Christmas Blessings

Something different.

A while back, an old friend e-mailed me a PowerPoint Show. I tweaked it a little bit — some of the transitions were too early, I thought. I can't vouch for the stats, but the reminders ring true, and the pictures are beautiful. Enjoy. (It's about 915KB, so you might want to think twice if you're on dial-up. Sorry.)

Christmas Blessings.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 12/23/04 08:36:14 PM
Categorized as Other.

"Can Catholics Vote Democratic Anymore?"

A book review by Dennis E. Teti at The Claremont Institute, Dec. 20 (brackets and quoted ellipses in original):

.... Kennedy's efforts to assuage voters' concerns about his Catholicism were successful enough to get him elected, but his rhetoric opened the door to the religious-political problem of today. His well-known statement to Protestant ministers in Houston spoke of the

absolute… separation of church and state [in America] where no Catholic prelate would tell the President… how to act… [w]here no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope… where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials.

This pronouncement no doubt relieved some Protestants, but it disturbed serious Catholics. Father John Courtney Murray, a political liberal, wrote that "To make religion merely a private matter was idiocy." America's best-known prelate, Cardinal Spellman of New York, believed Kennedy had painted himself into a corner and that Nixon would be more open to Catholic views on parochial school funding, anti-communism, and sexual morality. In short, Kennedy drew so sharp a line between religious belief and public policy that some wondered whether the Catholic Church, or religion in general, would have any place in the public square.

Kennedy's election marked Catholicism's greatest political triumph in America. As Marlin shows, however, even before his assassination Catholics began to divide, a trend that has accelerated in the decades since. Today we should recognize not a solid "Catholic vote" but two opposed Catholic voting blocs. Practicing members tend to vote Republican and conservative; nominal, "cafeteria" Catholics vote liberal and Democratic, untroubled about choosing which Church teachings to obey or disregard, especially as respects contraception, abortion, and homosexuality. America's Catholic bishops stand by the Church's traditional teaching on the sinfulness of these practices, but they are far from united about what this should mean at the ballot box. Many retreat to their wonted stance, avoiding direct political involvement in controversial issues even though the very meaning of their faith is at stake. Marlin's book concludes by mentioning Catholic lay organizations that "may fill the void and lead a Catholic counter-revolution." ....

See also these.

(Thanks, Mark.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 12/23/04 06:41:01 PM
Categorized as Religious.

A Satanic Gas?

And, Will on Crichton.

Thanks to a fellow blogger for this Congressional testimony, Oct. 6, 1999:

.... This testimony demonstrates that the observed climate changes that have accompanied the enhancement of the natural greenhouse effect have been considerably smaller than they were originally forecast to be, and that they are likely to remain similarly small. Further, they are inordinately confined into the winter, rather than the summer, and, within the winters, they are inordinately confined to the coldest, deadliest airmasses. There is no overall statistically significant warming in the average temperature of the United States, which is a record of 105 years in length. While the United Nations has stated that during the greenhouse enhancement, "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate," I cannot view what has happened as a net negative; some might easily argue that it is a net benefit. Under neither interpretation does this qualify carbon dioxide as a climatic "pollutant." ....

Being on a roll, he also calls to our attention George Will's column at WaPo, today, a look at Michael Crichton's latest novel, State of Fear:

.... Last week Fiona Harvey, the Financial Times' environmental correspondent, fresh from yet another international confabulation on climate change, wrote that while Earth's cloud cover "is thought" to have increased recently, no one knows whether this is good or bad. Is the heat-trapping by the clouds' water vapor greater or less than the sun's heat reflected back off the clouds into space?

Climate-change forecasts, Harvey writes, are like financial forecasts but involve a vastly more complex array of variables. The climate forecasts, based on computer models analyzing the past, tell us that we do not know how much warming is occurring, whether it is a transitory episode or how much warming is dangerous — or perhaps beneficial....

See also "Aliens Cause Global Warming".

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 12/23/04 06:09:25 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural & Speeches and Suchlike.

Christifideles

A brand spanking new weblog.

Vide.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 12/23/04 05:44:17 PM
Categorized as Blogosphere Stuff.

Lileks Flays Wolcott

The Bleat responds to a critic. It is interesting in many ways:

.... I’m empathetic to the meanings of other holidays. I suspect others are equally ecumenical and forgiving. For that matter I suspect that 98.025% of the population has no trouble with Merry Christmas shouted long and loud and clear this time of the year. Why, then, do the retail giants and big corporations seem to get a frozen Joker-smile when you bring it up? Yes, I know. Macy’s says “Merry Christmas” in tiny type on their website; dandy. But Southdale, the nation’s first enclosed shopping mall, hung MERRY CHRISTMAS in six-foot tall letters in 1963. This year? Not a word. Big candles, though. If you don’t think that’s an interesting development, or wonder why it happened or what it means, fine. Blog away about adventures in bird-watching, for all I care....

(Thanks, Amy.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 12/23/04 07:16:33 AM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

Is GWB "Too" "Religious"?

An article at The Economist, Dec. 16 (emphasis and quoted ellipses in original):

.... Mr Bush uses religious rhetoric in five main ways:

• As a literary device. In his first inaugural address, he referred to the parable of the good Samaritan: “When we see that wounded traveller on the road to Jericho, we will not pass to the other side.” He is especially fond of references to hymns: “There is power, wonder-working power in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people,” he said in the 2003 state-of-the-union address. Critics have complained that such quotations are code to please evangelicals, who recognise them. But religious imagery has been common currency in American public speaking since John Winthrop's “city on the hill” in 1630. Lincoln's speeches are rich with the sounds and rhythms of the Bible. Mike Gerson, the president's chief speech-writer, argues that to fillet out references to God would flatten political rhetoric.

• As consolation. “This world he created is of moral design,” said Mr Bush at the National Cathedral three days after the September 11th attacks. “And the Lord of life holds all who die, and all who mourn.” American presidents have long used religion in their role as comforter-in-chief. Remember Ronald Reagan's tribute to the crew of the space shuttle Challenger: “We will never forget them... as they prepared for the journey and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God’.” Mr Bush's usage is little different, and sometimes as eloquent.

• As history. On his trip to Africa in 2003, Mr Bush visited a slave-trading post at Goree Island, in Senegal. “Christian men and women,” he said, “became blind to the clearest commands of their faith... Enslaved Africans discovered a suffering Saviour, and found he was more like themselves than their masters.” In talking about the historical influence of religion, Mr Bush is highly unusual among presidents. But this is the least controversial feature of his rhetoric, since it concerns itself with historical facts, rather than the justification of present policies in religious terms.

• Arguing for his faith-based policies. Potentially this is more problematic, since the point of Mr Bush's faith-based initiative is to use religious institutions to deliver social welfare. The proposals have been criticised on those very grounds (for breaching the wall between church and state). But Mr Bush is careful not to claim too much for the role of faith, saying merely that religion is an aid to social welfare, not the heart of it. “Men and women can be good without faith,” he told a national prayer breakfast in 2001, “but faith is a force of goodness. Men and women can be compassionate without faith, but faith often inspires compassion.”

• To talk about providence. At a 2003 prayer breakfast, Mr Bush argued that “behind all of life and all of history, there's a dedication and purpose, set by the hand of a just and faithful God.” Yet, as he admitted in his 2003 state-of-the-union address, he does not think himself privy to that purpose: “We do not know — we do not claim to know — all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them.” ....

Confer.

(Thanks, Joseph.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 12/23/04 06:49:09 AM
Categorized as George W. Bush.

"Say 'Merry Christmas' While You Still Can"

Haven't quoted The Inimitable One for a long time:

.... The seasonally litigious rest their fanatical devotion to the deChristification of Christmas on the separation of church and state. America's founders were opposed to the "establishment" of religion, whose meaning is clear enough to any Englishman: the new republic did not want President Washington serving simultaneously as Supreme Governor of the Church of America, or the Bishop of Virginia sitting in the US Senate. Two centuries on, these possibilities are so remote that the "separation" of church and state has dwindled down to threats of legal action over red-and-green party napkins.

But every time some sensitive flower pulls off a legal victory over the school board, who really wins? For the answer to that, look no further than last month's election results. Forty years of effort by the American Civil Liberties Union to eliminate God from the public square have led to a resurgent, evangelical and politicised Christianity in America. By "politicised", I don't mean that anyone who feels his kid should be allowed to sing Silent Night if he wants to is perforce a Republican, but only that year in, year out it becomes harder for such folks to support a secular Democratic Party closely allied with the anti-Christmas militants. American liberals need to rethink their priorities: what's more important? Winning a victory over the kindergarten teacher's holiday concert, or winning back Congress and the White House?

In Britain, by contrast, the formal symbols remain in place: the Queen is still Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and the Archbishop of York still sits in the House of Lords. But, underneath all that, Christianity has collapsed, the churches are empty and the new Europe is as officious about public expressions of faith but without the countervailing balance of America's First Amendment protections. In Italy this Christmas, towns and schools have banned public displays of the Nativity on the grounds that they "may" offend Muslims.

Maybe they do, maybe they don't. But who cares? The elevation of the right not to be offended into the bedrock principle of democratic society will, in the end, tear it apart. That goes for atheists threatening suits against New Jersey schools and for Muslim lobby groups threatening fatwas against The Telegraph. On which cheery note, Merry Christmas to all.

See also these.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 12/23/04 06:26:48 AM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.