How Our Robed Masters Also Affect You

The last few days we’ve been having commentary from Thomas Sowell on the need for judges to read the law instead of trying to make the law.

How far things have gotten out of whack is illustrated by

THIS STORY.

It’s an op/ed piece titled "High Court Must Protect Innovators" and has to do with the Grokster case, whereby Grokster is being sued because users of Grokster are trafficking in illegal music and movie downloads.

Unless they’ve got evidence that Grokster is encouraging users to do this (and I don’t know whether or not they do), my sense is that Grokster ought (that’s a moral ought, not a predictive ought) to prevail. If you’ve got a network that has legitimate purposes some or even many are putting to illegal purposes then the preferred remedy would be to go after the people putting it to those purposes rather than the people who established the network.

F’rinstance: People must connect to the Internet in order to illegally download stuff. If any network that is being used by such people is liable for damages then the recording and motion picture industries might as well SUE YOUR INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER since some people using it are undoubtedly using it for illegal downloads. That logic would shut down the Internet.

Now, I know that someone can argue that a service like Grokster is more proximate to the practice of illegal downloading than your ISP is, but still: If something (e.g., a knife) has a legitimate purpose (cutting food) but also may be put to an illegitimate purpose (stabbing someone), the preferred solution should be to go after the person who is putting it to the illegitimate purpose (the stabber) instead of the person who made it (the knife manufacturer).

You might agree or disagree with me on that, but consider the headline of the editorial I linked: "High Court Must Protect Innovators."

It’s true that if innovators like Grokster aren’t protected then it will cramp technological and (ultimately) economic development, but in what way are Our Robed Masters being asked to protect innovators?

If "protecthing" innovators simply meant reading what’s in the law and applying it because the law says that innovators must be protected, well and good. But if it means creating policies not called for in the law then it’s an appeal to judicial subversion of the democratic process.

Which is the author of the editorial calling for? Consider:

Unless the courts maintain a proper balance between protecting
innovation and discouraging piracy, the steady pace of technology
advancement we have come to expect over the years could be in jeopardy.

So the Court is being asked to strike a balance between competing interests (the need for innovation and technological advancement vs. the needs of intellectual property rights holders).

I’m sorry, but isn’t striking balances between competing interests the business of legislatures rather then courts? We’re talking public policy here, guys. Judges should not be striking public policy balances. That’s what legislators are for. Judges should simply be making determinations of fact concerning whether a particular situation falls within the law that the legislators enacted or not. If it ain’t clear then the legislators should clarify the law. Judges shouldn’t simply make up their own standards to cover sloppy law writing by the legislatures.

The expectation that the editorial writer seems to have that courts should do the work of legislators is deeply troubling, but it’s what both the behavior of the Court in recent years has fostered, as well as what legislators themselves have been doing: The rigor of law-writing in the U.S. has suffered because legislators feel free to throw together a bunch of words that gesture in the direction of what they want to happen because "the courts will sort out" the details.

The Script

Reporters are driven by "scripts" that tell them how to frame and write a story. These scripts, which aren’t (usually) written down (making it a paradox to call them "scripts") are templates into which reporters pour the facts of particular stories. I recently blogged about

ONE SUCH SCRIPT.

But there are others.

Reporters really need scripts. They often don’t know how to do their job without them, and they often try to impose them on stories where the facts are otherwise.

Just yesterday I was doing an interview with a local TV reporter who kept trying to frame an ecclesiastical issue in terms of the Church "gaining support" or "losing support" regarding a particular matter. I kept having to explain to him, "This is not a political matter. It’s not about gaining or losing support. It is about being faithful to historic Christian values."

What happens when a reporter comes across facts that don’t fit his script? One of several things. He may dig deeper to try to make the facts fit the script. That’s what was happening with the reporter who kept asking me politically-framed questions about the Church. He was trying to get the facts to fit the script he had in mind for the story.

If digging deeper doesn’t work, an unscrupulous reporter may simply make stuff up to get the story he wants.

But if he doesn’t go that route and the facts still don’t fit the script, he may simply spike the story.

"E"-word Gets the Axe from IMAX

Now, I am happily ignorant when it comes to just exactly how the good Lord created us. The Catholic Church allows for different understandings of the biblical creation accounts, as long as certain basics are agreed on. Like rejecting the idea that we are merely a cosmic accident, the result of blind and purposeless natural forces. Things like that.

It is the presumptious and condescending manner in which evolution was for so long presented as settled fact that has helped to make a cottage industry of refuting the theory. People generally don’t respond well to force-feeding of any kind.

Again, I am not saying (or not NOT saying) that evolution of some kind might not have played a role in the creation of our physical bodies. I don’t know. But I know that alot of people just plain got sick-up-and-fed with being beaten over the cranium with atheistic evolution, so I was not that surprised to hear that some IMAX theaters had given a polite "no thank you" to a recent movie that makes yet another reference to the "E" word. No big deal, it just wasn’t something they thought would sell in their area. It’s a free country, right?

Well, it turns out that not only are we ignorant red-staters Ruining Everything, we are actually repressing the creative giants who make IMAX movies, and stuff. They are really very worried that this will restrain their creative approach. The story also points out that this is mainly occurring in the dreaded South.

GET THE STORY.

Take heart, theistic IMAX moviegoers! To paraphrase Goethe, "Act boldly, and unseen (market) forces will come to your aid."

“E”-word Gets the Axe from IMAX

Now, I am happily ignorant when it comes to just exactly how the good Lord created us. The Catholic Church allows for different understandings of the biblical creation accounts, as long as certain basics are agreed on. Like rejecting the idea that we are merely a cosmic accident, the result of blind and purposeless natural forces. Things like that.

It is the presumptious and condescending manner in which evolution was for so long presented as settled fact that has helped to make a cottage industry of refuting the theory. People generally don’t respond well to force-feeding of any kind.

Again, I am not saying (or not NOT saying) that evolution of some kind might not have played a role in the creation of our physical bodies. I don’t know. But I know that alot of people just plain got sick-up-and-fed with being beaten over the cranium with atheistic evolution, so I was not that surprised to hear that some IMAX theaters had given a polite "no thank you" to a recent movie that makes yet another reference to the "E" word. No big deal, it just wasn’t something they thought would sell in their area. It’s a free country, right?

Well, it turns out that not only are we ignorant red-staters Ruining Everything, we are actually repressing the creative giants who make IMAX movies, and stuff. They are really very worried that this will restrain their creative approach. The story also points out that this is mainly occurring in the dreaded South.

GET THE STORY.

Take heart, theistic IMAX moviegoers! To paraphrase Goethe, "Act boldly, and unseen (market) forces will come to your aid."

Lessons From Purim

It is Holy Week for Christians; but for Jews it is nearly Purim.  Thursday will be a fast day in commemoration of Esther’s fast (cf. Esther 4:16) and Friday will be the feast of Purim, which honors the Jews’ deliverance from the deadly plans of Haman.  Just as pro-life Christians have been seeing a parallel to the events of Holy Week in the Terri Schiavo case, so pro-life Jews are seeing a parallel to Purim:

"The [Purim] story recounts how an evil man named Haman sought to kill all the Jews. But through communal prayer, fasting and the heroic acts of Queen Esther, the plot was exposed and counteracted. In a divine turn of events, it was the evil Haman who was killed. The Jews who had been marked for death were now free to protect themselves and live!

"The significance of this is not lost to me as it relates to the Schiavo case, the result of which will affect the disabled community, and all people. We see an important message for us in these days in Esther chapter 4 verse 14:

"13. And Mordecai ordered to reply to Esther, ‘Do not imagine to yourself that you will escape in the king’s house from among all the Jews.

"14. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and rescue will arise for the Jews from elsewhere, and you and your father’s household will perish; and who knows whether at a time like this you will attain the kingdom?’

"Like Esther, each of us has been placed in a unique position so that we can help bring good out of even the most evil of situations. God only asks that we do our part. Ultimately, He takes care of the rest."

READ THE POST.

(Nod to Kathy Shaidle of Relapsed Catholic for the link.)

Slainte!

The Irish language may be all but dead in Ireland, but it is being kept alive at the University of Notre Dame (a school, I was surprised to learn, really doesn’t have Irish roots — despite its team’s famous nickname, "The Fighting Irish.")

"In Ireland, the Irish language is viewed by some affluent citizens as a peasant language that should be allowed to fade into oblivion.

"But at the University of Notre Dame, where students pay nearly $40,000 a year to attend, the little-used language is enjoying a renaissance.

"’There are a lot of kids here who are the grandchildren of the very successful and the very rich, and their grandparents were taught to forget about their Irish past,’ said Eamonn O Ciardha, program director at Notre Dame’s Keough Institute for Irish Studies. ‘They want to know about their language, they want to know about their history, they want to know about their culture.’"

Now all we have to do is to reintroduce Notre Dame’s students to their Catholic heritage and culture. Notre Dame does have some Catholic orthodoxy on campus — for a heartening example, check out The Shrine of the Holy Whapping, a blog run by a group of Notre Dame students — but certainly less than its fair share, as evidenced by this distressing article.

Let’s all pray that Notre Dame and other Catholic universities realize a resurgence of Slainte Mhath ("Good health"; pronounced "Slanzh’va").

End Of Life Guide

The case of Terri Schiavo has got a lot of folks thinking about what might happen to them should they ever fall victim to an accident or illness that leaves them unable to speak for themselves.

This touches on an issue we get a lot of queries about at Catholic Answers. We periodically get questions from people who are interested in finding out more about what the Church requires in such situations. Some are merely curious. Some are wanting to write living wills or make grants of durable power of attourney. Some are in the middle of an end of life situation with a relative.

We do what we can to help them, and often that includes getting them a copy of

THIS END OF LIFE GUIDE

by the National Catholic Bioethics Center, a group known for their thoughtfulness, fidelity to the Magisterium, and expertise in this area.

Viri Selecti

I want to thank John Lilburne RomanRite.Com for sending me the Latin text of the instructions regarding footwashing. I got this just before the recent announcement by the Archbishop of Boston, but I wanted to follow up by presenting what the text of the law says, even if now we have a doubt of law situation in the U.S.

Here goes:

From page 300 of the 2002 Roman Missal, for the Mass of
the Lord’s Supper


Lotio pedum

10. Completa homilia proceditur, ubi ratio pastoralis id suadeat, ad
lotionem pedum.

11. Viri selecti deducuntur a ministris ad sedilia loco apto parata. Tunc
sacerdos (deposita, si necesse sit, casula) accedit ad singulos, eisque
fundit aquam super pedes et abstergit, adiuvantibus ministris.

Here’s a quick, rough translation that I did on the fly (so it may contain errors I’ll fix later):

 

The Washing of Feet
 

 

10. The homily completed, he proceeds, where a pastoral reason would suggest, to the washing of feet.
 

 

11. The chosen men are led by the ministers to chairs prepared in a suitable place. Then the priest (removing, if it is necessary, the chasuble) goes to each, and
he pours water over the feet and he wipes clean, with the assisting ministers. 
 

 

The above is what the current Roman Missal says, which is somewhat different (differences highlighted) than what is said in the 1970 Roman Missal, page 244:


Lotio pedum

5. Post homiliam, in qua illustrantur potissima mysteria quae hac Missa
recoluntur, institutio scilicet sacrae Eucharistiae et ordinis sacerdotalis
necnon et mandatum Domini de caritate fraterna, proceditur, ubi ratio
pastoralis id suadeat, ad lotionem pedum.

6. Viri selecti deducuntur a ministris ad sedilia loco apto parata. Tunc
sacerdos (deposita, si necesse sit, planeta) accedit ad singulos, eisque
fundit aquam super pedes et abstergit, adiuvantibus ministris.

That is translated in the current English Missal as:

Washing of Feet

Depending on pastoral circumstances, the washing of feet follows the homily.

The men who have been chosen are led by the minsiters to chairs prepared in a suitable place. Then the priest (removing the chasuble if necessary) goes to each man. With the help of the mninisters, he pours water over each one’s feet and dries them.

What’s different is that a big huge chunk of the first paragraph has been omitted in the current English translation. That part says:

After the homily, in which the chief mysteries are illustrated which are recalled in this Mass, that is to say the institution of the holy Eucharist and the ordaining of the priests as well as the command of the Lord of fraternal charity, he proceeds, where a pastoral reason would suggest, to the washing of feet.

The directions regarding what the priest should have covered in the homily got dropped in the current translation and, now, they are gone from the Latin as well.

What was Lost is Found!

I follow stories about missing children, now. I don’t think they registered quite as strongly before I was a parent. With the news about Terri Schiavo, the tragedy of Jessica Lunsford (age 9, may she rest in peace) and all the other depressing stuff in the news (What ever happened to the newspaper GRIT ?) This story stood out a bit for me. A bright spot, and something to offer thanks for.

These two kids were abducted in Atlanta by their Mother’s estranged boyfriend. He shot their grandfather and took off with them. Their captor having committed violence in the act of abducting them, I would hazard a guess that their chances were not good. But they are back home, now. They are safe.

Get the story.

In the case of Jessica Lunsford, at least the man was caught, and quickly. Cudos to the authorities responsible for nabbing him. My daughter is 9. If such a thing were to happen to our family, I don’t know that I would ever be wholly sane again. Our prayers go out to her family and community.