On Losing My Speedo…

My car is a wonder of modern American disposable engineering. A cheap compact with no frills and over 140 thousand miles, it astounds and delights me every time the engine cranks over (I am part Scot).

Lately, in addition to various other mysterious signs of aging, the speedometer just stops working at random. Mostly it works, but it can cut out at any time.

Now, when this happens, I noticed that I do one of two things; I either drive whatever speed "feels right", or I (consciously or un-) begin to adjust my speed to fit in with local traffic. This being the second car that I have been blessed to own having this defect, it struck me that A) maybe it was no accident, B) that a speedometer is an apt analogy to the human conscience, and C) that it was something out of which I could probably squeeze a blog post.

Of course, there may be many of you suggesting that D) maybe I should get the stupid car fixed, but given the actual value of the car, and the cost of pulling the dashboard and trying to find the problem (I have serviced my own car, like, twice in the last decade-and-a-half), it’s nearly prohibitive. It’s not really dangerous… just an irritation. Besides, I can often fix it by pounding on the dash just right… but I do plan to have it fixed as soon as possible.

But back to the conscience metaphor… The conscience (like the speedometer) is an internal guide that tells us how we’re doing. We are given external guides (like road signs and Revelation) against which we can pretty reliably measure how well we are keeping The Law. But our consciences are not infallible. Sometimes they are defective. In a few instances, maybe they just never worked right at all. In the case of a defective conscience, a person will naturally tend to do one of two things… either they will do whatever "feels right" (whatever they want), or they will conform to the pressures of their immediate society.

We really need the external law, too (the road signs, Church teaching), or the reading on the speedometer becomes nearly meaningless. Following your conscience does NOT mean just doing whatever "feels right". The conscience is made to conform to an authoritative standard. If a policeman tickets you for driving 75 when your speedometer was reading only 62, there is no appealing to the defective instrument… the cop wins. If the church tells you that fornication is a sin, you have no defense in noting that, personally, you have no big problem with it. Your speedo is out of whack. Period. You are bound by your conscience, but your conscience is bound by The Law.

A defective conscience can – and should be – fixed.

Thing is, though, that I have received a few minor traffic tickets in my life, and in none of these instances was I driving a car with a bad speedo. The problem was, I had been ignoring a perfectly functioning speedo. I’d lay odds that this is the case in the vast majority of speeding violations. People just aren’t paying attention… they are driving whatever speed they like, or they are going with the flow, or their mind is elsewhere, they are distracted.

For most of us, the conscience is working fine (or close enough), but we often ignore it. We can develop the habit of ignoring it.

One last thought… when you drive according to the traffic laws as faithfully as you can, you become like a living, moving representation – a personification of the law – to other drivers. You’re the living law, just as we are all meant to be a living Catechism for those around us. That doesn’t mean you won’t be honked at… just try to avoid the fast lane.

That’s it. Just something I pulled from random mental notes from a busy week. Tawk amongst ya-selves… got any good car stories?

JA: Motu Proprio Soon

John Allen maintains that the motu proprio liberalizing the use of the Tridentine rite of Mass is real and should be out soon.

EXCERPT:

An April 3 letter from Cardinal Walter Kasper, who among other things heads the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with Jews, responds to concerns from the International Council of Christians and Jews about the pre-Vatican II Mass, in light of controversial passages it contains regarding Judaism. The last sentence of Kasper’s letter, the text of which I have, is the key line: "While I do not know what the pope intends to state in his final text, it is clear that the decision that has been made cannot now be changed."

Kasper’s language clearly indicates that something definitive has happened. It adds to the confirmation given by the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, on March 31 that a motu proprio from Benedict XVI, meaning a document under the pope’s personal authority, on the pre-Vatican II Mass is coming.

But when will it appear?

The hot tip now is April 30, the feast of St. Pius V on the Roman calendar, or May 5, the feast of Pius V on the older calendar.

GET THE STORY.

Allen’s story points out that certain prayers in the Tridentine rite may offend interreligious sensibilities, and it will be interestng to see what, if anything, is done regarding them. While one of the most troublesome passages was removed by John XXIII, if the Holy See were to take swift action to alter more passages, it would undercut the effect of liberalizing the rite before it could have its impact.

Brain Death Documents Published

Yesterday’s post about the International Theological Commission publishing its document on limbo called to mind the distinction between an official document of the magisterium and an advisory document that the Holy See has given permission to publish.

Lots of advisory documents get written and, while permission to publish them does signal at least a somewhat favorable attitude toward their contents, it does not invest them with teaching authority.

But what about advisory documents that aren’t given permission to be published? What happens to them?

Normally, they vanish into the mists of the night and are forgotten.

BUT NOT THIS TIME.

EXCERPT:

Breaching normal protocol, several participants in a 2005 Vatican-sponsored conference over the ethics of declaring someone brain dead have published the papers they delivered at the debate.

Many of the papers reproduced in "Finis Vitae: Is Brain Death Still Life?" argue that the concept of brain death was devised mainly to expand the availability of organs for transplant and claim that some patients who had been pronounced brain dead continued to live for months or even years.

Publication of the papers, which the Vatican had decided not to publish, is evidence of the strong feelings about brain death held by a minority of the members of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

Roberto De Mattei, vice president of the National Research Council of Italy who is not a member of the academy, said he edited "Finis Vitae" in order "to expand the debate and bring it to a wider audience."

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.