From The Eternal Battle of The Church Militant Department:

(Ok, technically speaking, it's not eternal. The day of ultimate victory will come. In His time.)

Today's target of opportunity is the CINO colleges. In an article entitled CINO No More?, Malcolm A. Kline of campusreportonline.net gives me hope for the future of Catholic higher education.

The elevation of Pope Benedict XVI to the Papal Suite at the Vatican might give some of America’s Catholic colleges and universities the chance to be more than Catholic in Name Only (CINO).
“Catholic theology is not individual reflection but thinking with the faith of the Church,” then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said in a 1999 U. S. visit. “If you will do other things and have other ideas of what God could be or could not be, there is the freedom of the person to do it, clearly.”
“But one should not say this is Catholic theology.”


Who's afraid of a third world papabile?


When Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze thought out loud with the faith of the Church in a 2003 commencement address at Georgetown University, 70 professors at the Catholic school sent the dean a letter of protest. One theology professor actually walked off the stage.
“In many parts of the world, the family is under siege,” Cardinal Arinze had said. “It is opposed by an anti-life mentality as is seen in contraception, abortion, infanticide and euthanasia.”
“It is scorned and banalized by pornography, desecrated by fornication and adultery, mocked by homosexuality, sabotaged by irregular unions and cut in two by divorce.”


Now an example of the thinking of the enemy we face.


Many Catholic professors viewed this as cognitive dissonance. Many other Catholics saw in it the old-time religion, mainly those of the denomination who still attend Mass.
Contrast the Cardinal’s clarion call with a letter sent by a Gonzaga University Professor of Religious Studies to his colleagues in the faculty at that Jesuit College. Professor Robert J. Eagen sought to clarify the Church’s position on homosexuality.
“It is true that the current official Vatican teaching forbids any genital expression of these feelings on moral grounds,” (emphasis mine) Professor Eagen wrote, “but this is disputed by many distinguished Catholic theologians and other intellectuals and scholars.”


"Genital expression" sounds so much more pleasant than sodomy, buggery, or violation of the Natural Law. Then Eagen steps in it.


“I myself believe it is the result of continuing to make judgments based on an obsolete paradigm.”


If you believe The Church bequeathed to us by The Word Incarnate Himself is nothing but an "obsolete paradigm" you have two choices. The smart choice is to repent and confess your sins to God through the Sacrament of Penance and then avoid this sin in the future. The other choice is just foolishness.

From the Creeping Fascism Department:

The Wall Street Journal reminds us a lot of foolishness has accumulated in the U.S. Senate over the years.

Advise and Consign

With a showdown looming over the filibuster of judicial nominees, now is the time to point out another abuse of the Senate's "advise and consent" power. It's called the "hold," whereby an individual Senator can delay indefinitely a Presidential nomination, and it is seriously interfering with the operation of the executive branch.
Call it every Senator's personal "nuclear option." If he doesn't like a nominee or, more likely, doesn't like a policy of the agency to which the nominee is headed, all he has to do is inform his party leader that he is placing a hold on the nomination. Oh--and he can do so secretly, without releasing his name or a reason.
Like the filibuster, the hold appears nowhere in the Constitution but has evolved as Senators accrete more power to themselves. Senate rules say nothing about holds, which started out as a courtesy for Members who couldn't be present at votes. Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden has said holds are "a lot like the seventh-inning stretch in baseball. There is no official rule or regulation that talks about it, but it has been observed for so long that it has become a tradition."

The amount of power they wield must be decreased.

From the Those Wacky Russians Department:

or, is WWII really over?

Mosnews.com brings us Monkeynazis!

And even though they are not Butmonkeynazis, I would like to take this opportunity to wish Laura Ingraham a speedy and complete recovery from breast cancer. Please say a prayer for her.

And speaking of Laura, there MUST be some hot and available Catholic babes out there.

From the Blind Leading the Blind Investors Advice Department:

There is a short article in the April 25, 2005 Forbes magazine on Bassi Investments. (Sorry, but I have not found it on line.) Bassi buys stocks in companies that emphasize employee training. It sounds like a good idea to me because I have worked for companies where training was so bad, no training at all would have been better. If I find more information on Bassi Investments or their Human Capital Portfolio, I'll post it. (Warning: Do not take investment advice from me. I am poor and have been for some time.)

Saint of the Day

Humblest appy polly loggies (plural?) for forgetting these two Saints on April 28:
St. Peter Chanel and St. Louis Mary de Montfort - pray for us.

And the Saint of the Day for April 29 is:
St. Catherine of Siena - pray for us.

Gee, I wonder if Senator Ken is a good Catholic boy...

Remind me to toss the word "anti-Christ" around a bit later.


Salazar Backs Off 'Antichrist' Comment
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
(04-27) 20:39 PDT DENVER (AP) --
Colorado Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar, locked in a bitter tussle with a conservative Christian group over President Bush's judicial nominees, referred to the group as "the Antichrist." He backed off Wednesday, saying he regretted using the term.
Salazar attacked Focus on the Family during an interview Tuesday with KKTV in Colorado Springs, saying, "From my point of view, they are the Antichrist of the world."


I wonder what he thinks of Pope Benedict XVI...

Here is a perfect example of what is wrong with those who worship power.

Bob Novak is the best. Today he shows us that Republican politicians are morons too.

Senate plots to get rid of doc
Dr. Tom Coburn, a U.S. senator from Oklahoma for less than four months, last week was up to old tricks he started playing in the House a decade ago. He was making colleagues' lives miserable by exposing wasteful, unnecessary spending that is supposed to stay hidden. The Senate establishment, like its House counterpart, has retaliated by bringing ethics charges against the obstetrician-senator for going home to Muskogee, Okla., to deliver babies.


Senator Coburn sounds like my kind of guy. I guess the citizen-legislator of yore is long gone. We are ruled by a political class. What each member of this class chooses to call himself appears to be accidental.

Sometimes, there really are Nazis...

My thoughts about Godwin's Law, etc. First, the "law" itself:


Godwin's law

Godwin's law (also Godwin's rule of Nazi analogies) is
an adage in Internet culture that was originated by Mike Godwin in 1990. The law
states that:
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
There is a
tradition in many Usenet newsgroups that once such a comparison is made, the thread is
over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument
was in progress. In addition, it is considered poor form to invoke the law
explicitly. Godwin's law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper
bound on thread length in those groups. Many people understand Godwin's law to
mean this, although (as is clear from the statement of the law above) this is
not the original formulation.
Nevertheless, there
is also a widely-recognized codicil that
any intentional invocation of Godwin's law for its thread-ending effects will be
unsuccessful.

(Thanks to Wikipedia)



I remember mouthing off to a high school English teacher who was trying to get me to take Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" seriously. She explained it was really about the greatest sin since Hitlerism - namely, McCarthyism. You see, kiddies, it's not about the Salem witch trials, it's about how peace loving people of good conscience were (and are) persecuted in Amerika because of their beliefs. They are called commies, reds, and pinkos and accused of betraying their country when all they want to do is make the world a better place.

Smartass that I was, I said, "You know, sometimes there really are witches".

Everybody knows leftists love to call their opponents Nazis and Fascists while everyone to the right of the late two-wheeler aficionado Che Guevara can be safely compared to Hitler. In college, I was called a fascist for wearing a Solidarnosc pin on my jacket. So, yes, I am wary when I hear such words used.

But on the other hand... Live from Germany! Real Nazis under 1oo years of age. But of course, you say, they are German after all.

Does a British university teacher's union boycott of Israeli universities strike you as a Nazi tactic? Don't you smell even the faintest wiff of fascism?

Oh, yeah. Almost forgot. What about the way Terri Schiavo was murdered?

Yes, Virginia, there really are Nazis.

Maybe I should ride the Wayback Machine to 1930's Germany and see what I can see.



To be continued...