Blogworthies LXXVIII

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

Noteworthy entries @ Catholic and Enjoying It, neo-neocon, Wittingshire, small dead animals, Error Theory, Bettnet.com, Cor ad cor loquitur, Off the Record, Armavirumque, Captain's Quarters, Dappled Things, Discriminations, Mister Snitch, Michelle Malkin, Wittingshire (again), Varifrank, Ales Rarus, Off the Record (again), Pontifications, and Gates of Vienna.

Opinion Journal Notices the Sullivan Ruckus @ Catholic and Enjoying It:

Here's the text, with some interesting research on the odd coincidences surrounding Sullivan's changing attitudes toward Bush....

The approach of winter @ neo-neocon:

It's coming; I can feel it. A week or two ago it suddenly turned quite cold, and the grass, so recently green, is starting to show brown in patches. The autumn colors have become even more autumnal and muted....

Academic Freedom for Politically Correct Professors Thrives at KU @ Wittingshire (brackets in original):

My old college town paper, the Lawrence Journal-World, reports that two new classes at the University of Kansas will work to discredit the theory of intelligent design. One class, taught by religion professor Paul Mirecki, chairman of KU’s religious studies department, was initially titled Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and Other Religious Mythologies. In an e-mail to an atheist listserv, Mirecki wrote: “The fundies [fundamentalists] want it all taught in a science class, but this will be a nice slap in their big fat face by teaching it as a religious studies class under the category mythology.”

Mirecki later apologized for the e-mail, noting that he didn't intend for the e-mail to end up in the public square....

Mainstream Offers Inaccurate, Silly Opinion On Blogs @ small dead animals:

An article on political blogs that manages not only to avoid meaningful content, it offers up a host of incorrect assumptions;

But for all the political blogs that can be found on the Net, it remains hard to pinpoint with any certainty their impact on voters.

Recent voting patterns indicate turnout among younger Canadians is low and dropping.

How long have we had the "interweb" now? In how many homes? Why does mainstream media continue to stereotype political bloggers and our readers as "tech savvy" twenty year olds?...

Redesigned Flight 93 memorial still an Islamo-fascist shrine @ Error Theory:

The redesigned flight 93 memorial, announced today, still contains all of the features that made it a terrorist memorial. Architect Paul Murdoch's infamous red crescent is still there, still planted with red maple trees, still inscribed in the exact same circle as before, and with the same two crescent tips still intact. Thus the crescent bisector defined by these crescent tips is also the same as before. It still points almost exactly to Mecca, making the crescent a Mihrab (an Islamic prayer station, where the believer faces into a crescent, towards Mecca, to perform his ritual prostrations). The design still incorporates a separate upper terrorist-memorial wall, centered precisely on the red-maple crescent. There are still 44 translucent blocks on the flight path to the crash site, matching the total number of dead, instead of just the forty translucent blocks that are dedicated to the forty murdered Americans. Lastly, the Tower of Voices part of the memorial is still an Islamic prayer-time sundial....

Father Fessio's take on the Instruction @ Bettnet.com:

Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, (publisher of my magazine, Catholic World Report), was PBS’ "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" last night debating Fr. James Martin, SJ, on the Instruction.

Fr. Fessio scored all body blows, rhetorically speaking, on Fr. Martin and came out way ahead. The transcript shows Fessio’s skill at explicating the Church’s teaching. He even went into some explication of the Trinitarian significance of human sexuality....

A Fictional Dialogue on Purgatory @ Cor ad cor loquitur (brackets and emphasis in original):

Paul the Presbyterian: Hey Dante! What is this nonsense about purgatory [spoken with a grimace] that you Catholics teach? Haven't you read that "to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord" (2 Cor 5:8)?

Dante the Catholic: First of all, you're misreading that verse. Paul is saying only that he would rather be present with God in spirit than here in his body. Secondly, your interpretation wouldn't apply to those who are damned to hell, since they are not "with the Lord." Thirdly, why would you assume that to be in purgatory is to not be with God?...

backing water and blowing smoke @ Off the Record:

A lot of bishops are twisting uneasily on their episcopal thrones today. The newly-released Vatican Instruction excludes from the priesthood men with deeply-rooted homosexual tendencies and, while it does not call for expulsion of homosexuals already ordained, the reasoning on which the document is based makes it clear that such men lack the affective maturity necessary to the spiritual paternity in which the priesthood is authentically lived out. This deficiency does not affect the validity of the sacrament of Orders — homosexual priests validly confect the Eucharist and so forth — but they're not grown up in the way the Church would have them be. More pointedly still, the Instruction issues a ringing condemnation of tactical subterfuge — i.e., lying about one's sexual disorder: "It would be gravely dishonest for a candidate to hide his homosexuality in order to proceed, despite everything, towards Ordination. Such a deceitful attitude does not correspond to the spirit of truth, loyalty, and openness that must characterize the man called to serve Christ and his Church as a priest." ....

Another Marie of Roumania moment @ Armavirumque:

You know the Dorothy Parker ditty:

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

Remember how CNN flashed a big X through the image of Vice-President Cheney a few days ago when he was giving a speech?...

Biden, Democrats Ask The Wrong Question @ Captain's Quarters:

Senator Joe Biden writes an op-ed for today's Washington Post that gets the entire war on terror fundamentally wrong — and demonstrates why the Democrats have entirely failed to provide any leadership on Iraq and the wider war. Along the way, Biden slices off half-truths out of context to argue for the worst possible spin on Iraq, and ignores the tremendous progress that has been made by Coalition forces in developing Iraq into a democracy.

First, Biden postulates that the primary issue of a military deployment is when it will end: ....

Why's the Vatican So Obsessed with Sex? @ Dappled Things:

I was having a drink with a friend recently, and he asked me, "So, what's up with the Catholic Church being so obsessed with sex? Especially since we got that new German Pope, everything's all about sex — premarital sex, gay sex, sex with condoms, sex, sex, sex. Who wants to go to church and hear about that all the time?"

First, I reminded him that it had been many months since he had been to Mass, and, second, that the laws of probability were such that the priest probably wasn't preaching on sex that day, either. It sounds more like an excuse not to go to church, to me.

Anyway, the main question: Why is the Vatican always talking about sexual sins? My answer is that it is not....

Solomon Fears ... And Inconsistencies @ Discriminations:

The Supreme Court will hear argument next week on the Solomon Amendment, which provides for cutting off federal funds to colleges that refuse to allow the military to recruit on campus. The attack on the amendment is being led by a group of law professors, supported by a number of law schools, universities, the AAUP, and the usual suspects among liberal interest groups.

No one will, or at least should, be surprised that the recent news stories on this debate implicitly, often explicitly, and occasionally heavy-handedly support the critics of the Solomon Amendment, warning that both civil rights, civil liberties, and academic freedom are in danger of being strangled by zealous governmental intrusion. For example....

Blogging styles and traffic stats @ Mr. Snitch:

We've been blogging just long enough (not quite a year now) to have spotted at least seven distinct types of traffic-generating blogging styles....

They Don't Support Our Troops @ Michelle Malkin:

Lots of blog buzz over MoveOn.org's latest, noxious anti-war propaganda.... Notice this?...

Dilbert Designer Strikes Again @ Wittingshire:

Scott Adams begins his Intelligent Design, Part 3 post by saying: ....

From the Law Offices of Dewey, Cheatam and Howe @ Varifrank:

Well, well, look what we got here. Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark has joined the legal team of Saddam Hussein. For some reason, the left thinks the title of "ex-attorney general" lends some sort of panache to having this man on Saddams side, but I think seeing Ramsey Clark on your legal team is like looking up and seeing a vulture circling overhead. It just does not bode well for your future, its like O.J. saying you were framed.

Let's take a look at the track record of this particularly fine legal mind....

Repost: Discovering a Season @ Ales Rarus (emphasis in original):

.... Christmas has always been my favorite holiday. I get so excited that I start listening to my Christmas music at the beginning of November, much to the surprise and chagrin of some of my loved ones. Last year, I asked myself what I've been getting excited about. Is it the celebration of Christ's birth? I wish I could say so, but the truth is that I've been enamored with the secular trappings of the season. Decorating the Christmas tree, baking cookies, singing catchy tunes, visiting relatives, watching classic movies, giving and receiving gifts (sadly, mostly the latter), playing in the snow (in those few lucky winters), and other generally faith-free activities have been Christmas' raison d'être for me.

Realizing this has not been a pleasant experience for me. At first, I was merely depressed at the commercialization of the holiday, and my contributions to it. As I dealt with what I felt Christmas shouldn't be, it occurred to me that I had only a vague idea of what it should be. We've all heard "Jesus is the reason for the season" so many times that it's become cliché. It's a bit preachy, but it's based on a solid principle. Or is it? There's an assumption built into that phrase that the whole season, from early December to New Year's Eve, is Christmas. Most of the popular carols bear witness to this assumption. I only recently realized how wrong this is, at least for those of Christian faith. It finally dawned on me that "The Twelve Days of Christmas" refers to dates after December 25!...

sub-standard medicine @ Off the Record:

The Times reports on Britain's latest health-care scandal: survivors.

A Government agency is launching an inquiry into doctors' reports that up to 50 babies a year are born alive after botched National Health Service abortions. The investigation, by the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health (CEMACH), comes amid growing unease among clinicians over a legal ambiguity that could see them being charged with infanticide.

Note the word "botched." This part of the story is about things going wrong. Babies that we don't want to live, do. How?...

Worshiping the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness @ Pontifications:

I was baptized in the Episcopal Church, and there I learned to worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness. When I became a Catholic, one of the most difficult adjustments for me was learning to accept the generally wretched state of the sacred liturgy in most parishes: banal language, casual atmosphere, mediocre secular music, ugly buildings badly decorated. In all too many places, the result is simply unspeakable. But this need not be.

The Catholic Church gave us Chartres and Canterbury; she gave us plainchant and Palestrina. The Catholic Church saved the language of Cicero, and gave birth to the Christian poetry of the West. The cultural and artistic riches of the Western Church are still in our storehouse; we need only deploy them in a way adapted to the present structure of the Roman Rite.

I have been a priest for more than twelve years, and in that time I have served four parishes, one college chaplaincy, and one seminary. In all of those posts, the following characteristics were observed (mutatis mutandis), and the results were splendid. I offer these suggestions for those who seek to “re-enchant” the sacred liturgy for the purpose of leading those who worship more deeply into the Paschal Mystery....

The Christmas Truce Leaves Living Memory @ Gates of Vienna:

A Scotsman named Alfred Anderson was the last person alive who could remember the Christmas Truce of 1914. With his death on Sunday at the age of 109, that definitive moment of the Great War leaves memory and enters history....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 12/03/05 10:45:31 AM
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