Evil & Banal, Unlimited has a branch office in Fyodor's neighborhood, too.

ABOVE: The power of the terminally rebellious peepee meets the power of the press in the bucolic Garden Spot of the good ol' US of A.


My third-favorite bumpkin scribe of the totalitarian middle, Gil 'Get' Smart, (That's what I call him in my inimitable idiot's idiom, though I think his real middle name is 'Not Quite Half'.) vomits forth some down-home fascism in the hopes of being called up to the Major Leagues of ignorance.

Get a load of this, kiddies:

When abortion is the lesser evil

No, he's not talking about two abortions. He'd have to remove both shoes to count that high. Sssshhh. Members of the sloth family are notoriously sensitive about everything.

Today’s bit is meant for female readers. And it comes with a warning label: It is going to be harsh. Unfortunately, it’s also real — and something you might want to consider before we go any farther down our current road.

Hey girls, it's a "bit"! Raping, torturing, (Real torture. Not Abu Grab-u s&m playtime torture.) and killing you is fodder for the Lancaster Sunday News' own Shecky Beria. He'll be here all week.

I want you to imagine, for a moment, that you are Imette St. Guillen.

You might recognize the name. St. Guillen was a college student pursuing her master’s degree at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Friends described her as a “caring, bright, radiant” young woman.

I want you to imagine that you are Imette St. Guillen, and went out with friends one night, as she did Feb. 25.And I want you to imagine that on your way home, like St. Guillen, you were savagely raped.

I want you to imagine that, like St. Guillen, your hands and feet were bound with plastic ties, your hair chopped off.

You were tortured, sodomized, perhaps “violated with objects,” as police say the real St. Guillen’s wounds suggest.

Like St. Guillen, you were choked, a tube sock stuffed down your throat. And I want you to imagine that your face — your face — was wrapped in packing tape, effectively obliterating your identity.

It was the most vicious, violent, animalistic attack imaginable. The real St. Guillen died as a result.

Note the lack of punishment for the rapist and murderer. Typical "liberal" compassion for women. Gil Boy's rage is reserved for the child conceived during a rape and for anyone civilized enough to actually love that child. Silly Christians, that's a "rape-product", not a baby.

But I want you to imagine that you managed to live through it.

And then, a few weeks later, you discover you’re pregnant. What do you do?

Many, perhaps most women, might be unable to bear the additional trauma. And the law, as it now stands, would permit them to end the pregnancy.

But as you know, there is a well-funded, well-organized attempt to change the law. It seems likely that at some point in the not-too-distant future, the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade. If it happens, states will write their own laws. Some may retain abortion rights. Others may restrict abortion, yet permit it in cases of incest or rape. But many states may outlaw even this. One, in fact, has already done so.

South Dakota recently became the first state to ban abortion outright, unless it is necessary to save the life of the mother. The law is likely to be struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court — it is too extreme a move, too soon.

But make no mistake, this type of draconian law is exactly what the front-line shock troops in the abortion wars want. And their politicians are listening: Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, a darling of conservative evangelicals, strongly backed the South Dakota law, saying that “rape and incest are horrible crimes, but why punish the innocent child?”

Ah, Get, your blood soaked rags are showing. As is always the case, kiddies, Mr. 'Not Quite Half' Smart's real beef is with God. Killing children is Gil Boy's way of saying "You're not the boss of me, Lord."

La Smart has a particular thing against the politically active friendly protestant forces over in Amish country. In a word, he's a powerless, cowardly, outnumbered rebel who strikes at those who cannot strike back at him. After all, when's the last time you saw a six week old child cave in the skull of a rich, fat, white, left-fascist newspaper gauleiter like old Gil?

It's all political for "men" like Get Smart. See, rape victims might vote for Gil's favorite Democrass mass murderer. Abortion victims can never vote against Comrade Smart's interests.

Always, and in everything, kiddies, remember it is Love versus Power.

One wonders if Mr. Brownback would feel the same had his face been wrapped in packing tape as he was violated by foreign objects.

Actually, Get, Mr. Brownback seems to be, unlike you, a man of principle. I would sooner put my life in his hands than in yours, you petit fasciste thug. Other people's lives seem much too cheap to you, boy.

For it is telling that the men — and it’s almost always men — who scream the loudest for such restrictive laws never fully address the reality of rape or incest. They can never know what it must be like to have to carry the child of a monster who has destroyed your life, how it may force you, day after day, to relive the horror that got you pregnant in the first place.

It is always telling that it is men like you, Gil Boy, who scream the loudest about keeping baby-chopping legal so you can "dispose of" any little indiscretion your genitals might commit. "Bad peepee!"

In truth, they don’t really care. Oh, they will claim to, and there is certainly a raft of organizations dedicated to making the unbearable bearable. But when even a clump of tissue (Ahhhh, if only Gil's mom had had the option of chopping up and throwing away little Forest Clump back in the day...Hey, if he gets to fantasize about killing people, why don't I? At least I wouldn't go after the innocent ones... - F. G.) days or mere seconds old is the moral equivalent of a 6-year-old, abortion becomes a crime greater than any that might have been perpetrated upon you. However brutally you may have been assaulted, if you wind up pregnant, it doesn’t matter.

You don’t matter.

Note the superabundance of tiny paragraphs. Gil must have read Hemingway. Another champion of women's rights, ol' Ernie was.

And so as we hurtle (Oooooh, Gil! We're hurtling! - F. G.) toward the day when Roe v. Wade is overturned and people in this state, and others, labor to pass the most restrictive laws possible, it is worth wondering how you might feel had you been raped as St. Guillen was, and wound up pregnant.

Maybe you would have the child, regardless.

But if you didn’t want to, I suspect you might resent those who would paint you as the criminal.

Gil Smart is associate editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at gsmart@lnpnews.com, or phone 717-291-8817.

Drop ol' Gil Boy a line. Don't expect a civil reply. But then, why would you? After reading his hateful and murderous fulmination against children, one would be surprised to find La Smart functioning in polite society without one of those Hannibal Lecter masks: "Babies taste goooooooood. Especially with a nice Chianti."

All things considered, (Ha! Get listens daily, I'll bet. His "thought" has that pre-cooked quality about it.) I gave Get the benefit of the doubt in my e-mail decrying his latest bit of printed crapulence:



Dear Get,
You really have to get some proofreaders. Your last column seemed to imply you advocate chopping up little kids because their dads are rapists. This would be akin to Lancaster countians sending you their tax bills because your fat, rich, white owners (Oops, bosses.) are assured of not losing a dime on their convention center boondoggle because our fat, rich, white owners (Oops, politicians.) are backing it with our hard earned money. (By the way, where's your outrage on that one, Mr. Friend of the Little Guy? Oh, right. You're their bitch. Somebody's got to pay for all those donuts and cheeseburgers, right?)

Anyway, everybody who can read and is bored enough to look at your foolishness knows you are just an ignorant little goof who's good for a couple of laughs each Sunday. You don't have the nerve to actually be a child-murdering pervert. You're more Vichy France than Stalinist Russia. (Of course, I don't doubt you could grow into a babykiller. They say Fidel is still a little squeamish at the sight of his victims' blood. You can always hire it done.)

So get out from under your desk and find someone to clean up your mess, boy. You wouldn't want anyone to think any less of you, after all. (Ha! It was impossible to type that last sentence with a straight face.)

Fyodor Garibaldi

Jed Babbin comes pretty darn close to nailing down this pesky war thingee.

War is war and we're not fighting this one like we mean to win it. Freedom and the rule of law must be left to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. (Unless you want us to flatten both countries like we did to the Germans and the Japanese. Democracy is much easier to impose when everyone is beaten, cowed, demoralized, starving, and tired of resisting.)

From The American Spectator:

A useful battle among conservatives began last week when National Review's Rich Lowry fired a salvo at those he calls "the 'to hell with them' hawks." Lowry aims at the head of the conservatives who grow more skeptical of the president's strategy. Lowry accuses them of writing off the reform of Islam, of misunderstanding the lessons of Vietnam, and of failing to understand that our goal in this war is to win the hearts and minds of all Islam. Lowry has picked a good fight, and his challenge must be met because the neo-Wilsonians such as he are profoundly wrong about the nature of this war and how we must fight it to win in the long haul. This is not an argument over who is braver or a more stalwart supporter of the president. It's about who understands this war, what it will take for us to win, and when we will know if and when we have. Who can most accurately define victory and thus chart a path to it? It is not Lowry and the Bush-Wilsonians who believe victory in this war can only be achieved by democratizing the Middle East.

The nascent Iraqi democracy is neither the center of gravity in this war nor a factor determinative of victory or defeat. Iraq is but one key campaign in a larger war and if it becomes a democracy that is a collateral accomplishment, nothing more. To say that doesn't make the sayer an isolationist or someone who wants to abandon Iraq. We didn't invade Afghanistan and Iraq because they weren't democracies. If the lack of democracy were a casus belli we'd be at war with about two-thirds of the world. We counterattacked the Taliban because with malice aforethought they provided the base from which Osama bin Laden organized an attack that killed three thousand Americans and then refused to turn him over to us when we gave them the choice between doing so and war. In Iraq we sincerely believed that the Saddam Hussein regime posed a threat to Americans and attacked only after the UN failed, as it always does, to deal with such a threat. The only goal of this war, which Lowry and the others lost track of, is to end the threat of radical Islam and the terrorism that is its chosen weapon against us.

We mean to win this war by destroying the regimes that provide terrorists with weapons, funds, people, and sanctuary. We mean to defeat the radical Islamist ideology (for that is what it is, not a religion) as we defeated the Soviet communist ideology. I and those who agree with me aren't "'to hell with them' hawks": we are Endgame Conservatives.

We understand that Islamic terrorism cannot threaten us significantly without the support of nations. We are impatient with Mr. Bush's neo-Wilsonianism because it allows the enemy and its apologists to control the pace and direction of the war. We are unwilling to allow the prosecution of this war against the terrorist nations to be delayed for however long it takes for Iraqis to sort themselves out. It is impossible for them to do so while neighboring nations -- Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia -- actively interfere. Endgame conservatives don't want to be caught in the web of failed nostrums of Vietnam. We won't wait for Islam to be reformed or to win the hearts and minds of the mullahs in Tehran. We don't consider Islam unreformable; but we understand that it is unreformable by non-Muslims. And we understand that the only way to spur Muslims to accomplish that reformation is to break the hold radical Islam has over a growing number of nations.

Lowry says that the global war on terror is most like a counterinsurgency, and that it can only be won by persuading radical Islamists to either lay down their arms or not take them up at all. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the war we're in, and what our goals must be to defeat the enemy. Like Vietnam, this war is not only a counterinsurgency. First, it is a war against nations that has to be fought both diplomatically and on the battlefields, both conventionally and otherwise. Second, it is an ideological war that can't be won with soft words and euphemisms. And third -- in Iraq, the Philippines, and much of the Horn of Africa -- it is both a counterinsurgency and war for ascendancy among tribes and religious sects. (Emphasis mine.)

BINGO! The paragraph above and the one below pretty much say it all, kiddies.

We don't, like Lowry, completely mistake Vietnam. Lowry accuses us of missing the point that we only began to win in Vietnam when we "started to fashion a true counterinsurgency strategy focusing on hearts and minds, on holding territory and on training Vietnamese security forces." Endgame conservatives understand the principal lesson of Vietnam is something else entirely: if you fail to prosecute a war in the manner that will produce victory decisively, you will lose it inevitably. (Emphasis mine.) Iraq, by the President's and Lowry's formulation, is a self-imposed quagmire. They believe that unless and until we establish democracy there we cannot prosecute the war against the other national sponsors of terrorism. We are now at the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion, almost five years since 9-11. If we had prosecuted this war as we did World War II, we would not be facing a pre-nuclear Iran, Syria's Bashar Assad would be only a bad memory and Saudi Arabia would have been forced to cease its support of terrorism. And Iraq would be a much more peaceful place, closer to the goal Messrs. Bush and Lowry seek.

The "hearts and minds" campaign in Vietnam was essentially irrelevant to winning or losing. What lost the war was President Johnson's gradualist approach to fighting it. LBJ was a stringless yo-yo. His stop-and-start, fight today, negotiate tomorrow and fight again the next day strategy, if you can call it that, was a disaster. When we pounded the North, we moved toward victory by depriving the insurgents (and the regular North Vietnamese forces) of the support on which they depended. When LBJ sputtered and stuttered, we lost what we had gained and gave the enemy time to recover and retake the offensive.

Lowry's formulation is, at its core, colonialist. He writes, "The project in Iraq is an attempt to shift the terms of the competition to who can better deliver peace, prosperity and representation." How shall we compete for hearts and minds of the Muslim world by offering Western democracy in a culture that, even at its most benevolent, cannot separate church from state? The only way would be to re-create the British Raj of colonial India. Would Lowry commit the hundreds of thousands of troops and tens of thousands of civilian bureaucrats to running a colonial government in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia for the next hundred years? I doubt it. And neither should anyone else interested in winning this war. We cannot and should not abandon Iraq. There, we should stay the course at least until the terrorist regimes that surround it are removed and their interference in Iraq ended.

Lowry's argument boils down to unquestioning support for the President's push to democratize the Middle East. He questions whether "the 'to hell with them' hawks" can support a responsible foreign policy and accuses them of wanting to put our civilization into a "permanent posture of strategic defense." No Endgame conservative wants to cut and run, or thinks Iraq is lost. Nor do we want to prevent America from ever engaging in another campaign. What we want to do is prosecute this war decisively to its conclusion, which Mr. Bush isn't doing.

Mr. Bush's democratization strategy, naive and Wilsonian, has put us in the posture of strategic defense. His original formulation -- that nations are either with us or against us -- has been whittled away to a confrontation-cum-engagement strategy that enables Iran to offer cooperation in Iraq while buying time to build nuclear weapons. The President is in the process of putting the UN in control of the Iran nuclear issue. This will result, in all probability, in allowing Iran enough time to achieve nuclear weapons. In Iraq, we are on the defensive because we haven't taken sufficient action to end the foreign interference that disrupts the nation-building effort. It's time to extricate ourselves from the Wilsonian policy quagmire. Let's press on with this war through the endgame and defeat the enemy decisively on both the military and ideological fronts. When that happens there will be time to encourage the rise of democracy in the Middle East, and many more of its peoples willing to undertake it.

TAS contributing editor Jed Babbin is the author of Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe Are Worse Than You Think (Regnery, 2004).

Fyodor Presents the Comedy Stylings of Eldrick "Tiger" Woods.

I heard this one on the radio from Steve Czaban, who got it from Golf Digest, who heard it from David Feherty, who got it from Tiger himself.


Tiger: "What do you call a black guy flying a plane?"

Feherty: "I don't know. What?"

Tiger: "You call him the pilot, you racist!"


Now that's funny.

Airlines Lost 30 Million Bags In '05

That's the headline, kiddies. The reality is this: That is 1% of all bags handled.

1%.

And remember, bag handling is not the number one priority of airlines.

Police: Man Killed Boy For Walking Across Yard

Obviously, this is a monstrous crime and Mr. Martin should be executed if convicted of the boy's murder. But once upon a time, a man who took care of his property and was proud of how it looked wasn't considered a crank and a lunatic.

Also, once upon a time, people respected others' property because they respected other people. That was a long time ago.

Police: Man Killed Boy For Walking Across Yard

An Ohio man who neighbors say was devoted to his meticulously kept lawn has been charged with murder in the shooting of a 15-year-old boy who apparently walked across his yard.

A 911 tape recorded 66-year-old Charles Martin as saying, "I just killed a kid." Martin also told a dispatcher, "I've been harassed by him and his parents for five years. Today just blew it up."

The child, Larry Mugrage, was Martin's neighbor.

According to police, Martin and Mugrage had a history of arguments about Martin's yard. The two argued again Sunday, police said, and when Mugrage returned, Martin was waiting outside and shot him twice.

He then called 911, officials said.

Martin: "I just killed a kid." 911 Operator: "You just killed a kid?" Martin: "Yes, ma'am."

Later, the operator asked Martin to explain what happened.

Martin: "Kids just been giving me a bunch of (expletive), making other kids harass me in my place, tearing things up."

911 Operator: "OK, so what'd you do?"

Martin: "I shot him with a (expletive) 4-10 shotgun twice."

911 Operator: "You shot him with a shotgun? Where is he?"

Martin: "He's laying in his yard."

Neighbors said Martin lived alone quietly, often sitting in front of his one-story home with its neat lawn, well-trimmed shrubbery and flagpole with U.S. and Navy flags flying.

Another neighbor described the victim as "a good kid."

Mugrage, a student at Glen Este High School, was pronounced dead at a local hospital. Authorities said Martin has no prior criminal record, but he does have a history of complaints about neighbors allegedly damaging his property. Other teens from the neighborhood said Martin was obsessive about his lawn.

May God have mercy on both their souls.

Martin is scheduled to be back in a Clermont County court Thursday.

Saint of the Day and daily Mass readings.

Today is the Feast of St. Nicholas von Flue, soldier, father of ten, hermit, peacemaker, and the Patron Saint of Switzerland. Pray for us, all you angels and saints.

Today's reading is Daniel 3:25, 34-43.
Today's Responsorial Psalm is Psalms 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9.
Today's Gospel reading is Matthew 18:21-35.


[Links to the readings will be from the NAB until I can find another chapter and verse searchable Douay-Rheims Bible on-line.]


Everyday links:

The Blessed Virgin Mary
The Rosary
Our Mother of Perpetual Help
Prayers from EWTN
National Coalition of Clergy and Laity (dedicated to action for a genuine Catholic Restoration)
The Catholic Calendar Page for Today


Just in case you are wondering what exactly Catholics believe, here is

The Apostles Creed

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son Our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.He descended into Hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into Heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Amen.


Memorare

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that any one who fled to thy protection, implored thy help or sought thy intercession,was left unaided.Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins my Mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful; O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy clemency hear and answer me. Amen.


St. Joseph, her most chaste spouse, pray for us.


Prayer to St. Anthony, Martyr of Desire

Dear St. Anthony, you became a Franciscan with the hope of shedding your blood for Christ. In God's plan for you, your thirst for martyrdom was never to be satisfied. St. Anthony, Martyr of Desire, pray that I may become less afraid to stand up and be counted as a follower of the Lord Jesus. Intercede also for my other intentions. (Name them.)


PRAYER TO SAINT MICHAEL THE ARCHANGEL

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil; may God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the divine power, thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

The latest from Orit, my favorite hot Israeli babe.

LEFT: Nothing says security like a "charming Jewess" (Remember Liz Taylor in Ivanhoe? Or was that "charming negress" - Abe Lincoln to Lt. Uhuru in Star Trek Episode 77?) with a gun.


Orit seems to almost have come full circle. She may once again call the good ol' US of A home.

Thursday night -- yet again. I don't want to go out.

A friend invited me to a happening party, and another friend invited me for a drink, but I still don't feel like dancing or drinking. I'm not in the mood for small talk and frivolity. Sometimes I wish I was. I know that in the past month I have sunken into a slight depression.

Now I'm wondering if Tel Aviv is not the only problem.

About two weeks ago I thought that maybe I had to leave the city and live on a settlement -- to become a "hilltop youth." Friends told me about an outpost deep in the Judean desert -- between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea -- that mixes religious and secular singles and couples. Maybe there I would find my place.

I was intrigued for a while and even spent Shabbat at this secluded hill consisting of a dozen caravans. I thought that maybe that's what I needed -- a simple life in the Judean desert to clear my head and to hear the Word about what I was supposed to do with my life. I had a good time -- I ate Shabbat meals together with some of the residents and we talked at length about the horrible state that Israel is in. I felt that I could unleash the frustrations I couldn't unleash with my friends in Tel Aviv.

Problem is, this desert outpost, while built legally, has no more vacancies. The Gush Etzion municipality no longer provides them with any caravans or support of any kind. I offered to try living there for a period -- if I really liked it I would raise money and buy my own caravan -- but the woman in charge of absorption said that they are giving priority to families. She wants more children around for her kids to play with.

Needless to say, it was a big turn-off -- here I came with all this idealism, good will, and enthusiasm, only to be rejected. I noticed that even settlements and outposts, which preach about the evils of selfishness in Israel, can sometimes be parochial and cliquey. At the end of the day most people are concerned with their own needs and desires, which, ultimately, is human nature.

Orit, baby! I can't believe you don't get it. For pioneers, children are like gold. And so are couples of child-bearing age.

Where does this leave me? I don't know, but I'm thinking more and more of moving back to the States. The Land of Israel is sacred, but the State of Israel is a blasphemy. I'd rather live freely under a gentile government than be oppressed by a Jewish government.

Fifty years of socialist government and being an American welfare client will do that to anyone.

Sometimes I think that we live in galut even in Israel. Our government is more oppressive to the Jews than the American or even some -- but certainly not all -- European governments. The rights and religion of Jews as individuals are protected in the States far more than they are here. And that's why being Jewish is cool and hip in the States, whereas in Israel Judaism is to be thwarted. So while I wouldn't be on Holy Land in the States, I won't always feel persecuted and undermined by the government and the people who vote for it.

Being Jewish is hip and cool here? Black folks, call your office.

Jews like to think that they own each other. Because we are all Jews we like to think we have the right to abuse, uproot, and control each other. In the United States the separation of religion and state and the relative protection of individual rights lend to a society where Jews can live according to their conscience and religion. In Israel the mish-mosh between religion and state and religion and society creates rifts and turmoil. Israel needs an intellectual revolution if it is to survive.

If I may be serious for a moment, kiddies.

Since the Nazis did not make any distinction between observant and non-observant Jews and killed every Jew they could, Jews have seemed reluctant to admit there are indeed different kinds of Jews. It may be time...

There is a lot I need to think about -- and I still have revolutionary ideas I want to get on paper -- but I don't know if I could do so in Israel -- confined, alone, struggling, and poor. The walls are closing in on me -- literally. And I feel as if I'm always besieged by stupidity, mediocrity, and barbarism -- in the media headlines, in the cafes, in the government offices - that turn the knife that is already in my back.

I've been here for almost seven years -- seven years of hard toil and labor. Yes, I had unforgettable and amazing experiences and I met extraordinary people, but maybe it's time for shmita -- a seventh year sabbatical. I'm worn out.

If two weeks ago I didn't want to speak to my secular friends, now I can't talk to my religious-Zionist friends. I know they'll try their hardest to convince me to stay. I know they'll call me a traitor. They'll tell me not to give-up. But their lectures will only make me feel more alone and invalidated.

So I'm planning to spend Passover -- the time of our liberation -- with my family in the US. It will be somewhat of a pilot trip. All I want is freedom, for me and the entire house of Israel.

Welcome back, Orit. You won't have to worry about the goat-raping murderers here. (As much.) But America has other kinds of predators who prey on good Jewish girls.

Meanwhile, back in the Holy Land...

Muslim and Jewish leaders open congress to discuss how to work toward peace
Muslim and Jewish leaders meeting in a rare face-to-face forum have appealed to their faithful not to view each other as enemies and keep religion from being hijacked by extremists.



Hodgepodge of Jews, Muslims and Christians cross the Sahara for peace
Ex-Israeli fighter pilot Gil Fogiel rarely talked about being a prisoner of war in Syria, until he sat across a campfire in the middle of the desert with people he long considered his enemies.



Apples from Israeli Golan Heights begin arriving in Syria
Truckloads of apples produced by Arab farmers in the Israeli Golan Heights began arriving in Syria as part of a government drive to help the farmers to market their main crop.
(Thanks to Israelinsider for the heads up.)

The Theology of the Body: 64. Marriage and Celibacy in the Light of the Resurrection of the Body

In his General Audience of 11 November 1981, the Holy Father began a new segment of his catechesis on theology of the body, basing his talk on the words of Christ to the Sadducees on the general resurrection. "These words are of fundamental importance for understanding marriage in the Christian sense and also the renunciation of conjugal life for the kingdom of heaven."



Marriage and Celibacy in the Light of the Resurrection of the Body

On Wednesday, 11 November, at the General Audience held in the Paul VI Hall, the Holy Father resumed his catechesis on the theology of the body, basing his talk on the discussion between Our Lord and the Sadducees. Following is the text of the Pope's message.



1. After a rather long pause, today we will resume the meditations which have been going on for some time, which we have called reflections on the theology of the body.

In continuing, it is opportune to go back to the words of the Gospel in which Christ referred to the resurrection. These words are of fundamental importance for understanding marriage in the Christian sense and also the renunciation of conjugal life for the kingdom of heaven.

The complex casuistry of the Old Testament in the field of marriage not only drove the Pharisees to go to Christ to pose to him the problem of the indissolubility of marriage (cf. Mt 19:3-9; Mk 10:2-12). Another time, it also drove the Sadducees to question him about the so-called levirate law.(1) This conversation is harmoniously reported by the synoptic Gospels (cf. Mt 22:24-30; Mk 12:18-27; Lk 20:27-40). Although all three accounts are almost identical, we note some differences, slight, but at the same time significant. Since the conversation is reported in three versions, those of Matthew, Mark and Luke, a deeper analysis is necessary, since it contains elements which have an essential significance for the theology of the body.

Alongside the other two important conversations, namely, the one in which Christ refers to the "beginning" (cf. Mt 19:3-9; Mk 10:2-12), and the other in which an appeal was made to man's inner self (to the heart), indicating desire and the lust of the flesh as a source of sin (cf. Mt 5:27-32), the conversation which we now propose to analyze constitutes, I would say, the third element of the triptych of the enunciations of Christ himself: a triptych of words that are essential and constitutive for the theology of the body. In this conversation Jesus referred to the resurrection, thus revealing a completely new dimension of the mystery of man.

Christ refutes belief of Sadducees

2. The revelation of this dimension of the body, stupendous in its content—and yet connected with the Gospel reread as a whole and in depth—emerges in the conversation with the Sadducees, "who say that there is no resurrection" (Mt 22:23).(2) They had come to Christ to set before him an argument which in their judgment confirmed the soundness of their position. This argument was to contradict "the hypothesis of the resurrection." The Sadducees' argument is the following: "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man must take the wife, and raise up children for his brother" (Mk 12:19). The Sadducees were referring here to the so-called levirate law (cf. Dt 25:5-10). Drawing upon the prescription of this ancient law, they presented the following case: "There were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and when he died, he left no children. The second took her, and died, leaving no children, and the third likewise, and the seven left no children. Last of all the woman also died. In the resurrection whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife" (Mk 12:20-23).(3)

Wisdom and power of God himself

3. Christ's answer is one of the answer-keys of the Gospel, in which there is revealed—precisely starting from purely human arguments and in contrast with them—another dimension of the question, that is, the one that corresponds to the wisdom and power of God himself. Similarly, the case had arisen of the tax coin with Caesar's image and of the correct relationship between what is divine and what is human (Caesar's) in the sphere of authority (cf. Mt 22:15-22). This time Jesus replied as follows: "Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven" (Mk 12:24-25). This is the fundamental reply to the case, that is, to the problem it contains. Knowing the thoughts of the Sadducees, and realizing their real intentions, Christ subsequently took up again the problem of the possibility of resurrection, denied by the Sadducees themselves: "As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God said to him, 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not a God of the dead, but of the living" (Mk 12:26-27). As we can see, Christ quoted the same Moses to whom the Sadducees had referred, and ended with the affirmation: "You are quite wrong" (Mk 12:27).

Another affirmation

4. Christ repeats this conclusive affirmation even a second time. In fact, he said it the first time at the beginning of his explanation. Then he said: "You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God" (Mt 22:29). We read in Mark: "Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?" (12:24). In Luke's version (20:27-36), on the contrary, Christ's same answer is without polemical tones, without that, "You are quite wrong." On the other hand, he proclaimed the same thing since in his answer he introduced some elements which are not found either in Matthew or in Mark. Here is the text: "Jesus said to them, 'The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection'" (Lk 20:34-36). With regard to the possibility of resurrection, Luke—like the other two synoptics—refers to Moses, that is, to the passage in Exodus 3:2-6. This passage narrates that the great legislator of the old covenant had heard from the bush, which "was burning, yet not consumed," the following words: "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" (Ex 3:6). In the same place, when Moses had asked God's name, he had heard the answer: "I am who am" (Ex 3:14).

In this way, therefore, speaking of the future resurrection of the body, Christ refers to the power of the living God. We will have to consider this subject in greater detail later.

NOTES

1. This law, contained in Dt 25:7-10, concerns brothers who lived under the same roof. If one of them died without leaving children, the dead man's brother had to marry his brother's widow. The child born of this marriage was recognized as the son of the deceased, so that his stock would not be extinguished and the inheritance would be kept in the family (cf. 3:9-4:12).

2. In the time of Christ, the Sadducees formed, within Judaism, a sect bound to the circle of the priestly aristocracy. In opposition to the oral tradition and theology elaborated by the Pharisees, they proposed the literal interpretation of the Pentateuch, which they considered the main source of the Jahwist religion. Since there was no mention of life after death in the most ancient books of the Bible, the Sadducees rejected the eschatology proclaimed by the Pharisees, affirming that "souls die together with the body" (cf. Joseph, Antiquitates Judaicae, XVII, 1.4, 16).

The conceptions of the Sadducees are not directly known to us, however, since all their writings were lost after the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70, when the sect itself disappeared. We get what little information there is about the Sadducees from the writings of their ideological opponents.

3. The Sadducees, turning to Jesus for a purely theoretical "case," at the same time attacked the primitive conception of the Pharisees on life after the resurrection of the body. They insinuated, in fact, that faith in the resurrection of the body leads to admitting polyandry, which is contrary to God's law.

Watch the NYT notice a conservative black Republican!

Ann Coulter takes us into the fetid world of the racially sensitive left-fascists who still give Jayson Blair good references:

I guess the only way we'll ever find out how many blacks have worked in the Bush administration is to wait for them to get in trouble someday so we can read the breathless, triumphant stories on the front page of the New York Times about a black Republican scofflaw. It's amazing that anyone has ever heard of Condoleezza Rice -- she's never even been arrested for jaywalking.

Claude Allen, whom I first heard of this week, was a top adviser to President Bush for more than 4 1/2 years. Soon after Bush was elected in 2000, he made Allen the No. 2 official at the Department of Health and Human Services. Allen later became Bush's domestic policy adviser, meeting with the president several times a week.

In 2003, Bush nominated Allen to a federal judgeship on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals -- which nomination was then blocked by the party that wouldn't exist without black votes. Deploying their usual strategy against black Republicans, Democrats raised questions about Allen's "legal credentials": Democrat-ese for "He's black, so he's probably not very smart." Allen went to Duke Law School, where he was remembered fondly by law professor Walter Dellinger, later Clinton's solicitor general.

During the entire time this talented, intelligent, magnificently conservative black man held high positions in the Bush administration, he was mentioned in only 11 articles in The New York Times. (A small part of Times Executive Editor Bill Keller dies every time the paper is forced to mention any black top officials in the Bush administration. It might remind people that the most highly placed black in the Clinton administration was his secretary, Betty Currie.)

Heehee! (Poor woman. You do know Goober II made her clean up those messes, don't you?)

But since Allen was accused of stealing from department stores a few weeks ago, the Times has mentioned him in seven articles -- including a major front page article on Monday, coverage more appropriate to the first moon landing. This makes Allen the first black alleged thief whose photo has ever appeared in the New York Times.

Heehee!

Allen isn't even working for the Bush administration anymore. Yet the Times is wallowing in his agony. I've never seen people enjoy another person's private pain so much -- at least not since a prosecutor started investigating Rush Limbaugh for taking too many back pain pills.

Let me be the first to say: Congratulations, Mr. Allen! The New York Times really hates you. Welcome to my world. We're so happy to have you in our club.

I'm not shocked by the information that Claude Allen is not without original sin. But it has to be said: He was pretty close.

Allen emerged from a tough neighborhood in Washington, D.C., to go to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and then Duke Law School. He joined a "mostly white and liberal" fraternity, according to the Times, where he was adored -- despite the fact that he didn't drink, a major demerit at a fraternity -- for his ability to get along with anyone. One fraternity brother told the Times that Allen was "always thoughtful and respectful of different opinions" -- a trait that would come in handy for a black teetotaler living in a UNC frat house.

He became a born-again Christian at college and -- the obvious next step -- a Republican after college. These acts are known in the liberal rulebook as "strike two" and "strike three," respectively. He explained leaving the party of his birth to become a Republican with eloquence: "I realized after the fact that I agree more with the Republican Party platform, that it talked about independence, that it talked about individual responsibility, individual rights, it talked about the ability to guarantee opportunities, not outcomes," adding, "that was very much what my family stood for."

Amen to that, Brother. I wonder if Celine Dion has heard about this...

He is married with four children, all of whom he home-schools. (Is there such a thing as strike four?) So he was already the moral equivalent to a Ku Klux Klanner in liberal eyes. Wait, no, if he were a former Klanner, he'd be the Democratic senator from West Virginia. Let me rephrase that: He was already a meat-eating, God-fearing, patriotic American in liberal eyes.

Allen also worked for the sainted Jesse Helms, former senator from North Carolina. By now, the average liberal would need yoga and a Barbra Streisand album to calm down. After Helms' 1984 Democratic opponent, James B. Hunt Jr., ran a TV commercial saying Helms was backed by "right-wing nuts," Allen reacted by saying that if the Helms campaign was run by similar guttersnipes, they could say Hunt was backed by "queers."

Heehee!

This week at the New York Times, it was revenge of the queers. I'm sorry it took a tough period in Allen's life for the New York Times to feature him under a banner headline on its front page, but all in all, I'm glad to finally know about Claude Allen. I'm proud to have this great fellow sinner in our party.

Bless Mr. Allen and his family, Lord. And protect them from those stone throwers who are without sin.

NEWS FLASH!

Sarandon to Play Cindy Sheehan in Movie...

...Several Other Ghouls Miss Chance at Role of a Lifetime

Sharon Stone, who wasn't even the best looking chick in Meadville, PA back in the day, and was never as hot as she was made out to be, proves she...

...just may be the dimmest bulb on the nearly extingushed Hollyweird scoreboard.

Peace just a breath away, says Sharon Stone

Yeah, but... Sharon baby, what if the guy breathing down your lovely neck is a certified goat-raping terrorist wearing a C4 vest instead of an Armani suit?

A peaceful co-existence between the peoples of the Middle East is but a breath away, Hollywood star Sharon Stone said after a highly publicized visit to Israel.

"It feels to me that we have an opportunity ... to choose understanding in a new way," she told a press conference in Paris when asked about her trip.

I really shouldn't pick on the Hollyweird glitterati. They think that since so many people pay so much attention to them, they can really make a difference in this poor old world by just saying something. Or anything. It's vanity, that's all.

"And it really is just a breath. It's just an agreement that's just a breath. We are not far apart. We can choose to have this alternative kind of growth that is a collective nuance of understanding.

Now wait just a darn minute there, missy! Is it a breath or an agreement?

"We are just that breath away from a peaceful co-existence," she added after her visit to Israel as a guest of the Peres Center for Peace, a foundation run by Nobel laureate and former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres.

"Peaceful co-existence"? Is she channeling every commie dictator from Lenin to whatever arch-murderer is running Slave China today? Where's Shirley MacLaine when you need her? (BTW, Shirl, baby, I was Charlemagne and I'm darn sure I could have done better than you.)

Stone, 48, who visited several projects aimed at promoting peace, including a kindergarten for Israeli and Palestinian children in Jaffa, was also photographed praying at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, the holiest Jewish shrine.

Stone, who is also an ardent champion of women's rights, was in Paris ahead of the release of her latest film "Basic Instinct II".

Yeah, I'm sure this flick will be another triumph for oppressed women everywhere.

She told journalists that she was delighted that women were stepping up to take their place in the world, taking on new jobs to which they brought something unique, "their feminine instinct."

"This is a new and very exciting time for women, because women by their very nature are creative and not destructive. (Hoohoo! Hitlery ought to use ol' Sharon as a speechwriter! Gebärmütter über alles! - F.G.) And this is an extraordinary and important thing that we can bring into a world that awaits the opportunity for peace."

Big Mother Is Watching.

Man jailed 30 days for having disorderly house in Nebraska...

Party Crack Down at Kansas University...

State Shuts Down Online March Madness...

Thanks to Drudge for these links.

From The Holier Than Thou Department:

Three Tenors swag not as valuable as once thought...




Scandal shakes public radio...

The sedate, urbane world of public broadcasting was rattled Thursday as prosecutors charged three former employees of Michigan Public Media with illegally accepting golf club memberships, Persian rugs, airline tickets and massages in exchange for on-air considerations at the state's top public radio station.

Golf club memberships and Persian rugs are racist. Massages are sexist. And that last one sounds like good old fashioned payola. Haydn's publicists must have been working overtime...

Each of the men -- current WDET-FM general manager Michael Coleman, Jeremy Nordquist and Justin Ebright -- was charged by Washtenaw County prosecutors in Ann Arbor with embezzlement of under $20,000 while working at Michigan Public Media-controlled WUOM-FM (91.7). Each could face up to five years in prison if convicted.

An internal audit also found sloppy recordkeeping, excessive bonuses and expense-account fraud that totaled more than $50,000 from July 2001 to December 2005, said Timothy Slottow, University of Michigan's chief financial officer. U-M owns and runs Michigan Public Media.

WDET (101.9) and WUOM are the major public radio stations in Michigan, and public radio has long had a trustworthy image of being above the kind of influence-peddling that has occasionally tarnished commercial radio.

The charges shocked listeners of the National Public Radio affiliates.

"This is a sad revelation for Detroit, which has functioned as Michigan's cultural engine for so long," (Huh? If true, that explains quite a bit about the death of Detroit. - F.G.) said public radio listener Willie Northway of Ann Arbor. "The talk and news offered by Michigan Radio is an invaluable service to the community."

Great news from Drudge!

House Expected To Be In Session Only 97 Days This Year...

Happy Spring!

1:26 Eastern

(BTW, there is no sign of global or local warming in Totalitarian Pennsylvania today. Darn groundhog.)

Once upon a time in the West...

UN: Humans cause worst extinctions since dinosaurs...

...D. Keith Mano wrote a novel in the 1970's called The Bridge. In it, those who care more for "nature" than man have taken over and returned us to the Stone Age to save the planet from the scourge that is humanity.

Eventually, the ecocrats (my neo-logism, not Mr. Mano's) realize they cannot prevent the holy bacteria from being killed when evil humans inhale them, so they order the murder of the human race (including their own suicides).

We have been warned, kiddies.

These morons hate themselves and everyone else. And they are preparing to do something about it.

The state-sanctioned murder of Terri Schiavo plus one year.

Thanks to WI Catholic Musings for the reminder. Watching basketball all weekend is fun, kiddies, but it is still just a game. This is the real world:

A Year Since Court-Ordered Death of Innocent Terri

As a nurse since 1972, and a nursing assistant before that, I have been caring for many different people with head injuries and strokes, cognitively and developmentally disabled caused by many different things (some genetic, some from birth, some from accidents such as falls, vehicular crashes, etc).

I have also cared for many dying patients over the years.

There is a huge difference between the two.

Disabled people do not deserve to be murdered by starvation and dehydration. They deserve the best care that we can give them, meeting them at the level that they are at, and trying to assist them to any level higher that they can achieve, regardless of how long it takes.

Terri Schindler Schiavo was not dying when court orders were issued to remove her G-tube and worse, to not give her anything by mouth. One year ago today, that court order was carried out. Terri died after 13 days of dehydration, 13 days of starvation, in spite of the fact that her parents and siblings wanted her to live, and fought hard for her to be able to do so.

The world watched while she was being killed. The world also watched while the Holy Father was dying a 'natural' death.

There is a difference.

While her family wanted her alive, her unfaithful husband, who had already been 'intimate' (his testimony under oath in deposition and court testimony) with at least three women, including one, Jodi, with whom he had already had two children. While he tried to convince the world that this was what TERRI wanted, others who knew her strongly denied it.

Terri was not brain dead, nor was she a vegetable. A human being can become disabled, but they can NEVER become anything less than a HUMAN BEING. Terri was a disabled woman who had every right to life. She had a right to be fed and given liquids.

JPII spoke out against killing Terri, as did other Vatican officials. As did several Bishops in the USA. While JPII's statements are powerful, Bishop Vasa's was direct, short, and to the point. Bold sections are this writer's emphasis.

The Catholic Church teaches that hydration and nutrition are simply water and food. These must always be provided as long as the food or water itself or the method of delivery is not unduly burdensome to the PATIENT. There does not appear to be any indication from Terri that the provision or the method of provision of food and water is burdensome to her.

The one 'burden', which so many seem so determined to lift from her, is that one thing that allows Terri to continue to be a living breathing human person, life itself. Life itself cannot be the burden from which we in the Catholic Church seek to deliver the faithful. This is the Assisted Suicide attitude.

Life is a grace and a blessing and yes the living of that life does entail some burdens, sometimes great burdens, but the solution can be neither murder nor suicide - these are offenses against life itself and the Lord who gives it.

Terri is alive. She is kept alive by the same things that keep me alive - Food, water, air. Her disability deprives her of the ability to ingest these things, it does not deprive her of the ability to digest them. She may well die in the future from an inability to digest food but it would be murder to cause her death by denying her the food she still has the ability to digest and which continues to provide for her a definite benefit - life itself.

Related Tags: Terri Schindler Schiavo, Death by Court order, Disabled, G-tube, Tube feeding, Bishop Vasa

I hope all you kiddies out there are paying attention on the all-too-infrequent occasions I quote from this blog.

I know I am usually to be found joking about the Fairer Sex, (It's a nervous laughter kind of thing. I know women are better than men. Usually.) but this lady is the real thing. She's a grandmother, a nurse, and a Catholic gentlewoman to boot.

So pay attention, kiddies. You just might learn something.

I hope I didn't make her blush.

WI Catholic Musings on the husband of Mary.

From my favorite Catholic blogging babe in all of Wisconsin:

The Heart of a Father
An excellent article on St Joseph is here.

Just part of it:
His heart is always in the right place, and God was able to accomplish great things through this eminently just and faithful man.

St. Joseph's fatherly heart jumps off the page throughout the rich, biblical accounts of Christ's childhood. Let's take a brief look at just one such familiar episode: the Finding of Jesus in the Temple (Lk 2:41-52).

"Now His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. And when He was twelve years old, they went up according to custom" (verses 41-42).

These verses may seem unremarkable at first blush, though as St. Joseph is carting the Holy Family from place to place in the first century we can be certain these journeys were much more onerous than a leisurely afternoon drive in the air-conditioned minivan. But even in his fidelity to the Jewish practices of his time, St. Joseph gives us a most timely lesson on the value of men being observant Catholics. Too often we find at Sunday Mass mom and the kids, but where's dad? St. Joseph challenges us men to allow our love for the Lord and zeal for our faith to set the tone for the entire family.

Real men go to church.

And more......

It's also significant that Mary refers to Joseph as Jesus' father, which surely reflected the common understanding of the people. As an adoptive father myself, I appreciate the affirmation of a father that transcends biological lineage. As Pope John Paul II commented in his 1989 apostolic exhortation Guardian of the Redeemer:In this family, Joseph is the father: his fatherhood is not one that derives from begetting offspring; but neither is it an "apparent" or merely "substitute" fatherhood. Rather, it is one that fully shares in authentic human fatherhood and the mission of the father in the family.Joseph accepts this fatherhood through the obedience of faith, even though he also knows that this child was conceived "of the Holy Spirit" (Mt 1:20). He exercises this fatherhood in complete docility to God's will and with superabundant love for mother and Child. As the wondrous events unfold around him, it's clear that St. Joseph does not have a complete understanding of what is going to happen next. Yet he always remains faithful in the present moment, and the Lord never fails to reveal to him what he needs to know at any given point in time.

As I've tried to translate this into my own life experience, I've understood this to mean that I must at all times remain attentive to God and available for my family. When things go wrong, it's typically because either I'm not paying attention, or I am serving myself and not my beloved family. Mighty Love and Daily Solicitude

"And He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and His mother kept all these things in her heart" (verse 51).

Women with careers often need to be affirmed regarding the beautiful vocation of motherhood, which too often — in subtle and not-so-subtle ways — is devalued in our society. Yet men need to hear a similar message regarding fatherhood, spoken through the humbly eloquent life of St. Joseph.

We might do great things in the world's eyes, but our primary vocation as married men is to be husband and father in the domestic Church.

What happens when you search for "Catholic" at Yahoo! News...

...at noon on 3/20/06...


Poles' Anger Over Wartime Crimes
Catholic Times - Mar 16
Polish Church leaders have deplored a Russian prosecutor's ruling that a 1940 massacre of thousands of Polish officers cannot be considered a "communist crime."


Tough to be a Rosales after a Sin
INQ7.net - Mar 16
IT'S TOUGH being Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales. Often measured against the late Jaime Cardinal Sin, the low-key archbishop of the powerful Metropolitan See of Manila isn't exactly staring at calm seas, especially now that he's got the red hat.


UK Catholic hospital must tighten ethics: Cardinal
Reuters via Yahoo! News - 28 minutes ago
The leader of England's Roman Catholics called on Monday for tighter ethical controls in a fashionable Catholic hospital embroiled in a complex morality debate.


St. Anne serves Catholic faithful in 2 languages
The Arizona Republic - 1 hour, 54 minutes ago
The tremendous growth rate of Gilbert's Hispanic population is evident in the weekly St. Anne Catholic Church bulletin.


Four Fisher Catholic students are heading to district economics competition
CentralOhio.com - Mar 20
Most people would probably cringe if asked to explain the "inverted yield curve," but not Nathan Brunney, a junior at Fisher Catholic High School.


Catholic school will close in June
MLive.com - 1 hour, 14 minutes ago
After 51 years as a Catholic elementary school in Belleville, St. Anthony Academy will close in June. Debt and declining enrollment led to the decision.


Rell, who backed Catholic hospitals on 'morning after pill,' got bundle of campaign cash from St. Francis execs and docs
Journal Inquirer - 26 minutes ago
Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who this month sided with Catholic hospitals opposed to a bill that would force them to dispense the so-called "morning after pill," had previously collected $19,250 in campaign contributions from more than two dozen administrators, physicians, and others at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford.


College begins Catholic lecture series
Duluth News Tribune - Mar 20
The College of St. Scholastica is launching a new lecture series today to examine Catholic thinking on various topics.


Winning rate for Catholic teams average
Middletown Press - 51 minutes ago
But before we decide to put the Catholic schools on a reservation, maybe we ought to look at some numbers. Consider: All four boys basketball titles were won by public schools. Three of four girls titles were won by public schools. All four boys swimming titles were won by public schools.


Catholic Diocese Settles Suit for $5.1M
WLBT 3 - Mar 19
The Catholic Diocese of Jackson will pay more than $5.1 million to victims of priest abuse. The announcement was made Thursday by the Diocese and attorneys for 19 plaintiffs in the case. The settlement brings vindication..and church leaders say they hope some level of peace for victims.


Catholic Church losing its clout on Beacon Hill
South Coast Today - Mar 18
BOSTON — Massachusetts, one of the most Catholic states in the country, is witnessing an ever-widening rift between church and state on a raft of social issues, including gay marriage, abortion "buffer zones," stem cell research and emergency contraception.


Catholic school teachers pay dispute set to escalate
ABC via Yahoo! Australia & NZ News - Mar 18
A dispute by Canberra's Catholic school teachers over pay and conditions looks set to escalate into industrial action.

Bill Lester has a dream, too.

USA Today: Lester, 38th, learns much in Cup debut
(March 20) Wedged shoulder-to-shoulder between Mark Martin and Dale Earnhardt Jr. for a postrace interview, Bill Lester said he felt embarrassed because his 38th was undeserving of the attention. The Nextel Cup veterans on either side wouldn't have agreed.

Orlando Sentinel: Lester's debut on hold

Greensboro News-Record: Bill Lester secures spot in race

Lester Wants to Be Known As a Racer

Bill Lester doesn't want to be a footnote in history. Instead of being remembered as the first black driver to qualify for a race in
NASCAR's top stock car series in nearly 20 years, Lester would prefer to be thought of as "just a race car driver."

The 45-year-old regular in NASCAR's Craftsman Truck Series did make history, though, qualifying for Sunday's Golden Corral 500 in his first try at racing in the Nextel Cup series.

And the unassuming Lester, who left a six-figure job in corporate America 14 years ago to try his hand in racing, (Emphasis mine.) remained very composed after realizing the first step of his biggest dream.

"The biggest issue has been the age issue but, fortunately, I don't look or act my age," he said, smiling. "I'm pleased that those doubting Thomases are a little bit in the situation of re-evaluating the statements they made. There are always people who don't believe in you. But if I listened to those people, I wouldn't be where I am today."

Where he will be Sunday is starting 19th in the 43-car field for the race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. And he didn't back in.

Lester qualified at 190.502 mph, the fastest of the 15 drivers competing for eight open positions in the lineup. The other spots went to cars that were the top 35 in car owner points last year.

And now that he is in the race, Lester has some goals.

"I expect to race 500 miles," he said. "I expect to learn a lot and add knowledge to my database of information. I hope to gain the respect of my competitors. I'm hoping for a top-20 finish, but you can't predict the outcome. I'm just excited to race with the best drivers this country has to offer."

From The Stupid And Ironic Way To Die Department:

Rockclimbing Rule #1 from a non-rockclimber: Don't practice on buildings. They are partially made of rocks, but they are not rocks.

Rockclimbing Rule #2 from a non-rockclimber: Don't climb rocks (or practice rockclimbing on buildings) when wasted.

Harrisburg Patriot-News: Woman dies in fall from city building
Camp Hill resident was climbing with group of 'daredevils'

A Camp Hill woman fell to her death yesterday morning while trying to jump from the top of one 10-story building to another after a night of drinking alcohol with her friends, authorities said.

Zeynep Barnes, 25, of the 100 block of South 32nd Street, fell into an 18-inch-wide gap between the Walnut Street Parking Garage and the building known as 30 North Third Street Building that houses a Wachovia bank branch.

Barnes had been out drinking at several West Shore bars and bars along Second Street with a group of friends, who are rock climbers, in the hours before the accident, Mayor Stephen R. Reed said.

That would be Harrisburg, PA's ghoulish Mayor-for-Life Stephen "Hopalong" Reed, who loves to get himself in front of a camera and microphone whenever someone dies hideously in his fiefdom.

Barnes is the second woman to fall to her death from a downtown building after a night of drinking in the last three weeks.

To be fair to the first one, she was dropped out of a twenty-third floor window by her fiance as they celebrated their engagement. His defense? He was dangling her out of the window just for fun.

Reed said police continue to investigate Barnes' death but said he did not expect criminal charges to be filed.

"We're destroyed -- in shambles," said David Barnes, Zeynep's father. "She, we thought, was a rising star."

Here come the ironic parts, kiddies.

Barnes graduated from Skidmore College, majoring in business, where she also played soccer. She had an internship in China while at Skidmore and learned to speak Mandarin Chinese.

Ironic Part #1: She was an educated woman.

Barnes worked for Carlisle SynTec as a risk analyst and was working on her master's degree at Shippensburg, her father said.

Ironic Part #2: She was a "risk analyst".

"It's a tragic accident involving alcohol and what I would call daredevil behavior," Reed said.

The group, consisting of Barnes and four others, made a habit of going to the top of the 11-story parking garage and the bank building at night to look at the city and the surrounding area, Reed said.

You can look all you want. Just don't jump.

********************************************************** UPDATE (3/24/06)
To the anonymous person claiming to be this woman's sibling:

My post is cautionary in nature, trying to remind all that their lives are short and precious and encouraging all to refrain from needlessly and stupidly risking death. Short of banning everything sharp, heavy, fast, tall, tricky, and deep, our God-given common sense is our best protection.

And, as always, may God have mercy on her soul, your soul, and all souls.

*********************************************
UPDATE 4/27/06
To the anonymous person claiming to to be this pathetic woman's father:

My humblest appy-polly loggies to you and your entire family of geniuses. Has it turned out your intellectually superior offspring was working on a third shift maintenance or painting crew, bravely sprucing up Harrisburg's parking garages while mere mortals slept in the safety of their puny little bourgeois beds?

Or was she an undercover roof inspector, bravely exposing shoddy building materials and corrupt government contract-letting? (Mayor Steven "Hi-ho, Silver" Reid, call your office.)

Or maybe she was rescuing someone's kitty...

Whatever helps you sleep at night, pal.

Oh, and one more thing. If I don't pray for her poor soul, who will?

*********************************************
Update The Last
To every Everyone:

Although I am skeptical of concepts such as transference, one hardly ever knows for sure, does one? Therefore, I do not mind being a passive cog in the great mechanism that is mental health. (If, in fact, I have been dealing with the late rockclimber's loved ones. You can never be sure on the internet, kiddies. It could always be an FBI agent trying to entrap you into typing something someone else does not like. You also never know what could have been made illegal while you slept.)

If every tv sitcom I have ever watched is correct, (and who am I to doubt Hollyweird heavyweights who know therapy inside and out?) we have gotten through anger, denial, and (if the latest missive to arrive at my palatial dacha is to be believed) are about to wrap up the bargaining phase. Again, I am glad to do my part, cynical and sarcastic monster that I am.

Sadly, only the Natalee Holloway story lasts forever. It is time for Your Humble Servant to move on to stories on the current news cycle. Such are the hectic times in which we live.

But there may be something Miss Holloway's tragic (and, yes, stupid) demise and her mother's reaction to it can teach us. It seems Mrs. Twitty gets it.

I offer the following news item from the West Side Leader of beautiful Akron, Ohio without comment or opinion because sometimes, kiddies, people have to learn how to make lemonade on their own.

Natalee Holloway’s mother promotes travel safety

Beth Holloway Twitty has been living every parent’s worst nightmare since the disappearance of her daughter, Natalee Holloway, in Aruba last May.

But the speech therapist and mother of two from Alabama is trying to make something positive come from her tragedy. She is making visits around the country, including several here in the Akron area last Thursday, to educate teens and young adults about travel safety.

************************************************************
Update Beyond the Last

Remember Len Bias, kiddies? See how his mother triumphed over his horrific death here.

Vengeance belongs to God alone, but I understand Corporal Johnson completely.

A father re-enlists to avenge his son's death in Iraq. What was the Army thinking?

Joe Johnson wanted to serve with his son in Iraq
A bomb in a Baghdad slum stole his Justin. Would he get revenge?

AL-ASAD, Iraq - In the desert chill, on the lonely nighttime roads of Iraq, Joe Johnson looks out over his machine gun and thinks of Justin.

It was on Easter morning 2004 that a chaplain and a colonel appeared on Joe and Jan Johnson's Georgia doorstep with the news.

Justin, the boy Joe had fished and hunted with, the soldier son who'd gone off to Iraq a month earlier, was dead at 22, killed by a roadside bomb planted in a Baghdad slum.

May God have mercy on his brave soul.

Today it's Joe who mans the M-240 atop a Humvee, warily watching the sides of the road. He's an unlikely Army corporal at 48, a father who came here for revenge, a Christian missionary on a crusade against Islam, and a man who, after six months at war, is ready to go home.

"I shouldn't even have come," he now says.

Mr. Johnson should be sent home...

He wasn't there when the news arrived in Rome, Ga. The self-employed house-builder was in Fort Lewis, Wash., trying to qualify for a place in a Washington National Guard unit ticketed for Iraq.

With six years of long-ago Army and Navy service, Johnson had joined the National Guard in 2003, wanting to serve his country again, this time in combat, and to go to Iraq while his son was there. A year with husband and son at war would be easier on Jan than two years separately, he reasoned.
The death of Justin, a 1st Cavalry Division machine gunner, stunned his parents.

At that point, Johnson said, "I decided it was too soon to leave home." Jan was too distraught.

But last April 11, a year and a day after his son was killed, Johnson told his Iraq-bound Georgia National Guard unit, the 48th Infantry Brigade, he was ready to join them. They ended up at this dust-blown base in Iraq's far west, pulling escort duty for fuel convoys on the bomb-pocked desert highways from Jordan.

Why did he do it? The wiry, lean Georgian, an easy-talking man with a boyish, sunburned face, tried to answer the question that won't go away.

"It's a lot of things combined," he said. "One, a sense of duty. I was p----- off at the terrorists for 9-11 and other atrocities. Second, I'd only trained. I wanted combat." And then, he said, "there's some revenge involved. I'd be lying if I said there wasn't."

But there was more on the mind of this man who has done Church of God missionary work as far afield as Peru and the Arctic. "I don't really have love for Muslim people," Johnson said. "I'm sure there are good Muslims. I try not to be racist."

But somewhere along the way, his passion cooled, as the over-aged corporal, like tens of thousands of other American soldiers here, faced the reality of Iraq.

Was it last Christmas, when roadside bombs rocked his convoy one after another, and Johnson thought he was next? Or was it when speeding civilian cars passed the Americans' Humvees and Johnson failed to level his gun and open fire, which "I think anyone else," fearing car bombs, "would have done"?

Mr. Johnson should be sent home...

"I really don't want to kill innocent people," he now says. "I don't want to live with that the rest of my life."

...immediately.

It might have been the calls home to Jan, who was dealing not only with depression and other health problems, but with the prospect that their elder soldier son, Josh, 26, might be sent to Iraq or Afghanistan.

"I don't like that Joe's there," Jan Johnson said when called by satellite telephone from al-Asad. "But it's something he felt he had to do. People heal in different ways. This is how he heals after Justin's death."

War is too dangerous and too important for personal vendettas. I hope he hasn't (and doesn't) get any of his buddies killed.

Johnson's battalion leaves Iraq in early May, when his enlistment term expires.

Once home, he'll remove the silver-toned bracelet he's worn on his right wrist throughout his deployment, bearing Justin's name and date of death.
His mission is accomplished.

"I got it out of my system," he said.

Saint of the Day and daily Mass readings.

Today is the Solemnity of St. Joseph, the most chaste spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Pray for us, all you angels and saints.

Today's first reading for the Solemnity of St. Joseph is 2 Samuel 7:4-5,12-14, 16.
Today's second reading is Romans 4:13, 16-18,22.
Today's Responsorial Psalm is Psalm 89:2-3, 4-5, 27, 29.
Today's Gospel reading is Matthew 1:16, 18-21, 24.


[Links to the readings will be from the NAB until I can find another chapter and verse searchable Douay-Rheims Bible on-line.]



Everyday links:

The Blessed Virgin Mary
The Rosary
Our Mother of Perpetual Help
Prayers from EWTNNational Coalition of Clergy and Laity (dedicated to action for a genuine Catholic Restoration)
The Catholic Calendar Page for Today


Just in case you are wondering what exactly Catholics believe, here is

The Apostles Creed

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son Our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.He descended into Hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into Heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Amen.


Memorare

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that any one who fled to thy protection, implored thy help or sought thy intercession,was left unaided.Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins my Mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful; O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy clemency hear and answer me. Amen.


St. Joseph, her most chaste spouse, pray for us.


Prayer to St. Anthony, Martyr of Desire

Dear St. Anthony, you became a Franciscan with the hope of shedding your blood for Christ. In God's plan for you, your thirst for martyrdom was never to be satisfied. St. Anthony, Martyr of Desire, pray that I may become less afraid to stand up and be counted as a follower of the Lord Jesus. Intercede also for my other intentions. (Name them.)


PRAYER TO SAINT MICHAEL THE ARCHANGEL

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil; may God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the divine power, thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.