went a-tremble as she wrote Friday that “flat-screen TVs all over the school were advertising the presentation.” A Loyola faculty member is its counselor.

Then she happily reported that State Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) who’s openly gay and an AIDS victim will be there to push his civil union bill and so will lawyers urging same-sex marriage hailing from Iowa and California. “But [more than anything else] the fact that one of Chicago’s Catholic institutions was opening its grand `ceremonial courtroom’ to same-sex marriage advocates” justified her elation. Ergo: when a Catholic institution caves, it’s heady stuff.

She described an OUTlaw co-founder as society reporter of old would write of a bride’s gown at a wedding: A OUTlaw co-founder is “a slender guy with short auburn hair, neatly dressed in slacks, a white shirt and a navy pullover.” If I didn’t know better I would have surmised Schmich had a crush on him.

A second point intriguing Schmich is that there will evidently be no opposition views represented on the panel but will serve as a gusher of anti-traditionalist propaganda that runs only one way: pro-same-sex marriage. She concedes “students will come to argue” i.e. but they will presumably be in the audience—not serving on the panel. This is very like the brand of “advocacy” endorsed by Herbert Marcuse in “One Dimensional Man” [1964] who argues America should not be confused by cross-currents of disagreements but should center on rigid hard-left advocacy as form of social control…which certainty fits Schmich’s own column-ing style on social issues of importance to her anent homosexuality.

As a former adjunct professor there and knowing how the gay movement cherishes dissent, I will say that a lonely heterosexual in the audience to defend the tradition of 5,000 years in the West will have to withstand charges of intolerance, bigotry and Neanderthal-ism from two quarters: panelists and the overwhelming number of fellow attendees. There will certainly be no support for orthodoxy from the lavenders and emasculated neuters, comprising the preponderant Jesuit clergy at Loyola who defer to the university president’s own ideologically fragranced beliefs.

As the conclusion of her column, Schmich, walks with her OUTlaw companion to the ceremonial courtroom where the “symposium” will be held…with this purple prose descriptive:

“The ceilings soared and Chicago rose across the walls of windows. Out in the changing, growing city old buildings crowded next to new ones and next to buildings so freshly under construction that you couldn’t know exactly what they’d look like, only that one day soon they’d be there and that once they were there we’d take them for granted.

“Just like, I’m betting, same-sex marriage.”

I’m willing to take that bet. On my side: the long tradition of Judeo-Christian thought that while eschewing hatred or persecution considers homosexuality incompatible with God’s plan for human sexuality…natural law, scripture, and Tradition…the recognition that we are all under God’s judgment, that we are all lost and condemned sinners, that we are all born with a sinful nature that spurs sinful thoughts and actions, that the most important message is the promise of forgiveness and eternal life for which God sent his Son into this world to live a perfect life and die a perfect death as payment for our sins…concluding with this: homosexuals leading celibate lives will be immeasurably aided by Christ’s promise to all of us born with malefactions: that if we take up His cross we will find our burdens light.

Isn’t it a shame Loyola doesn’t have the fortitude to summon up another symposium so the case for which Ignatius Loyola stood can get a hearing?

But that wouldn’t rate a column by Mary Schmich.

The Lavender Clergy.

The gay rights movement now has become an indissoluble part of a mental disorder known as “modern liberalism” which moved from the domain largely of one political party in my younger days to the status of civil religion in the United States.

This new liberalism of gay rights which is essentially hedonism…self-masturbatory gratification…has invaded the precincts of Catholic education and has supplanted the Church’s philosophy and theology in many key faculties. The chaos stemming from radical, heretical theological interpretations of “the spirit of Vatican II” helped. The gradual diminishing of the role of university president has helped the growth immeasurably…along with the rise of the all-powerful faculties and the abdication from responsibility of university trustees: once scholars themselves, now largely people of wealth and political influence with no permanent convictions except that the universities should cultivate “prestige” so as to rake in more money.

As a new civil religion, liberalism has moved into Catholic intellectual life by embodying perceptions of victimization…the need to satisfy child-like claims to entitlement…bolstering feelings of envy: the rich should have the obligation to pay higher taxes imposed by the government purportedly to benefit those who are poor…rejecting the sovereignty of the individual to the overriding power of big government: all spuriously linked to the so-called “social teachings of the Church.” Homosexuals are seen in the same way black slaves were since 1620 except that…the dogma goes…homosexuals are still despised. Hence the Church should depart its old dogmas on sex as a conduit for procreation and embrace a new order.

Seminaries and religious orders beginning in the 1940s…including at my own Saint John’s of Minnesota which was once a traditional Thomistic-directed university…crafted an entirely new schema of “responsibility” which denigrated capitalism, rose up the “idealism” of labor unions and then moved to embrace government as the solver of all problems. At the same time came the sexual revolution and the Benedictine monastery’s Fr. Godfrey Diekmann OSB was ready to pounce. His new theology which began as a refreshing commentary on the old moved steadily leftward with an outreach in politics that continues today.

Diekmann was a man’s man, an athlete and in no ways a lavender—but his revolutionary theology cratered the campus in later years. Revolutionary thinking creates revolutionary living. No one less than the abbot of Saint John’s confessed to homosexual predatory practices and the campus has degenerated into just another secular near-behemoth.

Women were regarded as victims, chattel who were required to have as many children as the lustful husband caused her to bear: they should be aided not by natural family planning which is acceptable under Thomistic rubric but artificial contraception. Hence the struggle against “Humanae Vitae” and the decision by many error-prone theologians to accept artificial birth control. It so happened I was on hand when the first towering heretic emerged to transform much of the contemporary thinking of church scholars. Diekmann OSB became a major dissenter of “Humanae Vitae”. Then the cause moved to a so-called woman’s right to control their own bodies notwithstanding that the unborn child within them was also a person. This was denied and abortion rights were propagated in Catholic universities, not as a formal teaching at first but under-cover: now as a teaching formally prescribed by many professors at Catholic universities.

The sexual revolution virtually destroyed the women’s religious Orders. It also propelled men, principally, to examine their own sexual identifies. Some who believed themselves homosexual decided to go where men are: cohabit in seminaries and monasteries where they can find similarly affected fellows. They became priests. Then bishops. Then bishops who recommended others for the priesthood. Then priests who recruited their buddies to the seminaries. Not all became involved, of course, but the prevalence is significant. Throughout, honorable religious stood their ground. The identity of the Church was greatly helped by the personal prelature “Opus Dei” for one, which…although I am not a member…shows often to me at least that it is the authentic Church in exile.

Those who became involved in homosexual encounters and then repented were blackmailed…indeed are blackmailed now…so that in fear of discovery of their past they are held captive by their clerical fellows who know much about them. Some notable bishops and cardinals are in that condition. But throughout the ordeal good priests, good brothers, good lay organizations have continued to thrive.

Still, lavender is a major condition of much of the clergy…including much of the ecclesial leadership today. At my old university the sexual revolution raged so greatly in the `70s that the school itself for all practical purposes is a secular factory concentrating on a range of subjects but not distinguished by any theological vision beyond advocacy of political liberalism. I was, for all practical purposes, the last commencement speaker there to deliver in 1977…who spoke of any theological matters: in my case pro-life. The reaction was intriguing. The faculty sat on its hands and refrained from applause when I concluded. The student body, never having heard these ideas before, was dazed. Only the student body’s parents roared their approval and responded with a standing ovation. A high academic leader of the university…a priest…sniffed: “That was, er,er,er very interesting.”

Interestingly enough, he died a few years later—of AIDS.

The Lavender Clergy populate most old-line Catholic universities with which I am acquainted and has much…very much…to say about the conduct of dioceses. In doing so they are tied inextricably to the liberal Democratic party. Am I pessimistic? Actually, no.

Anyone who knows the history of this Church understands that it has survived for 2,000 plus years not because of luck but because it is Divine—from servitude and persecution under the Roman imperium, the flourishing of heresies, the near collapse to the barbarian, the rise and near fall to the Muslims, the crusades, the rise of Protestantism, the Inquisition, the Renaissance, centuries of war. But not only troubles flourished but indeed its building of western civilization: invention of the university, invention of modern science, the highest development of painting and sculpture, the composition of great music, preservation of western civilization by the monks, the creation of modern philosophy adapted by Augustine and Aquinas from Aristotle who had been largely forgotten down to the genius of William Shakespeare whose plays written in times of persecution show brilliant Catholic insights. But most of all the saints both canonized and unrecognized—from the great pillars of strength to the humble nuns who sacrificed much to teach and minister to the weak.

Thus the Lavender Clergy is just another painful period which we shall endure. Why? Because Christ said this Church shall survive to the end of time. But in all these difficult times, don’t count on the indomitable role of bishops to stand the guff. When Henry VIII ordered all Catholic bishops to take a blood oath of obedience to him as head of the Catholic church in England in the 16th century, there were 25 bishops: of which 24 obeyed.

The sole one who dissented was John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, England who was sent to the Tower of London. To dissuade Henry from decapitating Fisher, the Pope made Fisher a cardinal and so notified Henry saying that Fisher’s red hat was on the way to England. Henry responded: save your time; Fisher’s head will be on its way to Rome. Fisher is the only member of the College of Cardinals…the only one…who was martyred…of a group that has taken red—the symbol of blood—as emblematic that they are to sacrifice all…even their lives…to uphold the faith.

He is now incardinated as Saint John Fisher [1469-1535]. From that time on, the Church has been under attack from many quarters—now principally with the sexual revolution…then with Henry VIII’s autonomy…but it is noteworthy that we have not seen a cardinal in our time or within the cognizance of church historians who have validated the tenet of the cardinalate. Today you can’t find a cardinal to even consider stripping the designation “Catholic” from an erring and heretical CINO institution, can you?

Since I started writing of this subject, there has been an indication from one writer that actually Edward Cardinal Egan stripped the Catholic designation from two relatively minor Catholic universities…but on examination I find that while he condemned them, he did not take the formal nuclear option. If you have found differently, please tell me either in a note to this website or to me personally at thomasfroeser@sbcglobal.net.

Two Thoughts While Shaving.

1. Many-many thanks to steadfast reader Mike Buck who has loaned me a video which will enable me to view…for the first time ever…a Will Rogers film. It is “Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.” I shall view it this week as I gently sip my obligatory one…yes one…scotch and soda and will return it and another he has sent to Michael upon completion.



2. My thanks to a reader who passed along to a canon lawyer my recommendation that as a last resort a CINO university could be threatened by the bishop with the possibility of withdrawal of the Catholic designation. After I read the canon lawyer’s finding, I took it up with an authenticist bishop and we come to loggerheads.



The canon law expert says that with the exception of Catholic University of America there is not one “Catholic” university in the United States where a local Ordinary could bring serious canonical pressure to bear for the reason that every one of them is organized solely from the perspective of civil law i.e. none of them are canonically erected, pointed out by Prof. James Coriden in one of his commentaries to the 1983 Code of Canon Law.

In addition to which an expert opinion was prepared in 1983 by Msgr. Frederick McManus, professor of canon law that stated canons 807-814 were prepared with reference to European universities but don’t apply to American “Catholic” universities…copies of which were sent to the presidents of every “Catholic” university in the country.

Thus, the canon law expert concludes, a local Ordinary’s authority is limited to vigilance over faith and morals. Exactly, I say!

I discussed his finding with a famed authenticist bishop (not of this diocese, understandably) who is himself a canon lawyer and dismissed it with an impatient wave of his hand. He said flatly a bishop has jurisdiction over the name “Catholic” which is applied to university’s in his diocese…and that he would be happy to move the matter to Rome for confirmation, believing the role of the bishop would supersede any hair-splitting archangels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin view of a bureaucratic hidebound canonical theoretician.

He cited also the fact that since the Ordinary’s authority has jurisdiction to vigilance over faith and morals (although he declined to accept that a bishop’s authority is “limited” to this) universities which honor pro-aborts and holders of scandalous views would fall into the jurisdiction…along with those which present plays such as “The Vagina Monologues” and so-called “courses” as Queer Studies: 101 that are being offered at DePaul. If these are not detrimental to faith and morals, he says, what is?

And so it goes. My personal lay view is that if a bishop were to push stripping the designation, Rome would be hard-pressed to stand against him on the vigilance over faith and morals question.