US Troops Beg to Differ

SoldiersThe Christian Science Monitor runs THIS article, in which American service-people in Iraq voice their perplexity at the gloom-and-doom coverage of the war.

While hardly a unique piece, it should be read by everyone with an interest in the U.S. mission in Iraq.

The current national debate is not actually about the Iraq war in particular, so much as it is about whether America has the stomach to really finish anything she starts. It is far more a test of our national attention span than a debate over the merits of the current conflict. We are the ADHD nation, the MTV nation. The truth is, many of us are just tired of hearing about the war.

GET THE STORY.

There seems to be a new understanding about what constitutes a Good War, if not a just one. Many, seemingly, will support a war in theory, but only if it meets the following requirements:

  • Victory must be assured (victory being understood as universal approval from our both our allies and our enemies).
  • There must be guarantees that no civilians will be harmed. Failure to achieve this makes the U.S. guilty of war crimes.
  • There must be no U.S. troop casualties. Any loss of U.S. personnel will be taken as a sign that Things are Going Badly. Only bad guys should be harmed.
  • We must know exactly how long the conflict will take. We are a busy people.
  • There should be a clearly set spending limit. Any overage will deducted from the next war.
  • We reserve the right to Change our Mind in the middle of any conflict. We consider that the above rules are binding, just not on us.

I am thinking of printing the following bumper sticker, a real morale-booster from the far left:

To Our Troops: We Support You!… even though we believe your mission is pointless and possibly evil. We hope you are home soon, you poor saps!

BIG RED DISCLAIMER: This post was NOT written by Jimmy Akin, but by me, Tim Jones, a guest poster. Combox flames should be directed solely at me, Tim Jones. Thank You.

“Set PHaSRs On Blind!”

PhasrYessirree, you’re lookin’ at an honest-to-God PHaSR, right here!

A Personnel Halting and Simulation Response system, that is.

It was recently unviled by the Air Force as a form of non-lethal crowd control and, like the phasers on Star Trek, is a laser-related weapon. (It also looks suspiciously like certain 24th century type III marine combat phaser rifles.)

It shoots a pulsed beam of green laser light that is intended to temporarily blind ("dazzle") the targets it is trained on, making it useful for crowd control and dazzling potentially dangerous motorists who are approaching military checkpoints too fast (i.e., as if to ram through them or suicide bomb or something).

Similar white-light-based systems are already being used in Iraq to stop potential terrorists careening toward military checkpoints, but the new system may be more effective.

An important aspect of the PHaSR system is that it does not (or is not supposed to) cause permanent blindness. Permanently blinding laser weapons do exist, but they are banned under a 1995 U.N. protocol and so are not used.

The PHaSR system seeks to avoid permanent blindness by automatically sensing the distance to the target and (apparently) adjusting the strength of the laser beam it emits (though the military is presently a bit cagey on exactly how this works).

It also uses two different frequencies of light in case the target is wearing goggles to block one frequency.

SWEET!

Now if they’d just develop zatnikitels. You just can’t beat that "one shot stuns, two shots kill, three shots disintegrates" functionality.

GET THE STORY.

P.S. Y’know, this only raises the question of why they never used a sub-stun setting to dazzle people on Star Trek.

Happy Turducken Day?

A reader writes:

I’m Canadian, but I did spend 6 years living in Los Angeles, CA and I do have an American girlfriend so this year I decided to celebrate American Thanksgiving.  The Canadian version is actually in October on what you guys celebrate as Columbus Day.

So for my US Thanksgiving feast I decided to finally make a turducken.  In case you haven’t heard of it, a turducken is what you get when you stuff a chicken into a duck and then into a turkey.  Of course that’s the short version of the preperatory phase.  I took some pictures of the process and a friend of mine was kind enough to post them on his websit.  The last photo is a cross section with labelling.  The stuff between the birds is sausage stuffing and cornbread stuffing.

This particular bird took 10 hours to cook at 225F until the internal temp reached the target of 165F.  I invited 14 friends over to help us feast and we still had half the bird left.  Anyway, though you might find the pictures interesting.

Y’know, I’ve read about turducken, but I’ve never known anyone to actually make it. Amazing.

It’s a good thing turkeys are native to the New World or there’s probably have been a prohibition on this kind of thing in the Mosaic Law.

GET THE PICTURES. (WARNING! Pictures of cooked and uncooked food!)

Bad Reactions

Peanuts_1

I had heard that some people who suffer severe allergies to certain food can suffer reactions because of proximity to, rather than ingestion of, the food in question. For example, I once heard of a child allergic to peanuts who went into anaphylactic shock upon stepping into his classroom, where it turned out that there was a Snickers wrapper in the wastebasket. I believe that child survived. A young woman allergic to peanuts, who went into anaphylactic shock after kissing her boyfriend who had just eaten peanuts, tragically did not survive.

"A 15-year-old girl with a peanut allergy died after kissing her boyfriend, who had just eaten a peanut butter snack, hospital officials said Monday.

"Christina Desforges died in a Quebec hospital Wednesday after doctors were unable to treat her allergic reaction to the kiss the previous weekend.

"Desforges, who lived in Saguenay, about 155 miles north of Quebec City, was almost immediately given a shot of adrenaline, a standard tool for treating the anaphylactic shock brought on by a peanut allergy, officials said."

GET THE STORY.

What a terrible story, but it does shed light for parents on the necessity to determine just how severe food allergies are and exactly what kind of proximity to the food can trigger an attack. It can also show that one person’s food allergy may require an adjustment in eating habits not just for that person but for family and friends.

A One Way Ticket to Cambodia, Please…

KillingfieldsHolland is the country of choice for tourists who want to smoke pot, shoot-up or patronize Amsterdam’s infamous red-light district.
Thailand is apparently a favorite of those interested in sex with children, along with a handful of other third-world nations along the pacific rim, including Cambodia.

Now Cambodia may be adding another category to the lexicon of sin-tourism: suicide travel.

See, apparently 57-year-old Roger Graham (from California – not that there’s anything wrong with that!) is encouraging people to come to Cambodia to kill themselves, as he has discovered that the nation has no laws regarding either assisted suicide or euthanasia. Most of its citizens have long been preoccupied with staying alive, and the whole assisted suicide debate hasn’t really shown up on the radar, yet.

He has a website, though it has been shut down once by the Cambodian government. They are not at all sure that they want their country to be known as a great place to shuffle off this mortal coil, but as yet they have found no legal mechanism to restrict Mr. Graham’s activities.

Chances are that if there is money to be made, little will be done to stop the suicide trade, even if the Cambodian government decides to outlaw the practice. Corruption is a national hobby.

Mr. Graham, who runs a coffee shop and internet cafe, says of his adopted hometown:

"Kampot is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. I get to
see the sun rise and the sun set. I get people coming by and saying
hello with smiling and happy faces."

I could say the same thing about Rogers, Arkansas (where I live), but suicide is illegal here, and incurs stiff penalties (heh). If I am dead, though, what do I care about that? Why fly to Cambodia to avoid having the authorities prosecute my corpse?

I guess most of these folks are looking to be done in by a competent professional. It’s more comforting if you have someone there beside you, even if you are paying them.

Euthanasia proponents will no doubt use the situation as a justification for legalizing assisted suicide – "Look, because we are making criminals of these people, they feel it necessary to fly overseas and have the procedure done by unlicensed practitioners. If we make it legal here, the whole industry can be properly regulated (and taxed!). It is a matter of personal choice, and should be kept between a patient and their doctor. It also falls under the right of privacy secretly encoded in the U.S. constitution.".

If the same voodoo worked to justify abortion, there is nothing to stop it being used to legalize suicide, unless the balance of the Supreme Court tips in favor of life.

GET THE STORY.

America’s Ministry Of Propaganda

Wesley J. Smith, a noted writer on life issues, catalogues a recent case of anti-life propaganda pushed by America’s premier newspaper Pravda… er, I mean the New York Times:

"Today’s Times has a front page story on Woo-Suk Hwang’s ethical lapses in obtaining eggs for therapeutic cloning, which I blogged on yesterday. Toward the end of the article, the story shifts from describing his bad ethics to defending therapeutic cloning. While the story mentions cloning embryos when describing the egg issue, it leaves that fact out entirely when actually describing the process of ‘therapeutic cloning,’ which, readers are told, consists merely of ‘converting one of a patient’s adult cells into an embryonic cell, and then converting that cell into new adult cells to replace any damaged tissue.’

"This description omits the crucial point: In somatic cell nuclear transfer, the nucleus of the adult cell is fused with the egg to create a new human embryo through asexual means — the act of human cloning. The embryo is developed for about a week and then destroyed to obtain its stem cells. This is not merely reverting an adult cell to a stem cell. It is creating a new human organism, a human life, for the purpose of destroying and harvesting it.

"The point of the inaccurate reporting is to conveniently skip past the part that causes people to be wary of the therapeutic cloning enterprise. This is bad journalism and an example of bias-by-omission for which the New York Times is becoming infamous."

GET THE POST.

This must be why God created bloggers.

What To Tell The Children

A reader writes:

I feel like I know you, having listened to you on EWTN many times.  I have a question for you, if you’d indulge me.

I am Catholic, my wife Protestant.  We were married within the Catholic Church, and God bless my wife, she has done a great job in helping to raise them Catholic.  (She always goes to Mass, is very supportive of their education within the Catholic schools, etc. etc.).  The kids are between 7 and 14 years old.

My wife’s sister is lesbian, and is now undergoing artifical insemmination so that she can conceive a child.  We’ve never broached the subject of her lesbianism with the kids, but with the potential addition of a "cousin", I have no idea what or what I shouldn’t say to the kids. 

My gut reaction is to be brutally honest, but I think they would come out hating their Aunt (which would indirectly hurt my wife). 

My wife feels the same as I do regarding the fact that both homosexuality and artificial insemmination are morally wrong, but she feels guilty because she also "can’t be there" for her sister as she attempts to go through pregnancy. 

I’ve always kept my sister-in-law at arms length, in the sense that we don’t visit her at her home, although we do visit together at public places (restaurants, etc), or in my in-laws home. 

I also don’t have any idea of how I’ll handle this new "niece" or "nephew" if it comes to pass; I don’t want to penalize the child for the mistakes of the mother, but I feel this articifial insemmination is an abomination.

This is a very difficult situation, and I feel for you.

It also is your sister-in-law who has created the situation. Your wife therefore should not feel guilty about the limitations that the situation creates for her ability to "be there" for your sister-in-law. The situation is of your sister-in-law’s designing, and she is the one responsible for the difficulties that ensue.

The question is: What practical steps need to be taken in a situation like this. Ideally, if possible, one would want to dissuade the sister-in-law from undertaking this course of action, though that may be impossible at this stage for any number of reasons.

If she goes through with the procedure and has a child then you would want to do several things:

  1. Continue to do your best to love her (i.e., will her good and do what you can to encourage her good), for she continues to be a woman who God loves and for whom Christ died.
  2. Love the child she gives birth to (i.e., will the child’s good and do what you can to encourage the child’s good), for the same reasons.
  3. Love your own children (i.e., will and encourage their good) for the same reasons *AND* for the reason that you have an obligation under divine law to care for them and promote their good.

All though all of these parties are equal in God’s eyes, your responsibility is strongest toward your children. Promoting their good is therefore your primary obligation. It therefore is not "penalizing the child" if you determine that certain measures must be taken to protect your own children. You can will and promote the good of all the children involved (your sister-in-law’s child included) as best you can; the situation may simply limit what can be done due to the needs of your own children.

What measures you may need to take is judgment call that you and your wife will have to make based on your knowledge of your own children, what they are ready for, and what they can handle. They are obviously old enough that something will need to be said to them, but they are not so old that they are clearly ready to hear all the facts. Which children are ready for what is something you would know much better than I since children are so different (and especially when you’ve got an age range like 7 to 14, which might turn into 8 to 16 by the time the child is born, depending on how quickly your sister-in-law becomes pregnant).

That being said, it does not seem to me that you necessarily need to bring up the subjects of either lesbianism or artificial insemination.

It seems to me that it may be possible to simply say "Aunt So-and-So is having a baby even though she is not married." You can then explain that it is wrong for her to do this–that it is God’s will that all babies be born in families with a mother and father who love them–but that even though this is wrong Aunt So-and-So and her child are both people that God loves and that we must love them and do our best to help them, too. (E.g., by praying for them.)

That may be all you need to say. If the children ask who the father of her baby is, you can say (truthfully) that you don’t know. (And omit the fact that Aunt So-and-So doesn’t know either.)

Stressing the love aspect is important, both for now and because it
will help the children when they finally do learn the truth of the
situation. You will have framed it in terms of God’s love all along, and that may make it easier for them to keep the reality in proper perspective.

I’d also have a talk with your sister-in-law, explain what you are going to tell the children, and ask that she *and her partner* respect your decision by not giving them more information than you feel they are ready for. For example, if one of the kids were to ask her who the father of the baby is, you would want her to say something like "I’d rather not go into that. Let’s talk about something else." Similarly, you’d like your sister-in-law to present the baby to your children as "my child" not "our (I and my partner’s) child."

If she does agree, it is likely to be several years (and your kids would thus
be older) before the situation would have to be further clarified. (Also, you and your wife should be the ones doing the clarifying; not your sister-in-law, her partner, or her child).

If she and her partner don’t agree to that I would then reluctantly conclude that her access to your children must become even more further limited than it is.

Again, I’m sorry to hear about your situation, but I hope this helps.

20

The B16 Tsunami?

John Allen has a nice piece on a couple of related changes that B16 has made in recent days.

The first is that he released a motu proprio stripping the Assisi Franciscan shrine of the autonomy it has enjoyed (and some would say, abused) for the last few decades. Now it will have to coordinate its initiatives "with pastoral aspects" with the local bishop and others.

Why’s this?

Some argued that it’s a way of muzzling the normally left-leaning Franciscans ahead of expected Italian national elections in 2006. Others, such as Italian Catholic writer Vittorio Messori, suggested that the roots of the motu proprio reached back to 1986, and a summit of religious leaders John Paul II hosted in Assisi. Horror stories have long circulated about what happened — including Buddhists putting smoking prayer-sticks in front of the Tabernacle in one church, and African animists slaughtering chickens in another.

An official of the Congregation for Bishops told NCR Nov. 23, however, that such interpretations are off-base.

“We had been studying the canonical situation in Assisi for years, and this document was prepared under John Paul II. The new pope had almost nothing to do with it, except for signing it. The idea that this is a ‘restoration’ by Ratzinger is absurd,” this official said.

I’ve kept checking the Vatican web site the last few days to read the text of the motu proprio to see what tea leaves might be read from it, but they haven’t put it up yet. (Typical. Absolutely typical.)

The outgoing bishop of Assisi is a big fan of the change. After the change was made he publicly expressed frustration with finding out from the press what the Franciscans were doing.

As diplomatically as the motu proprio is likely phrased, it’s clear that this was a smackdown on a group perceived to be acting in a rogue manner.

Fortunately, the Franciscans have pledged to comply with the change.

Allen brings up something else of interest in connection with this: Who the new bishop of Assisi is.

Sorrentino had been the secretary at the Congregation for Divine Worship since August 2003, meaning just 27 months. The previous occupant of the job, Archbishop Francesco Pio Tamburrino, served for four years, from April 1999 to August 2003. Both put in less than the normal five-year term.

Some have construed Sorrentino’s departure as the first wave of the curial “tsunami” expected under Benedict XVI.

Whether that tsunami emerges remains to be seen. What seems clear, however, is that Sorrentino’s transfer is more than a routine reassignment. Both Sorrentino and Tamburrino were nominations from the Secretariat of State, and both embodied a “softer,” more flexible stance on liturgical questions than the prefects they served: Cardinal Jorge Medina Estévez in the case of Tamburrino, Cardinal Francis Arinze in the case of Sorrentino.

“What the Secretariat of State was probably after was balance,” a Vatican source said Nov. 21.

It’s not clear whether that kind of “balance,” however, is what Pope Benedict XVI wants, since over the years he has been supportive of efforts to restore greater reverence, sobriety, and traditional forms of expression in worship. In November, the pope sent a letter to the Vox Clara Commission, created to advise the congregation on liturgical translation in English, in which he affirmed Liturgiam Authenticam, the congregation’s 2001 document that demanded greater fidelity to Latin originals.

On the other hand, some sources say the problem with Sorrentino was not always content, but style.

Those sources say that Sorrentino was a highly scrupulous secretary, wanting to be well informed and to hear multiple points of view before making decisions. Some believe that occasionally translated into gridlock. This was a particular liability, sources say, since the congregation’s prefect, Arinze, is one of the most-traveled Vatican officials, giving lectures and conferences in various parts of the world. Given that, sources say, it’s especially important to have a secretary who can make the trains run on time.

In general, observers believe that under Benedict XVI, the Secretariat of State is likely to play a less prominent role in filling positions such as that vacated by Sorrentino. Such decisions are more likely to come from the papal household, or at least to be subjected to a greater degree of review by the pope.

Personally, I’m heartened by the idea that the Secretariat of State will be playing a lesser role. For too long the Secretariat of State has served as the most important dicastery at the Holy See–more important even than the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith–which makes no sense. Christ sent the Church to preach the faith, not to be a state. Adding to this the political overlay that is bound to come from a dicastery devoted to matters of state, it’s heartening to hear that a different dynamic is expected to be at work.

GET THE STORY.