Personal Stuff

Tomorrow morning (Friday, July 30), I'll be dropping by the local office of a local newspaper to discuss the possibility of doing some freelance writing for them. At this point, I won't mention any names. Say a prayer for me! Even if after the fact: God, being God, can handle it. :-) Thanks.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 07/29/04 09:16:27 PM
Categorized as Other.

John Forbes Kerry Is It

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCCXLII

In honor of the selection of Sen. John Kerry (D-Pomo) as the Democratic Party's nominee for president of the United States of America, two editorials from the depths of the backlog.

First, from the Mobile Register, Mar. 5.

Sen. John Kerry, now the sure Democratic nominee for president, has been mocking President George W. Bush for months by saying "Bring it on" in reference to any and all debates on the issues.

But Mr. Bush and his political advisers are probably thinking the same thing about Mr. Kerry. For good reason, they probably relish having an opponent with all of the Democratic nominee's weaknesses.

In Mr. Kerry, the president faces a Massachusetts senator more liberal than Ted Kennedy, by a number of official rankings of the U.S. Senate. Indeed, the non-partisan National Journal just put out rankings showing that in 2003, Mr. Kerry rated as the single most liberal member of the Senate.

In him, the president also faces an opponent equally as inauthentic and as arrogant as Al Gore was. Mr. Kerry is Irish-Catholic when that suits him, but he's also Jewish when that's an advantage.

He has been both war hero and war protester, although he tried to have it both ways by throwing somebody else's medals over a wall in a high-profile protest, while secretly keeping his own.

When it comes to fence straddling, meanwhile, the senator has been a real champion. He voted against the first war in Iraq, but then wrote the same constituent twice within nine days, once saying that he opposed the war and later saying he "strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush's response to the current crisis." He voted for the second war in Iraq, but then criticized it. He voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement, but now talks like a protectionist.

To overthrow Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the senator now says we were wrong to do it with out negotiating further at the United Nations. But when it comes to Haiti's deposed dictator, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Mr. Kerry said he would have intervened on behalf of Mr. Aristide. Not only that, but "absent an international force, I'd do it unilaterally."

So it's not OK to act without U.N. approval (but with several dozen other allies) against Saddam Hussein, but it is OK to act without a single other ally to save a corrupt and brutal Haitian leader?

Sen. Kerry has cast key votes to cut funds for U.S. intelligence agencies, but now criticizes the Central Intelligence Agency for weak intelligence gathering. He says he'll be stronger on national security than President Bush has been, but he has voted against the B-1 bomber, the B-2 Stealth bomber, the F-14 fighter, the F-15, the F-16, the AH-64-Apache helicopter, the Patriot missiles, the Aegis air defense cruiser (which is key to sea-based missile defense), the Trident missile for submarines, the M-1 Abrams tanks, the Tomahawk cruise missile and the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

John Kerry has been both in favor of and against the death penalty for terrorists, both in favor of and against the Patriot Act, against the federal Defense of Marriage Act that President Clinton signed yet also against gay marriage, and accepting of and opposed to the "outsourcing" of jobs.

Even the liberal Washington Post editorialized on Feb. 15 that Mr. Kerry has tried to have it both ways on numerous issues, and wrote that "Mr. Kerry's attempts to weave a thread connecting and justifying all these positions are unconvincing."

Maybe the president shouldn't say bring him on, but to bring them on — because there seems to be far more than just one John Kerry.

Second, from the Washington Post, Feb. 15.

JOHN KERRY has become the favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination without a detailed or clarifying debate on many issues. This has happened in part because the leading Democratic candidates had relatively few differences on foreign or domestic policy; in part because their multi-candidate forums allowed little time for in-depth discussion; and in part because most have chosen to avoid direct attacks on each other since the primaries began last month. Most of the rhetoric has been directed at President Bush, and exit polls show that many voters have been more interested in which candidate has a better chance of unseating the incumbent than in where he might take the country. Mr. Kerry has surged to the forefront in part because of his biography and in part because he avoided the political misjudgments and verbal gaffes that caused voters to reject onetime front-runner Howard Dean. Now, with the nomination seemingly within his reach, the Massachusetts senator must begin to more fully explain where he stands on the major challenges facing the country.

That task is particularly important for Mr. Kerry because of his fuzziness on issues ranging from Iraq to gay marriage. Some of the blur is caused by a record of political activity stretching back more than 30 years, including 19 in the Senate; in such circumstances it's not hard for opposition researchers to unearth contradictions. But even a more independent assessment of Mr. Kerry can lead to puzzlement. He says he opposes gay marriage, yet voted against the federal Defense of Marriage act. He voted for the North American Free Trade agreement yet now talks in protectionist terms, promising he will provide American workers "a fair playing field" while accusing Mr. Bush of "selling them out." Would a President Kerry seek additional free trade agreements in Latin America and elsewhere? What's his position on whether his own state should adopt a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage? So far, the answers aren't clear.

The most important confusion surrounds Mr. Kerry's position on Iraq. In 1991 he voted against the first Persian Gulf War, saying more support was needed from Americans for a war that he believed would prove costly. In 1998, when President Clinton was considering military steps against Iraq, he strenuously argued for action, with or without allies. Four years later he voted for a resolution authorizing invasion but criticized Mr. Bush for not recruiting allies. Last fall he voted against funding for Iraqi reconstruction, but argued that the United States must support the establishment of a democratic government.

Mr. Kerry's attempts to weave a thread connecting and justifying all these positions are unconvincing. He would do better to offer a more honest accounting. His estimation of the cost of expelling Iraq from Kuwait in 1991 was simply wrong; and if President Bush was mistaken to think in 2003 that there was an urgent need to stop Saddam Hussein from stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, Mr. Kerry made the same error in 1998.

More important, Mr. Kerry should clarify what he believes should be the objectives of the U.S. mission in Iraq going forward — and what military and aid commitments he is prepared to make. In his last substantive speech on the subject, in December, the candidate called for replacing the U.S. occupation authority with a United Nations mission and recruiting NATO and other allied troops "so that we get the targets off the back of our soldiers." But there is no prospect of a U.N. administration; its envoys are instead negotiating the terms under which an Iraqi government will succeed the U.S. authority. The Bush administration has meanwhile invited NATO to share responsibility in Iraq, only to receive a cool response from Germany and France. Mr. Kerry spoke of "completing the tasks of security and democracy" in Iraq. But he hasn't yet offered a realistic plan for how he would do it or committed himself to the likely cost in American troop deployments and dollars. If he is to offer a credible alternative to Mr. Bush, he must explain how he would manage the real and dangerous challenges the United States now faces in Iraq — without the fuzzing.

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Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 07/29/04 09:01:38 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode.

The State of the Church

A monumental essay by George Sim Johnston.

Were I capable of writing a lengthy and profound analysis of the Catholic Church in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, it would Deo voluntas be very much like this:

.... The Second Vatican Council was a call to full spiritual maturity. It was time to take off the training wheels — to stop living “in the shadow of the Law” — and take our vocations as Christians seriously. The pre–Vatican II Church “worked” marvelously well, which is why there are those who are nostalgic, but it wasn’t spiritually creative. The council offered the difference between a minimalist, rules-oriented Catholicism and full discipleship, especially for the laity. In its focus on the human person, rather than on dogmatic truths about the divine order, it reminded us that we’re obliged to become the person God wants us to be and that this isn’t a limitation of our freedom — as the rich young man supposes — but its guarantee.

Once we had achieved that freedom through the call to holiness, we could go out and change the world. This has been the program of John Paul’s pontificate. But the pope has faced serious obstacles within the Church in implementing the council. The problem has been summed up by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger: “What devastated the Church in the decade after the Council was not the Council but the refusal to accept it.” In fact, it’s striking how ill-equipped the Church — clergy and laity included — was to receive the teachings of the council (and, for that matter, Humanae Vitae a few years later). The philosophical richness and originality of the documents were missed entirely. Instead of spiritual renewal and a new evangelization, what we got was a fight between “conservatives” and “liberals,” both stuck in previous categories of Church thinking....

Traditionalist Catholics who blame all the Church’s recent problems on Vatican II should ponder a few questions: If the Church was in such good shape before the council, why did things fall apart so rapidly in the 1960s? How do you account for the fact that the rebellion was the work of bishops, theologians, and priests who came out of the Tridentine system? Had all those priests and nuns who suddenly wanted to be laicized received adequate formation under the old system? Why was there so much dissatisfaction? It won’t do simply to rattle off statistics about the decline of the Church since the council. There’s no question that there were good and holy Catholics in the old days — even some saints — and that since the council we have lost much that is good. But there were also problems waiting to erupt. Might not the Magisterium have been correct in addressing them in the council’s documents?...

As for the Catholic laity: Do not underestimate the role of rising affluence in the troubles since the council. The post-conciliar mischief was initiated by disaffected clergy, but during these years, an increasingly wealthy and assimilated laity was perfectly happy to follow the path of least resistance marked by dissident theologians. In 1937, the Protestant thinker H. Richard Niebuhr drew attention to a soft-core spirituality among Americans: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” Was it likely that Catholics would be immune once they emerged from the ethnic ghetto, moved to the suburbs, and joined the mainstream? The Book of Revelation’s warnings to the Christians at Laodicea — who “say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing...’” — no doubt find application in every age but have particular relevance for the contemporary Catholic who has made his comfort zone the ninth Beatitude.

It is easy to look at the Church today and be pessimistic. There’s an easygoing spirituality among the laity, disaffection and heterodoxy among the clergy, an episcopate that veers between laxity and damage control, and, of course, the scandals. Looked at in a certain way, post–Vatican II Catholicism would all seem a downward spiral, a crisis from which there’s no obvious exit. But any such pessimism is misplaced. First, as someone once said, the Church isn’t a museum of saints but a hospital for sinners. This includes all of us. Human failure will always be generously spread among the faithful. Christ warned about this explicitly. It isn’t clear that the Church today is any worse off than it was in 500 or 1500. In fact, there’s probably now a higher proportion of good bishops, dedicated priests, and devout laity.

This pope has taken the documents of Vatican II for what they are: marching orders for the new millennium. And he has expanded their richness and application. Whoever the next pope may be, he won’t have to do much writing. The Church’s middle management has been slow to absorb John Paul’s writings — in many chanceries and seminaries they remain, in Mary Ann Glendon’s phrase, “unopened letters” — but this won’t be determinative. They have touched enough intelligent Catholics, especially among the laity, to change the Church in the long run. This is how the Holy Spirit works. Two thousand years have taught us the Church’s remarkable recuperative powers. And whether it was the sixth or the 16th century, spiritual renewal has always been a matter of grassroots movements inspired by and working with the papacy. The difference now is that whereas for Gregory the Great and Pius V the agents of evangelization were monks or Jesuits, for John Paul II it will be the laity.

The arsenal for this renewal will be the documents of Vatican II and the writings of this pope, which form a perfect continuum. Both are a call to personal conversion — to a maturity in self-giving — that goes far beyond simply obeying laws and commandments. The question for each orthodox Catholic is whether to take up the Magisterium’s challenge or be content with the “fundamental option” of the rich young man, who is more comfortable with a religion based on rules than on self-donation. Of course, the challenge is hardly new. Sts. Paul and Augustine taught that the fruit of Christian conversion is a new freedom wherein the rules (important as they are) hardly matter. This is the only possible meaning of Augustine’s “Love God and do what you will.” But this was not the message of Tridentine Catholicism, and in fact, not since Augustine has there been so much emphasis in sound Catholic theology on personal freedom.

The new Christian humanism proposed by the council and John Paul II is the only possible solution to the crisis within the Church. The modern world wants “freedom.” The rebels within the Church want “freedom.” Complaints about the Church are mainly about its moral teachings, which are perceived as putting a lid on everyone’s freedom. This problem isn’t going to be solved by a further insistence on the rules, but rather by a call to holiness and a positive vision of the human person and the uses of his freedom.

This is what the pontificate of John Paul II has been all about. Those who view him as an authoritarian who keeps tightening the screws are not paying attention. This papacy is all about freedom. But the pope insists that authentic freedom is based on the truth about the human person; otherwise, it will be a counterfeit and make us unhappy. Building on the council, he has proposed a sweeping vision of the human person that invites us into depths barely touched by the old scholastic casuistry. Right now, those in the Church who are shaping its future are busy unpacking these teachings....

I was groping towards some of this analysis when I wrote this a couple of years ago:

.... When one realizes how quickly and effectively the teachings of the Second Vatican Council were thwarted and hijacked, it becomes clear that the groundwork of subversion must have already been laid, however loosely and informally, before the Council even began its work. Thirty, forty, fifty years or more may be required to undo the damage done....

See also Macauley's Essay on Ranke's History of the Popes.

(Thanks, Amy.)

[Follow-up: "Why the Second Vatican Council Was a Good Thing & Is More Important Than Ever".]

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 07/29/04 07:44:31 PM
Categorized as Pope John Paul the Great & Religious.

Same Old Same Old

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCCXLI

I caught some of John Edwards' convention speech last night. This is what I noticed: (1) an insincere pastiche of President Ronald Reagan's ideas and (2) a quite sincere Marxoid incitement to class warfare.

All in all — sooooooooo Septemberrrrrrr 10th.

It's clear that the Democratic Party has become the wave of the past, not the future. One might be tempted to lament the fall of a great political tradition — until one remembers that the party of FDR & JFK has become the anti-God, anti-family, anti-baby, anti-life party.

Good riddance.

P.S. See also The New Democratic Party.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 07/29/04 07:49:15 AM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode.