Limbo Document Published

The document that the International Theological Commission has been working on concerning limbo has now been published.

AS ANTICIPATED, it casts doubt on the doctrine of limbo without claiming anything certain regarding the fate of infants dying without baptism, instead encouraging an attitude of hope regarding their salvation.

This is in line with the development of Catholic thought in the last few decades regarding the fate of such children, as well as the discussion of their fate in the Catechism.

That hasn’t stopped the MSM from portraying this in sensationalistic and inaccurate terms, speaking of the pope bucking Catholic tradition or changing Church teaching.

In fact, the International Theological Commission is not an organ of the magisterium but an advisory body. Its documents, even when their publication is approved by the pope, do not have magisterial force. What the pope did in this case was allow an advisory document to become public. That’s not the same thing as changing Church teaching.

Shame on the MSM for not being competent enough to get the basic facts of the story straight.

CATHOLIC NEWS SEVICE’S PIECE IS PRETTY GOOD, THOUGH.

BACKGROUND (LINK FIXED).

2 Cents on Virginia Tech

When was the last time you did something you knew would make you world famous?

The Virginia Tech shooter knew. He understood the importance of a multi-media approach. He sent a package off to NBC with the absolute assurance that within a couple of days his image, his name, his rambling thoughts would be inescapable… a pervasive, 24-7, continuous loop of streaming video. He knew from that day on his exploits would be "up there" with Columbine, Oklahoma City, the Unabomber. There would be books. The pundits would be miked-up and the klieg lights turned on. There would be documentaries about his life… about him… not some rich kid, not a politician or entertainer… but him.

Where’s Imus now? Where’s Anna Nicole?

When notoriety and stuff are the highest values in a culture, there are those who don’t respond well if they happen to feel they have been left out of that picture. If they are mentally unbalanced to begin with, there might be the makings for a perfect storm of vanity, resentment and rage, and no internal mechanism to stop it.

And there will inevitably follow people who feel the need to figure the whole thing out. How did this happen? Why?  Who’s fault is it? Can’t we pass a law, fund a program to prevent this in the future? Let’s get started on that.

I saw Dennis Miller last night, talking to Bill O’Reilly, and he had a point of view so similar to my own that the simplest thing is just to link to the video. In short, he is not interested in fixing blame, or in promoting a particular view of the tragedy. He is just – as best he can – trying to "mourn with those who mourn". O’Reilly attempts to pull him into a gun control debate ala Rosie O’Donnell, but Miller gives it a pass. He gives Rosie a pass, and points out, I think with a kind of weary wisdom, that in times like this, people will generally seek shelter in familiar templates. They will cling to whatever grid they happen to see through. They will think aloud and give knee-jerk responses.

In short, Miller was graceful. He was human, and he let everyone else be human, too. He said that, rather than trying to analyze the event for the cameras, about the only thing he felt like doing was shooting hoops with his kids.

Probably a good instinct, there. I like Miller.

Love your families. Keep them close. Pray.

Here’s the Miller video (FOX).

The Virginia Tragedy

The last few days the nation has been shocked by the tragic campus shootings in Virginia, and I thought I would do a post so that people could talk about them–their feelings, their questions, their prayers–whatever it is that they have on their hearts concerning the horror that unfolded earlier this week.

I don’t really have a lot to say at this point, myself. The guy who committed the shootings was obviously completely nuts–as his multimedia rant to NBC illustrates–and it’s hard to know what to say when someone goes murderously off the deep end. It’s just so irrational. The guy was filled with hate and rage–so much so that his ranting to NBC doesn’t even give a clear sense of who he was mad at. Maybe he wasn’t mad at anyone in particular. Maybe he just had a globalized rage that didn’t have a specific focus.

I will have more to say–perhaps tomorrow–but for now it’s just appalling that anything like this can happen. I can’t understand how someone can get so twisted around that they would want to do something like this. I can only conclude that something went desperately wrong inside him, and I can only pray for his victims and for his own soul.

DUH-O-GRAM to Rudy

SDG here (not Jimmy) with a DUH-O-GRAM for Republican White House hopeful Rudy Giuliani, whose increasingly blunt dissing of pro-lifers is making it harder and harder for morally sane voters to contemplate holding their nose and focusing on the promise of originalist Supreme Court nominees over Rudy’s actual rhetoric on baby-killing.

From the Des Moines Register:

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani warned GOP activists in Des Moines on Saturday that if they insist on a nominee who always agrees with them, it will spell defeat in 2008.

“Our party is going to grow, and we are going to win in 2008 if we are a party characterized by what we’re for, not if we’re a party that’s known for what we’re against,” the former New York mayor said at a midday campaign stop.

Republicans can win, he said, if they nominate a candidate committed to the fight against terrorism and high taxes, rather than a pure social conservative.

“Our party has to get beyond issues like that,” Giuliani said, a reference to abortion rights, which he supports.

Oh, the irony.

First Rudy spouts this line about being “a party characterized by what we’re for” rather than “a party that’s known for what we’re against.”

DUH-O-GRAM to Rudy: Being PRO-life is being for something, not just against something. It’s called the right to life — you know, one of those “inalienable rights” mentioned at the top of the Declaration of Independence. It has implications well beyond abortion (euthanasia, clone and kill, and embryonic harvesting to name a few).

But that’s not all! What’s Rudy’s grand vision for a positive party agenda? What does he want his party to be known as the party for, rather than against? Let’s hear it again:

“Republicans can win, he said, if they nominate a candidate committed to the fight against terrorism and high taxes, rather than a pure social conservative.”

Why, Rudy, do you really want your party to be known as the party against terrorism and high taxes? Isn’t that kind of, you know, negative? What has that got to do with what you’re for?

At least you’ve got to appreciate a politician who isn’t afraid to come right out and say what he really thinks, regardless what anyone thinks. It certainly does clarify matters. Rudy’s supporters have always admired his penchant for blunt talk, and he certainly isn’t losing his edge as he moves onto the national stage.

Caveat: In fairness, it must be noted that the last sentence quoted above is not a direct quotation from Giuliani but the reporter’s paraphrase. Whether Rudy actually advanced “the fight against terrorism and high taxes” as the real agenda over “issues like” abortion depends on the accuracy of the paraphrase.

Either way, though, it seems clear that for Rudy the defense of the unborn isn’t just a side issue — it’s a veritable thorn in the side of the Republican party. He doesn’t just want to focus on other issues, he wants to push this plank off the platform.

This raises one of the most salient points from a recent editorial called “NO DEAL, RUDY” that ran in my newspaper, the NATIONAL CATHOLIC REGISTER:

If pro-lifers went along [with Rudy], we’d soon find out that a pro-abortion Republican president would no longer preside over a pro-life party. The power a president exerts over his party’s character is nearly absolute. The party is changed in his image. He picks those who run it and, both directly and indirectly, those who enter it.

Thus, the Republicans in the 1980s became Reaganites. The Democrats in the 1990s took on the pragmatic Clintonite mold. Bush’s GOP is no different, as Ross Douthat points out in “It’s His Party” in the March Atlantic Monthly.

A Republican Party led by a pro-abortion politician would become a pro-abortion party.

READ MORE.

Whoa, Momma!

JohnnybravoEvery few years one network or another has a period when they’re doing really entertaining cartoons. Back in the ’90s, Nickelodeon had such a run when they were first doing Rugrats (before they got stale) and Doug. Then it was kind of slim pickins until they came up with SpongeBob SquarePants and The Fairly Oddparents (though Hey, Arnold! and The Wild Thornberrys could be good).

Kids WB (back when they were around) also had such a run with Animaniacs, Pinky & the Brain, Freakazoid, and Earthworm Jim.

And Cartoon Network had one with Johnny Bravo, Dexter’s Lab, Powerpuff Girls, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and Ed, Edd, n Eddy.

I don’t know what it is, but these runs of good cartoons always seem to peter out after a couple three years and then you just have to wait until someone else starts doing good TV animation again.

Filling the gap between such little golden ages is, of course, why God created DVDs, but man hasn’t been doing his part up to now: The vast majority of these cartoons have never been released on DVD! (Yet another crime against the humanities!)

I was delighted to learn, therefore, that though it’s not yet out on DVD the first season of Johnny Bravo has been released on iTunes!

WOO-HOO!

I downloaded it immediately.

My guess is that they’re testing the waters to see how well it does before possibly putting it out on DVD–or at least expanding the number of whole-season releases of Cartoon Network’s classic toons.

For those who may not know, Johnny Bravo is the biggest, dumbest, most narcissistic, body-building blond Elvis-clone that the world has ever seen.

Bravodoobiedoo
The first season of the show also includes the immortal episode "Bravo Doobie Doo," in which Johnny meets the Mystery Inc. gang from Scooby Doo, and we get a double-franchise satire.

There are some really funny bits in that one.

A favorite moment: Velma’s glasses are knocked off in a chase scene, and she’s groping around on the floor for them saying, "My glasses! My glasses! I CAN’T SEE without my glasses!" then the camera pans over and we see that Johnny’s ever-present shades have been knocked off, too, and he’s crying, "My glasses! My glasses! I CAN’T BE SEEN without my glasses!"

Classic!

Amazing what you can do with the passive voice.

I just hope they release the rest of the series.

I can’t wait to watch the episode where Johnny runs for mayor against a ham sandwich and the ham sandwich is ahead in the polls.

“Several Days Before Or After”

A reader writes:

Jimmy, I have a question about indulgences and the only answer I have been able to find is ‘a few days’.

What is the timeframe in which one has to make confession and receive communion in order to obtain an indulgence?

It’s understandable that there would be confusion on this point. In his apostolic constitution Indulgentiarum Doctrina, Paul VI merely wrote:

n.8—The three conditions may be fulfilled several days before or after the
performance of the prescribed work; nevertheless it is fitting that Communion be
received and the prayers for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff be said the same
day the work is performed.

In the absence of further clarification, what "several days before or after" means would be a natural source of perplexity. Fortunately, in the year 2000 the Apostolic Penitentiary (which has charge of issuing indulgences) issued a notice titled The Gift of the Indulgence clarifying the question as follows:

5. It is appropriate, but not necessary, that the sacramental Confession and especially Holy Communion and the prayer for the Pope’s intentions take place on the same day that the indulgenced work is performed; but it is sufficient that these sacred rites and prayers be carried out within several days (about 20) before or after the indulgenced act. Prayer for the Pope’s intentions is left to the choice of the faithful, but an "Our Father" and a "Hail Mary" are suggested. One sacramental Confession suffices for several plenary indulgences, but a separate Holy Communion and a separate prayer for the Holy Father’s intentions are required for each plenary indulgence.

Even "about 20" (an eye-opening number!) isn’t a fixed deadline, but at least it gives us an idea of the scale we’re talking about, and since it’s only "about 20" then for practical purposes it would be to safe to saw "within three weeks" (potentially even a little more, but presumably less than a month or they would have just said "a month").

“Jesus Family Tomb” Scholars Backtrack

TombI meant to blog about this last week (CHT to the reader who sent the link reminding me!), but some of the individuals connected with the "Jesus family tomb" nonsensamentary that the Dicovery Channel aired have been backtracking on their claims–or otherwise clarifying them in ways not supportive of the filmmakers’ thesis.

THE JERUSALEM POST HAS THE STORY.

EXCERPTS IN BLUE:

The most startling change of opinion featured in the 16-page paper is that of University of Toronto statistician Professor Andrey Feuerverger, who stated those 600 to one odds in the film. Feuerverger now says that these referred to the probability of a cluster of such names appearing together.

That’s a significant alteration since–if you’ve got 600 tombs with names laying around–you’d expect there to be at least one random cluster with this group of names, and that’s assuming that the math is even right, which I have major questions about. Among the reasons are those pointed out by Frank Moore Cross:

In the film, renowned epigrapher Prof. Frank Moore Cross, professor emeritus of Hebrew and oriental languages at Harvard University, is seen reading one of the ossuaries and stating that he has "no real doubt" that it reads "Jesus son of Joseph." But according to Pfann, Cross said in an e-mail that he was skeptical about the film’s claims, not because of a misreading of the ossuary, but because of the ubiquity of Biblical names in that period in Jerusalem.

"It has been reckoned that 25 percent of feminine names in this period were Maria/Miriam, etc. – that is, variants of ‘Mary.’ So the cited statistics are unpersuasive. You know the saying: lies, damned lies, and statistics," Cross is quoted as saying.

And then there’s this:

The paper also notes that DNA scientist Dr. Carney Matheson, who supervised DNA testing carried out for the film from the supposed Jesus and Mary Magdalene ossuaries, and who said in the documentary that "these two individuals, if they were unrelated, would most likely be husband and wife,"

Let me interrupt the excerpt to point out that this statement is TOTALLY LUDICROUS. If you’ve got a family tomb with 30 or more burial slots in it (ten ossuaries, each of which can hold the bones of 3 or more people) and you’ve got one lebelled "X son of Y" and another with the feminine name Z on it then it is COMPLETELY UNREASONABLE to infer from a DNA test that if they weren’t related that they are most likely husband and wife.

In a tomb containing multiple family members spanning several generations they could be any number of things: brother-in-law and sister-in-law OR nephew and non-biological aunt OR brother and adopted sister OR father and daughter-in-law OR grandfather and granddaughter-in-law OR great aunt and grand nephew–AND THAT’S ASSUMING THAT THEY’RE NOT RELATED BY *EITHER* THE MALE OR THE FEMALE LINE. If, on the other hand, you’ve only done a DNA test that shows that they don’t have a recent common *maternal* ancestor then it opens up even more possibilities of how they could be related (brother and step-sister, for example), so you’d better hurry quick to get it on the record that

[he] later said that "the only conclusions we made were that these two sets were not maternally related. To me, it sounds like absolutely nothing."

And then there’s this bit of dynamite:

Furthermore, Pfann also says that a specialist in ancient apocryphal text, Professor Francois Bovon, who is quoted in the film as saying the enigmatic ossuary inscription "Mariamne" is the same woman known as Mary Magdalene – one of the filmmakers’ critical arguments – issued a disclaimer stating that he did not believe that "Mariamne" stood for Mary of Magdalene at all.

Pfann has already argued that the controversial inscription does not read "Mariamne" at all.

How ’bout them apples?