Blogworthies LXIV

Because The Blog from the Core simply can't cover everything.

Noteworthy entries @ Rerum Novarum, Science Musings Blog, Power Line, Michelle Malkin, Insight Scoop, Mere Comments (twice), Dyspeptic Mutterings, The Curt Jester, The Corner, Discriminations, Power Line (again), The Commonplace Book of Zadok the Roman, HerbEly, Mystery Achievement, open book, JunkYardBlog, Off the Record, and Anchor Rising.

Hand Jive [Un] Doing that Crazy Hand Jive @ Rerum Novarum:

The guest editorial you are about to read is the same editorial alluded to in the previous post. Without further ado, let us get to it....

Hope is the thing with feathers @ Science Musings Blog:

The ivory-billed woodpecker lives! The last undisputed sighting in the United States was in the 1940s, and the bird was thought to be extinct....

Katie Kieffer Reports @ Power Line:

We contacted St. Thomas senior Katie Kieffer and asked for her report on Ann Coulter's appearance at St. Thomas. Ms. Kieffer's report provides a valuable counterpoint to the columns by the Star Tribune's fatuous columnist as well as to Father Dease's condemnation of the event: ....

Up or Down, 'Round and 'Round @ Michelle Malkin:

Power Line has been doing a excellent job exposing the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's forgetfulness about its flip-flopping on filbustering. Lots of amnesia going around: ....

What is the point of Cokie's "Catholicism"? @ Insight Scoop:

.... As Father Richard pointed out so well, Cokie is typical of liberal/progressive Catholics in that she sees nearly everything in terms of power, status, and politics. The very first paragraph of her new column illustrates this perfectly: "The new pope, Benedict XVI, faces a problem common to many secular leaders. Can he impose a rigid worldview on unwilling followers?" ....

Hitchcock on Ratzinger @ Mere Comments:

Our senior editor James Hitchcock, the historian, writes a column for Catholic diocesan newspapers. Here is the latest one, which I'm posting because few of you would see it otherwise, either not being Catholic or if Catholic not being blessed to be in one of the dioceses that prints his column....

The Healing of Schism @ Mere Comments:

One of the differences between the West and the Eastern Orthodox churches is in full display this week as the Orthodox are observing Holy Week. In Orthodoxy, Holy Week is not part of Lent proper, and began last Friday evening with services of Lazarus Saturday, the day before Palm Sunday (then connection between the two is suggested in John 11.) ....

Waiting for Popot. @ Dyspeptic Mutterings:

I have a hypothesis about a certain strand of progressive Catholicism: all the screeching about the Pope and clericalism has turned them into the most expansive papal/clericalists around. They are the mirror image of what they hate. Though I am loathe to quote possibly-syphilitic German philosophers, Nietzsche was on to something when he warned against fighting monsters lest one become a monster in the process.

They don't want the clerical brotherhood abolished, they simply want a much larger pool of applicants from which to select.

Likewise, they don't hate the Papacy so much as want it to be a steamroller acting in their interests....

If only they allowed women readers and married writers @ The Curt Jester:

With the heightened media coverage on the Catholic Church over the last couple of weeks we have had many pundits from the main stream media talk about the priest shortage in the United States and they offer their predictable suggestions. They usually frame it in the fact that the Catholic Church is a sacramental church and will die without priests who they see merely as sacramental deliveries systems. We get the normal if only they changed the discipline of priestly celibacy. If only they ordained women to the priesthood. If only they would stop being decisive about abortion, contraception, and homosexuality.

Now I find all of this highly ironic, especially coming from such outlets as the L.A. Times. I find this ironic since almost all of the main stream media is suffering from a readership/viewership crisis....

On Nazi Relativism and Other Kinds @ The Corner:

I'm really grateful to Jonah for making a distinction Andrew Sullivan missed. Nazism and Communism may have had their own metaphysical pretenses, but they both treated the human being as a thing, as a means, as an instrument, and in important ways as a non-moral (and certainly non-spirited) material agent. In the human and moral sphere, in other words, they required the surrender of any "objective" moral compass, "natural law," or allegiance to "God's law" – all those bourgeois illusions – and in this task they were greatly aided in their preparatory work by the cult of "the absurd" among the intellectuals, the literary set, and students of the time....

Left-Wing Holy Rollers @ Discriminations (ellipsis in original):

The Washington Post gave over most of its OpEd space today [Mon. Apr. 25] to two thumping (almost Bible-thumping) calls for what amounts to religious war ... against the radicalchristianright....

1994 Was So Long Ago... @ Power Line:

Yesterday, the editorial board of the Minneapolis Star Tribune came down squarely on the side of the filibuster in an editorial titled: "Nuking the filibuster/GOP arguments fail smell test." In the Strib's view, the filibuster is the Senate's great contribution to democracy: ....

And I was there — Part 3 (The Inauguration) @ The Commonplace Book of Zadok the Roman:

I got up early this morning — it was still dark and I wanted to get the best place possible and so I walked across the city towards the Via della Conciliazione, stopping only to get an early morning coffee and cornetto to sustain me. As is normal on these occasions, it seemed that the entire city of Rome was populated by religious sisters. They got up even earlier than I did and travel in packs to the Vatican. As I neared the Vatican however, the profile of the crowd changed — there were seminarians and priests in their cassocks, scouting groups from Italy and German, the ubiquitous sisters and pilgrims from all over the world....

Augustine's 26th Law & Irish Grandmothers @ HerbEly:

Maybe the Conference of Catholic Bishops knew what it was doing when it put Justice Anne Burke on the pedophilia case. Once she was on the National Review Board investigating child abuse she overcame Norman Augustine's Law XXVI. This law states that once enough management layers are imposed on top of one another, disaster is not left to chance....

The Truth Of What Is Left Unsaid @ Mystery Achievement:

Thanks to an unexpected call to duty this morning, I didn't get to see the Installation Mass for Pope Benedict XVI. But I did get to hear most of his sermon on the radio. And got a report from Mrs. someguy on my cell as I was driving back.

This is good. This is great. A great day to be Catholic.

We have a man of exceptional intelligence and wisdom in the chair of St. Peter....

An Open Letter to Maureen Dowd @ open book (italics in original):

Shut. Up.

Oh, I forgot.

Dear Ms. Dowd:

Shut. Up....

Sin City — Where are the Protestors? @ JunkYardBlog:

Last weekend I sat through the hit film Sin City. I say "sat through," as opposed to, say "enjoyed," because for me seeing this film was definitely an exercise in sitting through. I did no enjoying. I tried, but enjoyment eluded me. I would've gotten up and walked out, but my legs were asleep. And I was tired....

If the NYT had covered the Main Event @ Off the Record:

.... Yesterday's surprise announcement that doctrinal hardliner Jesus of Nazareth had been anointed "Messiah" provoked mixed reactions in the diverse and sometimes fractious Israelite community, ranging from cautious disappointment to frank despair....

Pope Benedict XVI: Proposing Faith as an Antidote to Relativism @ Anchor Rising:

With yesterday's [Tue. Apr. 19] election of Pope Benedict XVI, the hyperventilating of the liberal media has commenced as expected. The reactions tell an incomplete story, missing the broader and more significant issues threatening the civilized world....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 04/30/05 01:06:57 PM
Categorized as Blogworthies.

"To May"

Random Poetry List XXX

To May

Come May, the empire of the earth assume,
Be crowned with flowers as universal queen;
Take from fresh budded groves their tender green
Bespangled with Pomona's richest bloom,
And form thy vesture. Let the sun illume
The dew-drops glittering in the blue serene,
And let them hang, like orient pearls, between
Thy locks besprent with Flora's best perfume.
Attend your sovereign's steps, ye balmy gales!
O'er her ambrosial floods of fragrance pour;
Let livelier verdure animate the vales,
And brighter hues embellish every flower;
And hark, the concert of the woodland hails,
All gracious May! thy presence, and thy power.

Jane West (British, 1758-1852)

Originally e-mailed on Sunday, April 30, 2000 @ 2:32 PM.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 04/30/05 08:12:26 AM
Categorized as Literary & Random Poetry List.

Readworthies I

A handful of interesting, informative, and insightful articles.

News, editorials, columns, essays, et al.

Then came the name "Josephum" and gloom set in by Damian Thompson @ London Telegraph (quoted ellipsis in original):

.... "Lord, remember your Church throughout the world; make us grow in love together with Benedict our Pope..." This phrase, or variants of it, will be spoken by Roman Catholic priests at thousands of Masses throughout England and Wales today, just after the magical moment of transubstantiation.

In most churches, and especially traditionalist ones, the words will ring out joyfully. But in liberal parishes — which, though relatively few in number, exercise a disproportionate influence on English Catholicism — some priests will be trying not to choke on them. Make us grow in love together with Ratzinger? Not in their bleakest nightmares did the liberals think they would be asked to do such a thing....

Suppose We Had a "Liberal" Pope by James V. Schall, S.J. @ Ignatius Insight:

From various sources, here and abroad, I have heard that not a few are "disappointed" at the election of Pope Benedict XVI.

When we examine what they are "disappointed" about, we find that it is about "moral" things. They hoped that the Church would finally be "up-to-date." What this being "up-to-date" usually means is that the Church will finally approve of birth control, abortion, cloning, the ordination of women, divorce, gay life and marriage, and other pious habits. Seldom do we hear any other reasons for "disappointment." Thus, what the essence of such objections comes down to is that the Church, in being what it is, is wrong on such fundamental points.

Being "wrong," evidently, means that a mere flick of the papal wrist can set things right. All Pope Ratzinger has to do is sign a document stating that abortion, divorce, ordination of women, birth control, and gaydom are just what we need in the modern world to cure its ills. Behind this kind of attitude, of course, is the theoretical position that the criterion of truth is what is presumably accepted and practiced in the modern world....

Love's Language Lost by Bradley C. S. Watson @ Claremont Review of Books (italics and quoted ellipses in original):

It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.... In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.... In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

So says a philologist — an expert in "Newspeak" — in George Orwell's 1984. He is explaining to the novel's hero, Winston Smith, the ultimate purpose behind the manipulation and command of language.

The advocates of same-sex marriage have a similar political and linguistic purpose. They have pushed their agenda with stunning rapidity. Laws that confer unique legal status and benefits on the union of a man and woman have come under attack only recently. In America, the first major legal decision was Baker vs. State of Vermont (1999), in which the Vermont Supreme Court held, on the basis of indeterminate language in the state's 1777 constitution, that the state legislature must provide same-sex couples in "committed relationships" with identical benefits to married "opposite-sex couples." The Vermont legislature responded by creating "civil unions" — though not marriage — for same-sex couples. Under the Baker holding and subsequent legislation, civil unions were to be materially and therefore legally indistinguishable from marriage for all purposes of Vermont law and the benefits it conferred. But much more was at stake than the right of same-sex partners to enjoy such mutually fulfilling experiences as filing a joint state tax return....

Life After the Death of Theory by Thomas H. Benton @ The Chronicle of Higher Education:

"Of course, you're doing theory, right?" the woman next to me asked in one of my first graduate seminars in English. She was wearing a leather motorcycle jacket covered with zippers, and her orange hair was styled in dreadlocks. It was the early 90s.

"I guess that's what we're here for," I said. I didn't want to seem like a square, even though I was wearing tan khakis and a blue button-down shirt. "I'll probably do something Foucauldian," I said, with a hint of worldly boredom. I had heard of Foucault, and I grabbed his name like a piece of floating wreckage....

Our Role in The Church by Pia de Solenni @ The Washington Post:

Before I went to Rome to do my doctoral work in theology in the mid-1990s, I was inclined to believe, like many American women, that the Catholic Church's teaching on women was a bit skewed, if not flawed. At times, it seemed to me that there was no unique place for women in the church. In fact, they seemed subordinated to men in almost every way, beyond their ineligibility for ordination.

Yet over the course of six years of study at pontifical universities and a short time working at the Vatican, I found that I was actually more respected as a woman there than I have been in most other environments. I was taken seriously and challenged as a thinker in a way that I haven't been almost anywhere else. Given the preconceptions that most Americans have, I know how surprising this can sound. But I've wished more people could be aware of it as I've watched, listened to and debated the reactions to the new pope, Benedict XVI....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 04/30/05 07:50:08 AM
Categorized as Readworthies.

Readworthies

Today, The Blog from the Core inaugurates a new feature.

Readworthies — A handful of interesting, informative, and insightful articles: News, editorials, columns, essays.

I hope you'll come to enjoy it.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 04/30/05 07:37:12 AM
Categorized as Readworthies.

The Bleg from the Core II

Thanks to your generosity, Faithful Reader, I haven't had to bleg since November:

As a reminder, Faithful Reader, The Blog from the Core exists primarily to share articles and poetry, especially, that I think are interesting or important. In that respect, it's a wider continuation of informal e-mail lists I used years ago to share things with friends and relatives. It's also an outlet for my thoughts and feelings, too, which some people (to my continuing amazement) actually want to know about.

Though I naturally try to keep up with current events, I also like to blog items of more enduring interest. Thus, the archives are truly a trove of reading material....

Please consider helping to support my efforts when you can. I have no desire to make money from The Blog from the Core or ELCore.Net, but I really can't afford to continue to lose money on them. If a handful of folks can throw a handful of dollars in donations my way every month or two, it will make all the difference in the world. I plan to post a reminder bleg towards the end of each month — when the bills come due.

Thanks.

P.S. Links to articles of interest are always most welcome.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 04/30/05 07:13:20 AM
Categorized as Blog Stuff.