November 2005 – Page 10

“Catholic” Universities Face Identity Crisis

Wow, I was just saying in one of the comboxes how I hoped that His Holiness B16 would put the smackdown on secularized American Catholic universities by yanking their "Catholic" designation.
Now it looks like that may happen sooner than later.

OO-RAH! I for one want to encourage the Pontiff to confiscate these school’s fake I.D.s as soon as possible.

Maybe this will help people to know who to believe when it comes to Catholic doctrine.

The article quotes Archbishop Michael Miller, the Vatican’s #2 education official (from a talk given at Notre Dame, no less);

The Pope has
argued "that it might be better for the Church not to expend its
resources trying to preserve institutions if their Catholic identity
has been seriously compromised," Miller said.

The Archbishop indicates that B16 may be doing some "evangelical pruning" in the coming months.
GET THE STORY.

Bork’s Two Points

Robert Bork has two really good points in a recent article he wrote on the Alito nomination.

Point #1:

Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito will hear a lot about stability in the law, the virtues of stare decisis,
and the reliance many women have placed on that decision. The obtrusive
fact is that constitutional law has never been stable. Precedent counts
for less in constitutional law than elsewhere for the very good reason
that the legislature can correct the Court’s mistake in interpreting a
statute, but the Court is final when it invokes the Constitution and
only the Court can correct its own mistakes. For that reason, many
justices have made the point that what controls is the Constitution
itself, not what the Court has said about it in the past.

In other words: Stare decisis is fo’ suckas! (At least in Constitutional law.)

Point #2:

If judgments about the prudence of overruling are invoked, the justices should take note of the fact that Roe
lies at the center of the bitter polarization of much of American
society. In countries where the issue is decided democratically, no
such intense animus exists. Compromises are worked out and each side
knows that it is free to continue the public debate in hope of doing
better next time. That was, and would be again, the case in America if
the subject of abortion were returned to state legislatures and
electorates. Overruling Roe would not, as some Democrats will
claim, make abortion illegal, but merely the subject of democratic
regulation. We have paid a high price for a ruling that rests upon
nothing in the Constitution and was arrived at in an opinion of just
over 51 pages that contains not a line of legal reasoning.

This is a very interesting point. It’s true that in countries where the courts have not seized control of the abortion issue that there is less polarization. Unfortunatley, in many of those countries (at least the ones in Europe) that have functional majorities that are pro-abort. In other countries, though (like ones in South America and many parts of Africa), they have functional pro-life majorities.

Once we get Roe overturned (however near or far in the future that may be), we need to get a functional pro-life majority here and then strengthen it to the point that we can get a constitutional amendment protecting innocent human life.

The process of getting such an amendment will involve changing numerous "hearts and minds" (to use a MUCH overworked cliche), but the process needs to start with getting just FIVE hearts and minds where they need to be.

Top 10 Changes To Court If Alito Is Confirmed

. . . thus giving it a 5-Catholic majority:

10) Meat-less Fridays all year round in the Supreme Court cafeteria;

9) Oral arguments in Latin;

8)
The bones of [first] Chief Justice [John Jay] Marshall will be disinterred and placed in a
glass coffin in the center of the Supreme Court bench;

7) Collections between each session of oral argument;

6) Supreme Court windows replaced with stained glass;

5)
On close votes, the Justices will consult a statue of St. Thomas More.
If the statue weeps, they affirm; if no tears, then they reverse.

4) Incense at the start of each session;

3) Supreme Court opinions will be deemed infallible and unreviewable by any earthly authority [Ed. – Sorry – that does not appear to be a change at all]

2) Catechism of the Catholic Church will now be "persuasive authority";

And, the number one change which a Catholic majority would make to the Supreme Court . . .

1) Wednesday night bingo!

SOURCE.

CHT: Southern Appeal.

Propositions 16-20

HERE’S THE NEXT FIVE PROPOSITIONS FROM THE SYNOD ON THE EUCHARIST.

Proposition 16 continues the discussion of how to catechize the faithful properly, particularly children receiving the sacraments. This is pretty standard stuff.

Proposition 17 is much more interesting. It proposes that either the Vatican or the episcopal conferences write

a Eucharistic Compendium project, or an instrument of pastoral aid that
brings together, at the same time, liturgical, doctrinal, catechetical
and devotional elements on the Eucharist, to help develop faith and
Eucharistic piety.

This compendium could propose the best of patristic teaching, the
experience of the Latin Church and of the Eastern Churches, and
devotional prayers. It should include an appropriate catechesis on the
nature and structure of Eucharistic prayers.

This sounds like a really good idea, but (1) I’d want the Vatican to do it and (2) they need to KEEP IT SIMPLE AND PRACTICAL. They’ll hamper its effectiveness if they get too flowerly and high flown in it.

Proposition 18 deals with the role of the Liturgy of the Word in Mass. Much of it is pretty standard, but it does say some interesting things. Among these, it praises "the impulse of parish groups that prepare the Sunday Mass with a
prayerful study of the Readings themselves, and liturgical practices
such as silence or a few introductory words that help for greater
understanding."

It also praises lectio divina, Bible study groups, and small parish groups.

It also say, mysteriously:

An expression must be found for the prayer of the faithful that is
related better with the Word of God, with the needs of the assembly and
more broadly with those of the whole of humanity.

I’m not sure what they mean by this, but it could be that they have in mind a kind of fleshed-out guide for how to relate the prayer of the faithful at Mass to the Scripture readings.

I’d welcome any help in that area that could serve to depress the relentless liberal politicization of the intentions of the faithful that I hear at Sunday Masses in my parish.

Proposition 19 deals with the problem of BAD HOMILIES. The news here is that the fathers propose:

taking recourse —
stemming from the triennial lectionary — to "thematic" homilies that,
in the course of the liturgical year, could address the great topics of
the Christian faith: the Creed, the Our Father, the parts of the Mass,
the Ten Commandments and other arguments.

These thematic homilies should correspond to what has again been
authoritatively proposed by the Magisterium of the Church in the four
"pillars" of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and in the recent
Compendium. With this objective, the elaboration of pastoral material
was proposed, based on the triennial lectionary, which puts the
proclamation of the Scriptures in relationship with the doctrines of
the faith that spring from the same.

YEE-HAW! This would be great!

The fact is that many priests you encounter today have been so badly formed in seminary that they aren’t capable of preaching a good, content-rich homily without help, and official Church help oriented toward getting more of the content of the faith into homilies is an outstanding idea.

They’ve been taught to put too much emphasis on style over substance (and their style is often more polished than Protestant preachers), but they’ve really got to get substance back into their homilies.

Proposition 20 is another theological reflection that doesn’t say much except that human work is related to the Eucharist because everything is related to the Eucharist.

The Deer Departed

I almost passed right over this story in a list of today’s headlines, but I thought I would check it out.
After all, "Man Bites Dog" is one thing, but "Man Kills Deer in House with Bare Hands" is another.

So I followed the link to ABC News and was interested to read that it was an Arkansas man… dateline Bentonville! This was a hometown boy!

Apparently, the deer (a buck) crashed through a window into a bedroom of the man’s house, where it proceeded to freak out, kick alot and bleed all over.
Until the man, Wayne Goldsberry, broke it’s neck.
Ugghh.

Of course, he had the right to handle it however he thought best, but I do wish he could have just shooed the animal out the back door. I’m thinking I also might have just closed the bedroom door and called animal control.

In fact, I KNOW that’s what I would do.

I wasn’t there, however, and if the deer was going nuts and doing alot of damage… well, a man might hafta crack some vertebrae. I’m just glad it wasn’t me in there with the beast. They do have antlers, and those bucks can be murderous during mating season. One of the deputies at the scene observed of Mr. Goldsberry,

"He got kicked several times. He was walking bowlegged for awhile.".

According to the article, bucks will sometimes charge at their own reflection, which is probably what happened in this case. It’s too bad the deer had to die, though.

To make us all feel better, I have posted a Far Side cartoon of deer who are just playing dead.

GET THE STEREOTYPE-REINFORCING STORY!

An Angel’s Perspective

Recently I had the chance to view things from an angel’s perspective.

No, I haven’t received any divine visions. This was the viewpoint of an entirely earthly angel.

Lemme ‘splain:

I go square dancing.

At least, I do sometimes, though it’s been a while. I decided to brush up my skills, though, by re-taking a class.

This involves more than you might think, because Modern Western Square Dancing is THE MOST SOPHISTICATED form of folkdance on planet Earth. It’s a ton of fun, but it also takes a good while to learn.

To help beginners along, square dance clubs typically include experienced members in the dances for beginning classes. It makes it MUCH, MUCH easier for the beginners to figure out what to do if they’re dancing with folks who already know what’s going on.

These more experienced dancers, in square dancing lingo, are called "angels."

And that’s what I’m currently serving as.

I’ve already been through a typical square dance program, so even though I’m a bit rusty, I can still be a help to beginners.

When I went this week, I was very pleasantly suprised at how reflexive it all still was for me.

Square dancing is a skill that is stored in a different part of the brain than where you keep propositional knowledge. Thus, as you learn how to do it, it becomes reflexive. You KNOW what to do instinctively, even if it would require you to think a bit to figure out how to put it into words.

After you’ve started to internalize it, it’s amazing to simply hear the caller name a particular move and you INSTICTIVELY start to do it, even if you’re not sure what the next part of the move is.

The closest analog I can think of is saying a prayer out loud as part of a group. Once you’ve internalized the prayer, you know how to say it even if you can’t (for the moment) remember what’s coming up in the prayer and even if you couldn’t say the prayer by yourself, only as part of a group.

That’s what square dancing is like.

If the caller says "Star through!" or "California twirl!" or "Send her back, Dixie style!" or "Sides face. . . . Grand square!" your body feels pulled to make the appropriate moves even if you could never articulate what those are and even don’t remember the later ones as you’re beginning the move.

It’s really surprising.

At least, that’s the way it works if you’re at angel-level. If you’re a beginner, you still have to think through the moves that the caller has just taught you. As you get more "floor time," the moves become reflexive–just as with any other skill.

It’s kind of like C. S. Lewis’s remark about how you at first have to learn your fixed prayers by rote memorization and it’s after you’ve done that that you’re truly liberated in prayer to think about the meaning instead of just the words.

If I remember correctly, Lewis may even have made an analogy to dancing and moving from the watching your feet stage to the experienced, graceful stage.

Why Does Bill Gates Lie To Me Like I’m Montel Williams?

I mean, does he think I’m Montel Williams or something?

If now, why would he lie to me like this?

You see that "Updates are ready for your computer" balloon?

I hate those. They pop up annoying ALL THE STINKING TIME–unless you tell the system to simply STOP alerting you when updates for the OS are ready.

The TOTALLY IDIOTIC thing is that they pop up even when there AIN’T any updates ready for your computer!

Like in this case.

I mean, an update had JUST BEEN INSTALLED, so it was completely up to date unless Microsoft released a new update in the last few minutes.

Only that’s not what’s causing this balloon to pop up.

How do I know?

Because the computer IS NOT ON THE INTERNET. In fact, the cable to the Internet ISN’T EVEN PLUGGED IN.

There is therefore NO WAY FOR MICROSOFT TO HAVE NOTIFIED MY COMPUTER THAT THERE IS A NEW UPDATE.

So Bill Gates is just lying to me like I’m Montel Williams.

And this isn’t the only time that’s happened. I’ve observed exactly the same phenomenon multiple times on multiple computers.

BILL, STOP IT! Didn’t you ever hear the story of the boy who cried "wolf"? That’s PRECISELY what you’re doing to millions of Windows users. You lie to your customers with so many false "Updates are ready" balloons that they simply turn off the update system and go without updates–sometimes important ones.

You’ve GOT TO stop lying to your customers this way. It’s INSANE.

Ten Principles For Political Involvement

The Catholic Leaders Conference–a (mostly) lay group of pro-life and related Catholic leaders (among them Karl Keating) met in Phoenix last week to discuss how to better promote Catholic values in the political sphere.

Among other things, they produced a 10-point document that does a really good job explaining some core principles of Catholic political involvement.

Here’s what the document said:

We Catholic voters acknowledge the following ten obligations and guidelines. These principles should be a part of Catholic educational programs at every level utilizing all the means of social communications.

1. “In the Catholic tradition, responsible citizenship is a virtue; participation in the political process is a moral obligation. Every believer is called to faithful citizenship, to become an informed, active, and responsible participant in the political process.”[1] An informed vote by a Catholic is one that is guided by the authentic moral and social teaching of the Catholic faith.

2. Catholics should recognize that not all moral and social teachings have equal weight in determining how to cast their vote. Some teachings are directly binding and some are guided by individual prudential judgment.

3. The first obligation of government is the protection of innocent human life from conception[2] to natural death. The Church teaches that justice requires this protection. This truth can also be known through reason unaided by revelation. On the specific "life issues" in law and public policy – direct abortion[3], euthanasia, and the killing of unborn life for medical research, Catholic teaching is unequivocal; the defense of innocent human life is an imperative.

4. Catholic voters must first make decisions about their votes based on the moral issues that are non-negotiable. First among these are the life issues.[4]

5. On prudential matters that affect the common good, Catholics of goodwill can disagree. Though there are Catholic principles such as compassion, justice and charity that we should share, there is no single "Catholic" policy on issues like taxes, education, foreign policy and immigration reform.

6. A similar distinction was made by the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, His Emminence Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, to the American Bishops when he stated: “There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.”[5]

7. Catholic priests and bishops first and foremost are shepherds of souls. The role of these shepherds is to instruct and to remind voters, candidates and public officials of the moral obligations and social principles that should guide their political action.

8. All Catholics, especially the laity, have a right and duty to be heard in the public square. Catholic moral teachings should be publicly espoused in such a way that they can inform law and public policy and not be artificially limited to the private domain of individual belief.

9. In their political participation, Catholics must not compromise these principles even though, at times, prudential judgment will require accepting imperfect legislation as a means of incremental progress.[6]

10. The ultimate political goal for Catholics must be the achievement of public policies and laws that result in the legal protection of all innocent human life and that promote the dignity of each human person without exception and compromise.

[1] Faithful Citizenship, USCCB

[2] Conception, as the Church traditionally teaches, means the earliest moment of biological existence.

[3] Direct abortion is any procured abortion whether chemical or surgical.

[4] There are other non-negotiable matters that are not a part of the current political debate. For example no serious candidate is advocating decriminalization sexual assault.

[5] Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger Letter to Theodore Cardinal McCarrick for USCCB

[6] Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae

I’m quite impressed with how well the statement came out (though I might tweak a phrase or two).

I’m particularly pleased that point 6 was included. The U.S. bishops are scheduled to talk this month about a document dealing with the death penalty, and it’s helpful to have a reminder of the legitimate diversity of opinion that Catholics may have on this topic.

Propositions 11-15

HERE’S THE NEXT FIVE PROPOSITIONS FROM THE SYNOD OF THE EUCHARIST.

Having raised the question of "Sunday assemblies awaiting a priest" in Prop 10, the fathers go on to discuss vocations in Proposition 11.

They basicallly ask for a greater push for vocations–particularly by parish priests serving as recruiters.

They also reaffirm the discipline of priestly celibacy for the Latin Church and ask that the reasons for it to be explained to the faithful. Hopefully, B16 will go into some detail about that in his apostolic exhortation, because there is an annoying tendency in ecclesiastical documents for requests to be made for the reasons for something to be explained to the faithful but then (as here) there is NO ENUMERATION OF THOSE REASONS, meaning that the explainer just has to make his best guess at figuring out what the Church has in mind (and on some subjects it’s not even clear what the Church has in mind).

It would be so much nicer if, whenever an ecclesiastical document asks that the reasons for something be explained to the faithful if it then went on to say "And here’s what those reasons are."

I’ve seen Pre-16 offer his personal thoughts on the reasons for clerical celibacy before. Hopefully he’ll give us some official reasons in his apostolic exhortation.

One other note in this proposition is a push to have "a more equitable distribution of the clergy," which means moving priests around from high-vocation centers to low-vocation centers. In principle, that’s fine as long as it doesn’t serve to mask the PROBLEMS in a particular area that are CAUSING it to have a lack of vocations (e.g., heterodox vocations officers who drive away the best candidates for the priesthood or regional seminaries whose faculties are consciously trying to eliminate orthodox seminarians).

Proposition 12 continues the vocations theme by suggesting practical steps the fathers of the Synod hope will be taken to get more vocations. This is pretty standard stuff (priests giving their vocation stories, setting up vocation centers, having Eucharistic adoration for vocations).

A couple of items, while logical, have been unfortunately handled in recent years.

One is the recommendation of focusing on altar servers as potential vocations. The problem here is that you can’t just tell altar servers that they need to consider a vocation to the priesthood because MANY of the altar servers are INCAPABLE of becoming priests since the previous pontificate decided to allow girls into the altar server pool.

Had that not been the case it would be possible to make a stronger push for altar servers to consider becoming priests, but now it’s harder to deliver that message because of the extra nuances that have to be built into its delivery to the target group.

This could be solved, of course, by ceasing to have female altar servers, but I don’t see that happening. (Imagine the outcry. B16 has bigger problems he needs to spend his public capital on.)

Another suggestion that will be complicated in the light of recent events is the suggestion that priests mentor young people (meaning, young boys) and steer them towards vocations.

The problem here (at least in this country) is that in light of the recent priestly sexual abuse scandal parents in many places are frequently going to want to MINIMIZE CONTACT between their sons and parish priests. The less time priests get to spend with boys, the less they can encourage them to consider becoming priests.

Proposition 13 deals with the order of the sacraments of initiation (baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist). This section suggests an in-depth study of Confirmation to more clearly bring out its role and connection to the Eucharist, which would be good since the three sacraments of initiation share a common orientation that is often not understood.

The big news here, though, is that the fathers suggest that the Latin right RECONSIDER THE AGE AT WHICH CONFIRMATION IS TO BE ADMINISTERED.

YEE-HAW!!! This is something that is long overdue.

For a start, the age of confirmation in the United States is A TOTAL MESS. Basically, the U.S. bishops years ago got permission out of the Vatican to basically let each bishop set his own age for confirmation in his diocese (within certain limits). This is AN ENORMOUS PROBLEM and A TRAGIC MISTAKE in a society as mobile as ours, because it is GUARANTEED TO RESULT IN CHILDREN FALLING THROUGH THE CRACKS AND NOT GETTING CONFIRMED as families move from diocese to diocese.

If you’re in a diocese where the confirmation age is 16 and you’ve got a 15-year old kid and then you move to a diocese where the age of confirmation is 7, guess what! Your kid is past the age of confirmation in this diocese and will either have to go to special classes or be shoehorned in with a bunch of 7 year olds.

Conversely, if you have a kid who’s been confirmed at 7 and then you move to an age-16 diocese then when he’s 16 he’s going to sit out what all the other kids his age in the parish are doing because he’s already been confirmed.

We’ve really got to get a single age for confirmation in the United States, and any Church-wide revisiting of the age of confirmation is a good thing in that it could result in that.

The re-examination may have even more dramatic results than that, though, because what they’re talking about (at a minimum) is whether we should mandate that kids get confirmed BEFORE they have First Communion and (at a maximum) whether they should be confirmed immediatley after baptism (as done in many of the Eastern Catholic churches).

Either of these would be an improvement, as they would both restore the ideal order of reception of the sacraments of initiation (baptism, confirmation, Eucharist, not baptism, Eucharist, confirmation).

They would also get around a lot of the nuttiness that goes on in high school confirmation classes (which are also frequently a friction point between teens and parents if the kid is going through a rebellious stage and isn’t sure if he wants to be confirmed).

My preference on this question tends to be Eastern, so I’d love it if they had confirmation administered immediately after baptism, the way it was typically done in the early Church. But I’d be happy if they just mandated that confirmation be administered before First Communion.

(Note that the preceding commentary may tell you more about my concerns about the celebration of confirmation than it does about the Eucharist, though the question of the sequencing of confirmation relative to the Eucharist is a Eucharist-related question.)

Proposition 14 basically calls for renewed Christian education in parishes, focusing on the Eucharist and the Catechism of the Catholic Church and other recent Magisterial teachings.

It also stresses that seminarians "must understand as well as possible the meaning of each liturgical norm."

Proposition 15 basically calls on the family and the parish to be involved in preparing kids for sacramental initiation.

Good New For Insulin-Dependent Diabetics!

It may soon be possible to take insulin WITHOUT SHOTS.

There is an INHALABLE FORM OF INSULIN-DELIVERY that has now been developed. Instead of having to take injections, insulin-dependent diabetics would be able to use an inhaler, like asthmatics often do.

The FDA is currently considering whether to authorize use of the insulin inhaler.

From what I gather, it wouldn’t eliminate the need for the daily fingersticks to check bloodsugar, but at least it would eliminate the insulin injections themselves.

GET THE STORY.

(NOTE FOR THOSE WHO’VE NEVER KNOWN SOMEONE WITH INSULIN-DEPENDENT DIABETES: Such folks are required to check their bloodsugar regularly, typically by pricking a finger and putting a drop of blood on a testing strip which goes into a bloodsugar meter. Depending on what their bloodsugar is–and what they’re planning to eat–they then have to measure an amount of insulin and take it as an injection to keep their bloodsugar in control. The new system would seem to eliminate the need for the injection but not the fingersticks to check bloodsugar.)