Jimmy Akin – Page 467

All About Twinkies

If you thought Twinkies were just a cream-filled sponge that lives forever, think again. Not only do some people eat their Twinkies, they actually cook with them too!

"Twinkies, they’re not just for dessert anymore. The new Twinkies Cookbook has recipes for everything from a Twinkie Burrito to Twinkie Lasagna.

"Theresa Cogswell compiled about 50 recipes for the book.

"Many were submitted to Hostess, as part of Twinkies’ 75th anniversary celebration last year."

GET THE STORY.

GET THE BOOK.

In your excitement over the endless possibilities of using Twinkies, just be careful not to eat too many. The Twinkie Defense might not work today.

When an order of nuns could no longer maintain the graves of two of the deceased in their care, they decided to rebury them elsewhere. But the decision wasn’t solely based on the bottom line of economics, but on the bottom line of love. They decided to bring the relatives home to the family plot.

"[Nathaniel] Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables, died in New Hampshire in 1864. His wife, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, moved to England with their three children and died there six years later. She and their daughter Una were buried at Kensal Green cemetery in London.

[…]

"But when cemetery officials told the nuns that the grave site needed costly repairs, the order arranged to have remains reburied in Concord instead.

"On Monday, one modern casket containing the remains of mother and daughter was put on a horse-drawn 1860 wooden hearse and carried from a local funeral home through the town center to a church for the memorial service. About 40 family members and a group of nuns from the order followed the hearse in a procession."

GET THE STORY.

Why were the nuns so concerned about the disposition of the Hawthorne family remains? They are the Hawthorne Dominicans, and their foundress was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s daughter, Catholic convert and saint-in-the-making Rose Hawthorne Lathrop.

FIND OUT MORE.

AND MORE.

Some might think Rose Hawthorne Lathrop’s conversion to Catholicism surprising, but I doubt her father, the great American literary artist, would have thought so.

Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers. –Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Straight Story on Superman

A while back I posted HERE regarding the efforts of gay-advocacy magazine The Advocate to recast Superman as an icon of gay culture.

In the wake of that story, it was nice to see Superman Returns director Bryan Singer among the many pooh-poohing this notion — Singer’s own sexual preferences notwithstanding.

Singer described Superman as “probably the most heterosexual character in any movie I’ve ever made.”

GET THE STORY.

Incidentally, SDG has posted his review of Superman Returns — so get the straight story on the film HERE.

Flying Under The Influence

Class, for today’s Journalism 101 lesson we’ll learn how to meet deadlines by plumping up odd incidents into gripping news events.

The story of a sick pelican crashing into a car may not seem to the layman to make for particularly interesting news. But on a slow news day you too can learn how to massage it into headline-worthy material. Let’s see…. How about saying the pelican was intoxicated and is now being held on suspicion of flying under the influence? But nobody would believe it! Or would they?

Calif. pelicans held on suspicion of being drunk

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) — "Four pelicans suspected of being drunk on sea algae were being tested at a Southern California wildlife centre on Saturday after one of them crashed headlong into a car.

"Three of the California brown pelicans were found wandering dazed in the streets of Laguna Beach after another pelican struck a vehicle’s windscreen on a nearby coast road.

"It suffered internal injuries and a long gash in its pouch and was undergoing toxicology tests.

"Officials at the Wildlife Care Centre said the seabirds may have been under the influence of algae in the ocean that can produce domoic acid poisoning when eaten."

GET THE STORY.

And that, my young journalistic apprentices, is how you turn a Non-Story into a Story.

Attending Invalid Baptisms

A reader writes:

My brother in law is expecting to be "baptized" as a JW in September. I fear that my in-laws, although they don’t agree with this "religion", feel that it has done my brother in law good, and would like all of us (me, my husband and our 4 children) to go. I am planning on declining on attending, and insist that my children stay home with me. I think my husband may go too. What do I do if arguments ensue? I feel that, as a Catholic, I cannot attend because then I would be giving my approval of this. I certainly don’t want my children attending this “baptism”.

If arguments ensue, I would point out that our presence at a ceremonial life event says something. If we attend a wedding, a baptism, or a similar event, we are in a sense lending our endorsement to it or to some aspect of it.

To show up at a Jehovah’s Witness baptism would communicate either approval of the fact that the person is becoming a Jehovah’s Witness or–at a minimum–that one recognizes that there is some kind of legitimacy to the baptism that is being performed, even if one doesn’t approve of the fact it is JWs who are doing it.

To show up at such an event thus would constitute a form of false witness. It would deceive people (either the brother-in-law or others who were at or knew about your attendance at the event) into thinking one of the above things.

Even if one tells the person that you do not approve or do not regard this as a valid baptism, the message will remain that it obviously wasn’t important enough to you to keep you from coming and thus you value what the person will think of you was more important than your concerns about the baptism or the person’s new religion.

And telling the person getting baptized that you think the baptism is invalid doesn’t tell that to all the other people who will see you at the event or who will learn of your presence there.

My policy is that if a sacrament will be valid then it will be possible in principle to attend. My reasoning is that if God is going to show up at the sacrament (in the sense of his action to make the sacrament valid) then it is in principle permitted for me to show up and watch as God does this.

If God isn’t going to "show up," though (meaning: the sacrament will be invalid) then I shouldn’t either.

To do so would send the wrong message, no matter what I might say with my lips.

In the end, it is more loving to an individual (and others) to be honest with them about the fact that a sacrament is not valid–and to prove that you’re serious about that by not showing up–than to paper over the matter and send the message that you’re not really serious or even that you approve.

Hentoff On Abortion

Nat Hentoff is an interesting fella. According to Wikipedia,

Nat Hentoff (born June 10, 1925) is an American civil libertarian, free speech absolutist, pro-life advocate, anti-death penalty advocate, jazz critic, historian, biographer and anecdotist, and columnist for the Village Voice, Legal Times, Washington Times, The Progressive, Editor & Publisher, Free Inquiry and Jewish World Review. He was named as one of six 2004 NEA Jazz Masters, the first non-musician to win this prestigious award [SOURCE].

He’s also a critic of both the ACLU and the Bush administration.

One of the things that makes Hentoff interesting is that he came from and is subsantially aligned with the American "Left," but he came to hold pro-life views and has been forthright in stating them.

LIKE IN THIS RECENT COLUMN,

in which he shares some interesting thoughts regarding Jesse Jackson, the Hemlock Society, and a 9-year old boy’s insights on abortion.

It’s worthwhile reading.

On The Road

I thought I’d share with y’all a couple of pictures I took on my recent trip to go square dancing in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago.

The first is a picture of the sign you see when you enter the town of Gila Bend, Arizona. A number of desert communities have humorous or otherwise interesting signs, and I particularly like Gila Bend’s (click to enlarge):

The second picture is one I took in Imperial County, California, where the Salton Sea is located. The Salton Sea is the lowest body of water in the United States–a couple hundred feet below sea level, making it American’s equivalent to the Dead Sea. But you don’t have a body of water be that low without the surrounding land being low, too, and so on many various buildings in Imperial County you’ll see elevation markers like this one (click to enlarge):

GREELEY: “Give B16 A Break!”

Is it just me or does it seem to anyone else that Fr. Andrew Greeley — priest, novelist, sociologist, Catholic progressive — is mellowing in his old age? A few months ago, he was in the press defending Francis Cardinal George of Chicago against unfounded allegations of apathy on the priest abuse issue; now he’s come out swinging for Pope Benedict XVI:

"These have been rough days for the pope. It was inevitable his visit to Auschwitz would stir up complaints from Jewish spokespersons and commentators. No matter what he did or said, they had to criticize. The critics were a minority. Moreover, one can hardly blame Jews for sticking it to Christians for the long history of anti-Semitism and to Catholics for the long history of anti-Semitic popes. If I were Jewish I might be reluctant to believe the stand of the Second Vatican Council even after 40 years, especially if I had read some of the debates that preceded the endorsement of the document on anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, one would hope that they would give Pope Benedict a break.

"In a major article in the New Yorker, ironically titled "Forgiveness," the case was made that the pope has been complicit in the Holocaust because he prayed at cemeteries in which SS troops were buried and did not indict the whole German people for the Nazis’ crimes. The complaints against his failure to condemn the whole German people during his visit to Poland follow the same theme, accompanied by a picture of the pope as a frightened-looking teenage conscript in his Wehrmacht uniform.

"The Catholic Church, one must insist, is committed to forgiveness by the very words of the Lord’s Prayer. It cannot accept the notion of unforgivable collective guilt because it believes that final judgments on guilt belong to God. (Moreover, if everyone is guilty, then no one is guilty.) We pray for all the dead in hope that God’s mercy and love embraced them before it was too late — even if they were members of the SS.

"If we are good Christians, we pray for Islamic terrorists who have blown themselves up in the act of murdering innocent women and children. We should pray even for the World Trade Center assassins. We do not put any limits on God’s mercy. Do not expect this pope or any pope to condemn the Christian theory of forgiveness or embrace the notion of collective guilt."

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to Mark Shea for the link.)

I might bracket out and quibble with bits and pieces of Fr. Greeley’s analysis. For example, he really ought to read Rabbi David G. Dalin’s The Myth of Hitler’s Pope before making unqualified statements about "the long history of anti-Semitic popes." But for the most part, I was pleasantly surprised and cheered by Fr. Greeley’s defense of B16.

I’ve also found it interesting that, in the months since Pope Benedict’s election, more often than not Catholic progressives have been defending the Pope while those commonly thought to be orthodox (click here and here for examples) have been raking him over the coals. Is it perhaps because the orthodox were indeed expecting SuperPope?

Sciencs Vs. Magic: Hawking Vs. Potter?

The comments he made regarding John Paul II weren’t the only things that Stephen Hawking had to say recently.

ACCORDING TO THIS STORY,

he stated a number of other interesting things, such as humans needing to start establishing offworld colonies that can function independently from earth if we want to survive long term.

That project might take awhile–longer than most of us will be around–but Hawking also mentioned a much shorter-term project he’s involved in:

Hawking said he’s teaming up with his daughter to write a children’s book about the universe, aimed at the same age range as the Harry Potter books.

"It is a story for children, which explains the wonders of the universe," his daughter, Lucy, added.

They didn’t provide other details.