Cry Of The Howling Mars Toad

KimjongilJust to give you a taste of the shrill vocalizations of the howling Mars toad, consider the following story from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). Note that the title of the piece was put on it by the news agency itself.

I just love the wild swings in style within a single sentence, like "Nothing but balderdash can be heard from this guy and no one, therefore, would lend an ear to his tongue wagging."

The translator obviously has a unique grasp of English. High flown terms like "balderdash" and "tongue wagging" right next to colloquialisms like "this guy." Love it!

Here goes . . .

KCNA Blasts Hwang Jang Yop’s Hysteric Remarks

    Pyongyang, December 9 (KCNA) — Hwang Jang Yop in an interview with the Japanese Sankei Shimbun malignantly slandered the political system in the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; i.e., North Korea], according to its Dec. 5 issue. He let loose a string of hysteric outcries that "it is the only solution to the nuclear issue to overthrow north Korea’s regime" and the "dictatorship of north Korea should be toppled".

    They are the thrice-cursed crime as they were mouthed by the man who has inveterate bitterness toward the inviolable political system in the DPRK.

    He is human scum and a mentally deranged old man who fled to south Korea after abandoning his wife and children and unhesitatingly betraying the country that protected his political integrity for the sake of his personal luxury. Nothing but balderdash can be heard from this guy and no one, therefore, would lend an ear to his tongue wagging.

    This ugly looking man is completely unable to judge what is going on. Yet the south Korean authorities are using him for their sinister purpose.

    We can not but call this dishonest behavior to question. They only betrayed their awkward position by instigating Hwang to cry out for the so-called "solution" to such crucial political issue as the nuclear issue between the DPRK and the United States.

    In a word, the U.S. and the south Korean authorities only laid bare their true colors by letting this good-for-nothing talk nonsense.

    Hwang committed too hideous crimes that he was afraid of taking a back alley. Recently he toured the U.S. and is strutting about, having interviews with foreign media. This was possible only under the protection of the present south Korean authorities and thanks to the prearranged script of the U.S.

    The present south Korean authorities transferred him to a new place from the Intelligence Service in a bid to goad him into letting loose anti-north vituperation with bitterer grudge.

    It is shame on the nation that such human scum as Hwang is still at large. To patronize and use him is an anti-national criminal act of bedevilling the inter-Korean relations and going against the nation’s desire for exchange, cooperation, unity and reunification.

    It is a common sense that a failure to see through everything from a national stand and properly deal with it would result in playing into the hands of foreign forces and the traitors to the nation and bringing the inter-Korean relations to a collapse.

    All the facts go to prove that the south Korean authorities are neither interested in the improvement of inter-Korean relations, nor have any willingness to have dialogue with the north and settle the nuclear issue but have the same wrong way of thinking as Hwang’s.

    They should behave in a responsible manner from a national stand.

    It is nonsensical to talk about dialogue, contact, reconciliation and cooperation while letting renegade and traitor Hwang defile the system and dignity of the dialogue partner and cry out for "overthrowing" the system in the north.

    We will never sit idle in case the south Korean authorities allow Hwang to slander again the system.

The Howling Mars Toad

KimjongilHere in the U.S. we have a species known as the barking moonbat, which–as far as species go–has a surprisingly high rate of Internet access. The barking moonbat is known for its extreme views on all manner of subjects, but it is not the most extreme critter to be found in the wild.

In North Korea they have an animal so extreme in its views that it can only be referred to as the howling Mars toad (left). Like the barking moonbat, the howling Mars toad has a surprising degree of Internet access, particularly in view of how little Internet access there is in North Korea.

A major habitat for the howling Mars toad is apparently the North Korean news agency known as the KCNA (Korean Central News Agency), which is the official propaganda arm of Kim Jong-il’s government.

I’ve seen statements made by the howling Mars toads employed at the KCNA before on the web. Now I’ve found a site that makes it easier than ever to have hours of entertainment listening to the shrill vocalizations of the howling Mars toad.

The site is WWW.NK-NEWS.NET, and I ran across it because of a story by the news agency Reuters, which is a major habitat for the barking moonbat. According to the story, nk-news.net is run by a San Francisco graphic artist named Geoff Davis.

"Their propaganda is often unintentionally hilarious and I couldn’t find an existing searchable database of the KCNA on the Web. Thus, NK News was born," Davis told Reuters.

Launched in May, www.nk-news.net boasts of having nearly every KCNA article since December 1996 — "over 50 megabytes of hard-core Stalinist propaganda … each article written in the unique and indelible style of the KCNA."

Readers can get a taste of that KCNA style from recommended key word searches, such as "burning hatred," which turns up 18 articles. The targets of that hot wrath include Japan, Yankees, "U.S. imperialist ogres" and "class enemies."

"Human scum" yields 25 KCNA reports applying that epithet to U.S.
President George W. Bush, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and diplomat John Bolton. Rumsfeld also keeps company with Japanese officials in the "political dwarf" category.

GET THE STORY.

VISIT THE SITE.

Be sure to check out the pre-set searches on the site. My favorite so far is "human scum." Any time the KCNA calls somebody "human scum," you know that you’re in for some really over-the-top rhetoric.

Some of the other searches are based on inexplicable fascinations the KCNA has with certain things. For example, howling Mars toads are apparently fond of floral baskets and goat farms because these terms crop up enough in KCNA stories to prompt Davis to come up with "floral basket" and "goat farm" searches. (It apparently likes the former more than the latter. There were eight hundred and forty five references to floral baskets but only twenty-one references to goat farms in the database.)

A surprisingly high number of stories are headlined with the words "KCNA Blasts . . . "–as in "KCNA Blasts Japan’s Despicable Political Plot" or "KCNA Blasts Japanese Chief Executive’s Reckless Remarks." Any article headlined with these words is also a good bet for really fiery rhetoric, so I e-mailed Davis and suggested that he add a "KCNA Blasts" search to his list of pre-sets.

Have fun!

Future Shock

In his book How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, author Thomas E. Woods Jr. tells the story of how English monks were on the verge of introducing the Industrial Age to Great Britain when King Henry VIII closed the monasteries and destroyed Catholic religious life in England. As a result of a monarch’s greed, the Industrial Age may well have been postponed some three centuries.

It got me to thinking: What breakthroughs has our modern culture of death prevented us from accomplishing? Although we have accomplished a great deal in the realm of modern science, much of it has been devoted to both fighting and perpetuating the culture of death. The search for cures for deadly venereal diseases, caused in large part by the unchaste lifestyle of modern man, and the fascination with manipulating human life has taken up much of our time, energy, and resources. What if it had been possible to devote those resources to furthering the culture of life?

We can now routinely save premature babies as early as 24 weeks gestation, and have had spotty success as early as 20 weeks. That is no small accomplishment. But will future generations remark that if we hadn’t been consumed with finding ways to murder first-trimester babies in their mothers’ wombs, we might have been able to routinely save first-trimester babies in danger of miscarriage?

If we hadn’t had to focus resources to fighting the worldwide HIV/AIDS pandemic, could we have found a cure for cancer, multiple sclerosis, influenza, or the common cold? Would we have been able to reliably export to the developing world the medicines needed to cure childhood diseases that devastate youngsters in the Third World but are merely a rite of passage in First World countries?

If we hadn’t been diverted by the Cold War and the "need" to compete in the arms race, could we have redirected money used to stockpile weapons of mass destruction into helping developing nations reach maturity on the world stage?

If we hadn’t been consumed with an alleged "right to privacy," "freedom of choice," and "right to die," would we have turned our efforts to the rehabilitation (where possible) and comfort care (where not) of our disabled, elderly, and otherwise dependent citizens? Could Terri Schiavo have been rehabilitated, perhaps even cured, if our society hadn’t been more interested in warehousing and eventually murdering her and those who suffer from similar catastrophic disabilities?

How will future generations judge us? Somehow I doubt they will be impressed with our ability to clone sheep, walk on the moon, and treat (but not cure) venereal disease. They will be more likely to sigh, shake their heads, and note a lot of similarity between our society and that of Tudor England during the Protestant Reformation.

The Real Da Vinci Code

Guestblogger Arthur writes:

I’m going to preface this by stating upfront that I am Jewish and therefore have no personal religious stake in the claims of Dan Brown.  However I am also a historian by training and I detest bad historical research, which "The DaVinci Code" most certainly is an example of.

Perhaps you saw ads for this program "The Real DaVinci Code" last week hyping its broadcast on Saturday night.  And the ads looked like it was all supportive of Dan Brown’s nonsense.

Well it’s not!  It completely debunks, point by point, every aspect of "The DaVinci Code" and it’s source material "Holy Blood, Holy Grail".

I’d actually been aware of this program for sometime and was dying to see it.  It’s a British import hosted by Tony Robinson.  For those of you into BritComs, he played Baldrick in the various Blackadder series, but he’s also produced and hosted several other excellent historical documentaries.  And this one is of particularly high quality.

The basic scheme of the show works something like this, Robinson details one of the allegations in the book and then let’s various talking heads (along the lines of Michael Baigent and Elaine Pagels) natter on about how it may be right.  Robinson then travels about the world looking for possible explanations and then they bring in respectable historians, art experts and journalists to completely rip the books to shreds.  Showing how all Dan Brown’s  and Messrs Baigent, Lincoln & Leigh’s claims just don’t hold up to historical fact.

Tony Robinson successfully manages to take fiction and hold it up to the light of fact.  And he does it with a stylish sense of humor.

I think the best thing about this documentary is actually the fact that it does not use theology to make it’s point.  The debunkers are largely secular writers and the facts cited are all publically available to the public if they are willing to do some research.  This way DC fans can’t go around saying "Oh that’s just the Catholic Church point of view".

I have one niggling complaint and that is that they used the Garden Tomb rather than the Holy Sepuchre when discussing the events of the ressurection.  Perhaps they couldn’t get permission to film at the Sepulchre, but the claim that the Garden Tomb is the burial place just doesn’t hold up to archaeology and history.  This is rather minor to my point of view.

On the whole I heartily recomment "The Real DaVinci Code" and if Discovery Channel repeats I think you should watch it.

Happy World War II Victory Day

Victory_dayToday, August 15, back in 1945 a very significant event happened: World War II ended.

My favorite account of this is from the "Kamp Krusty" episode of The Simpsons, which starts on the last day of the school year:

T minus five seconds and counting.  When the bells ring, the
   students stream out the doors, but before they can disappear for
   good, a teacher properly concludes their education.


   Teacher: Wait a minute!  You didn’t learn how World War II ended!
     Class: [pause their celebration, awaiting the answer]
   Teacher: We won!
     Class: Yay!  U-S-A!  U-S-A!  U-S-A!

GET THE STORY.

And be prepared to party like it’s 1945.

The Shape Of Poorly-Designed Things To Come

I don’t know if they’ve shown up in your area yet, but here in San Diego stores are staring to have self-service checkout machines. The newly built Wal-Marts have them here. So do a few of the grocery stores.

The idea is that the store can save some money on cashiers if they let customers check themselves out and pay for their products, the same way banks can save money on tellers if they have ATMs for customers to use. Theoretically, both kinds of machines also benefit the customer by giving him greater convenience and speed since there are now more checkout lanes open for use. (How often have you been in a store where they have ten lanes, only two of which have checkers and are open?)

The problem is that ATMs work but these cussed things don’t.

As y’all know, I have nothing against technology. I’m fer it. I use it all the time. I’m a reg’lar tech-no-phile.

But they ain’t got the bugs worked out of these self-checker machines. Every time I use one it ends up as a frustrating experience. The other day I was at Wal-Mart and decided to complain to the manager about the experience (about the fourth or fifth bad one I’d had with their machines), telling him that the machines were poorly designed and that, although I was supportive of their efforts to introduce them and a technology fan, I would take my business elsewhere if I had to either use such frustratingly designed machines or wait through long lines now that they had fewer checkers.

If enough people tell them things like that, they may fix things.

After leaving the store, I started thinking about what exactly was frustrating about the devices. Basically, they’re too complex, but where does the source of the problem lie? It seemed to me that there are three general sources of the problem:

First, there is the bagging process. When you swipe a product over the scanner the machine directs you to put it in a bag in the bagging area, where an RFID sensor (or something) recognizes that you’ve done so and tells you to scan the next item.

In theory.

In practice what happens is that, for one reason or another, the RFID sensor doesn’t recognize that you’ve put the item in the bag, and you have to interrupt your scanning of the next product to try to convince it that you’ve done what you’re supposed to.

I don’t know what function the bagging process is supposed to fulfill (presumably something to do with making sure you scan all your items and do so only once), but whatever it is, it ain’t essential because they have a "Skip the bagging process" button for folks who are fed up with the whole thing and won’t do it.

Personally, I just put my items in the bagging area without making any effort to actually put them into a bag. I’ll bag them after I’ve got them all scanned, because the processes are just to frustrating to manage simultaneously. (Which is probably why clerks don’t do both at once, too. First they scan your items, then they bag them.)

A second source of needless complexity–and this is a much more serious problem–is the number of sources of information you’re expected to keep track of while you do all this. I counted at least six. You’re suppose to simultaneously juggle:

  1. Audible instructions in the form of a human-sounding voice from the machine
  2. Beeps and boops that sound when you scan items or do something wrong
  3. Printed signs affixed to different parts of the machine
  4. Instructions on the left hand side of the main touch-screen
  5. Instructions on the right hand side of the main touch-screen
  6. Instructions appearing THREE FEET AWAY on the secondary touch-screen where you swipe your payment card

The problem is that you often can’t tell which information source you’re supposed to be paying attention to. You don’t know if you’re supposed to be listening for the voice, for a beep, for a video instruction on a touch-screen, or even which touch-screen you’re supposed to be looking at.

For example, yesterday when I was trying to pay for my items, I swiped my ATM card through the secondary touch-screen’s slot, entered my PIN, and told it that I wanted a certain amount of cash back. I then noticed that the main touch-screen (three feet away) was saying "Authorizing transaction," which to a normal human being means that the machine has all the info it needs and is calling your bank to, y’know, authorize the transaction.

Not!

After waiting and waiting and waiting (during which time the customer behind me in line noted how slow the device was in getting authorization from my bank, figuring it was a modem or line problem), I discovered that the secondary touch-screen (THREE FEET AWAY) was saying "You have asked for $60 in cash back, which will make your total $74.15. Do you wish to approve this amount?"

I’d been waiting all this time and the machine hadn’t even tried to call my bank yet!

I didn’t know that, though, because I was mistakenly paying attention to a separate and erroneous (or at least misleading) source of information coming from the machine.

This really has to change if they want people to use these machines. ATMs work, in part, because they don’t require you to keep track of so many sources of information. They have one touch-screen, and they keep your attention concentrated there or on the slots immediately adjacent to the touch-screen.

They don’t make you hop back and forth needlessly between two different touch-screens, nor do they change-off the way you’re getting information (Am I supposed to be listening for the voice now? Which screen am I supposed to be looking at? Which side of the screen am I supposed to be looking at?)

ATMs also keep together things like where the cash comes out and where your receipt comes out. Those two slots are right next to the (single) touch-screen. But that’s not the way it is with the auto-checker machine. The cash back slot is two feet below the main touch-screen, while the receipt slot is immediately under the secondary touch-screen. The voice has to tell you where to look for these things and then you have to lunge back and forth between them to get your cash and receipt.

The third major problem is that there are simply too many bells and whistles on this sucker. The process is over-built. When you’re in a regular checker lane and you swipe your card, you typically have only to press one of two or three buttons to tell it whether you’re using a credit card, a debit card, or some third kind of card that I don’t have.

Why you even have to do that, I don’t know. I don’t know why the machine can’t identify what kind of card you’re using from the numbers in the magnetic stripe when you swipe it. It certainly knows if you’re using Visa, MasterCard, Discover, or what bank to draw the debited funds from using those numbers. I also don’t know that anybody would get bent out of shape if the machine simply treated all combination debit/credit cards as one or the other. But at least you only have to press one of two or three buttons to get past this step.

Not one of fourteen.

That’s right! You’ve got to pick from more than a dozen payment options on this device! Half of them I didn’t even know what they were, and it was really frustrating trying to simply find the option labeled "Debit Card" amid all the unfamiliar, complex, and colorful icons.

I don’t know who makes these machines, but they need to realize that if you want people to learn to use something like this you have to make it AS SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE. You cannot build a device that gives you all the options (and more!) that you’d have in a human-checker lane.

So, bright boys, go back to the drawing board and simplify. Strip down the steps the customer needs to perform to the bare minimum. Eliminate the stupid bagging process entirely. Get rid of the secondary touch-screen. Don’t put competing information on two sides of the remaining touch-screen. Eliminate the voice. Centralize all the parts of the machine that the customer has to interact with. Keep his attention focused on a single area of the machine. Don’t give him conflicting signals (like "Authorizing transaction" when, in fact, you’re not authorizing the transaction) from different sources.

Trust me on this one, guys: Less Is More.

Apparently some folks who make these machines have realized this. Mrs. Decent Films tells me that a few years ago in her area they introduced clunky, complex machines like the ones described above–and they didn’t last. People wouldn’t use them. So they vanished, but in the last few months they’ve introduced new, streamlined machines that are much simpler and are a breeze to use.

So there’s hope. And eventually economic survival of the fittest will drive the evil machines above out of the market.

Bad Thoughts

A reader writes:

I want to know if sinful thoughts are mortal sins.

It depends. They can be, but they often aren’t. For a sin of thought to be mortal, three conditions must be met: (1) the thought must involve grave matter (like inflicting grave harm on someone else), (2) you have to know that the thought is gravely sinful, and (3) you have to deliberately endorse the thought (as opposed to having it flit through your mind and you resist it).

When I bring them to the confessional, the priest(s) tell me that I am being overly critical of myself.

This may be the case. Many people scruple unnecessarily about sins of thought and are too hard on themselves. Frequently they confuse temptation with sinning. Having a thought and feeling a pull toward the thought is just temptation. It only crosses the line into sin when you deliberately endorse the thought.

I have had thoughts of resentment and jealously towards others.

Unless you are wishing grave harm on these people (e.g., that they die, that they experience horrible pain, that they have their lives or careers wrecked) then this is probably not a mortal sin because the matter isn’t grave.

I have also had thoughts of attraction towards other men (even though I am married).

This may just be temptation. Everybody is tempted in some way. These thoughts only become mortally sinful if you say, "I don’t care if it’s gravely sinful to have impure thoughts about this guy. I’m going to indulge myself in these thoughts anyway."

Can you offer any words on what the church wants me to do with bad thoughts?

Do your best to ignore them and put them out of your mind. Say a quick prayer. Think about something else. Just relax and ignore them.

Also, don’t go into detail about these thoughts in confession. That will be likely to stir up the thoughts and reinforce them.

If you believe that you need to confess them, do it very simply. Just say "I have had thoughts of resentment and jealousy toward others. I have had impure thoughts."–and then leave it at that! If the priest needs to ask a follow-up question, he will. But don’t burden yourself by trying to describe the details for him unless he asks. Just confess what you did simply and leave it at that.

No Mass Obligation Today

Although August 15 is the celebration of the Assumption of Mary, there is no obligation to attend Mass today in the United States. Among the complementary norms for the U.S. is the following:

Whenever January 1, the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, or August 15,

the solemnity of the Assumption, or November 1, the solemnity of All

Saints, falls on a Saturday or on a Monday, the precept to attend Mass

is abrogated [SOURCE].

Now, I’ve had some folks write in asking whether there is an obligation to rest today. You might think that, for the general law regarding holy day obligations reads as follows:

Can.  1247 On Sundays and other holy days of

obligation, the faithful are obliged to participate in the Mass.

Moreover, they are to abstain from those works and

affairs which hinder the worship to be rendered to God, the joy proper to the

Lord’s day, or the suitable relaxation of mind and body.

Since the complementary norm mentions the suspending of the obligation to attend Mass but not the obligation to abstain from certain works and affairs, you might conclude that the latter obligation is still in place.

Unfortunately, the situation is more complex than that. For a start, the canon is badly drafted. You’ll note that the canon refers to avoiding works and affairs that interfere with "the joy proper to the Lord’s day." Well, the Lord’s day is Sunday and Sunday only. Not other holy days. This raises a question of whether the second obligation specified in the canon is directed to Sundays or to all holy days.

The answer is that it does apply to other holy days; I’m just pointing out how sloppily the Church drafts its law on this subject so the reader will be put on guard against trying to read the law over-precisely when it comes to this stuff. The Church is painting with broad brush when it comes to the law on this topic. It hasn’t sat down and spelled matters out rigorously.

It’s really hard to imagine that the bishops would say "It’s asking too much to tell people they have to go to Mass on Monday when they just went on Sunday, but we will ask them to treat Monday just like Sunday in all other respects, with all the rest requirements that we haven’t preached on for forty years and when 99.44% of people are required by their employers to work on this day."

It’s not plausible that the bishops intended to put people into a multi-bind situation where they are NOT required to go to Mass BUT are required to rest EXCEPT for the fact that their employer requires them to work AND the people are almost totally unaware of the obligation to rest in the first place due to lack of preaching and knowing what the obligation even means in our culture. If it seems hard to you to imagine how you’d be expected to conduct yourself on such an overly complicated day, it’s for very good reasons and the same reasons suggest that that’s not what the bishops intended.

Thus it’s no surprise when one discovers that there is a recognition at the USCCB also that both

obligations are gone when August 15 falls on a Monday. The Bishops

Committee on Liturgy Newsletter simply says:

 

August 15 (the Assumption) is a day of obligation only when it falls on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Sunday (35 Years of the BCL Newsletter, 1557).

 

It therefore appears that the most likely explanation for all this is that the U.S. bishops intend both obligations to be suspended when the day falls on a Monday (or a Saturday). They simply phrased themselves with customary sloppiness following the Vatican’s example.

At a minimum we have a doubt of law situation, and in that circumstance our old friend, Canon 14, kicks in to tell us:

Can. 14 Laws,

even invalidating and disqualifying ones, do not oblige when there is a doubt

about the law.

Bottom line, you don’t have to navigate the multi-bind kind of day mentioned above. Think about what God did for Mary and go to Mass if you want to, but don’t feel obligated to treat the day as a quasi-semi-maybe Sunday.
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No Mass Obligation Today

Although August 15 is the celebration of the Assumption of Mary, there is no obligation to attend Mass today in the United States. Among the complementary norms for the U.S. is the following:

Whenever January 1, the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, or August 15,
the solemnity of the Assumption, or November 1, the solemnity of All
Saints, falls on a Saturday or on a Monday, the precept to attend Mass
is abrogated [SOURCE].

Now, I’ve had some folks write in asking whether there is an obligation to rest today. You might think that, for the general law regarding holy day obligations reads as follows:

Can.  1247 On Sundays and other holy days of
obligation, the faithful are obliged to participate in the Mass.

Moreover, they are to abstain from those works and
affairs which hinder the worship to be rendered to God, the joy proper to the
Lord’s day, or the suitable relaxation of mind and body.

Since the complementary norm mentions the suspending of the obligation to attend Mass but not the obligation to abstain from certain works and affairs, you might conclude that the latter obligation is still in place.

Unfortunately, the situation is more complex than that. For a start, the canon is badly drafted. You’ll note that the canon refers to avoiding works and affairs that interfere with "the joy proper to the Lord’s day." Well, the Lord’s day is Sunday and Sunday only. Not other holy days. This raises a question of whether the second obligation specified in the canon is directed to Sundays or to all holy days.

The answer is that it does apply to other holy days; I’m just pointing out how sloppily the Church drafts its law on this subject so the reader will be put on guard against trying to read the law over-precisely when it comes to this stuff. The Church is painting with broad brush when it comes to the law on this topic. It hasn’t sat down and spelled matters out rigorously.

It’s really hard to imagine that the bishops would say "It’s asking too much to tell people they have to go to Mass on Monday when they just went on Sunday, but we will ask them to treat Monday just like Sunday in all other respects, with all the rest requirements that we haven’t preached on for forty years and when 99.44% of people are required by their employers to work on this day."

It’s not plausible that the bishops intended to put people into a multi-bind situation where they are NOT required to go to Mass BUT are required to rest EXCEPT for the fact that their employer requires them to work AND the people are almost totally unaware of the obligation to rest in the first place due to lack of preaching and knowing what the obligation even means in our culture. If it seems hard to you to imagine how you’d be expected to conduct yourself on such an overly complicated day, it’s for very good reasons and the same reasons suggest that that’s not what the bishops intended.

Thus it’s no surprise when one discovers that there is a recognition at the USCCB also that both
obligations are gone when August 15 falls on a Monday. The Bishops
Committee on Liturgy Newsletter simply says:

 

August 15 (the Assumption) is a day of obligation only when it falls on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Sunday (35 Years of the BCL Newsletter, 1557).
 

It therefore appears that the most likely explanation for all this is that the U.S. bishops intend both obligations to be suspended when the day falls on a Monday (or a Saturday). They simply phrased themselves with customary sloppiness following the Vatican’s example.

At a minimum we have a doubt of law situation, and in that circumstance our old friend, Canon 14, kicks in to tell us:

Can. 14 Laws,
even invalidating and disqualifying ones, do not oblige when there is a doubt
about the law.

Bottom line, you don’t have to navigate the multi-bind kind of day mentioned above. Think about what God did for Mary and go to Mass if you want to, but don’t feel obligated to treat the day as a quasi-semi-maybe Sunday.
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