Potter-mania
I finally saw the first Harry Potter movie the other night. I haven’t read the books either so this was my first exposure to it. First let me start by saying that I’m not anti-fantasy fundamentalist: I’ve read many “sword & sorcery” style books, including the Terry Brook’s Shannara series, Michael Moorcock’s Elric series, David Edding’s Belgaraiad and so on. So, I’m not automatically averse to the genre. But I do also acknowledge that some books, while okay for discerning adults, are not suitable for impressionable children.
I can see how Harry Potter would be very attractive to children. He’s misunderstood and mistreated by his family (what child doesn’t feel that way sometimes?), until he’s revealed as a wizard and perhaps the greatest ever. What child doesn’t dream of being special, especially pre-teens who are starting to realize that they are not the center of the universe? And Hogwarts! To be able to do magic, to bend a frightenly uncontrollable world to your will! It’s quite seductive.
Some things gave me pause, again as the story relates to children. For one thing, all of the categories and terminology and such is taken directly from the practice of Wicca, modern witchcraft, and the occult. Without proper guidance children can be misled to dabble in such things. There are even reports that witch’s covens in England have had a marked increase in interest from children who want to attend a real-life Hogwarts. The other issue is that much of the behavior evinced by the “good” guys in the story is morally ambiguous. There seemed to be no clear line between the good use of power and the bad use. The children lie, disobey their elders, and cast spells on each other. In the quidditch game, one side uses brutal and violent, unsportsmanlike tactics but no repercussions follow. In fact, there are hardly any repercussions for bad behavior. In other words, there’s not a clear moral code. That also troubled me.
I’m not an anti-Potter fanatic. I thought the movie was above-average fun. But I can understand why parents would and should be cautious with the books and movies for children younger than teenage. I would suggest the same for other books I liked, such as the Horatio Hornblower series or any of the fantasy series I mentioned above. Most importantly, it’s about parents paying attention to what their kids are doing and reading and basing it all on good moral upbringing.
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Law’s depositions
I only scanned Cardinal Law’s newest depositions (available at the Boston Globe’s web site), but in reading newspaper reports on them, I can only shake my head some more. The Boston Herald’s treatment is a little incredulous in the beginning, I think, but hits the nail on the head later on.
The article starts out by highlighting the cardinal’s remarks that “I was not facing a major problem with the priesthood.“ The reporters make it seem like he’s out of his mind since we all know the scope of the Scandal. But if you read other parts of the deposition, you’ll see that what the cardinal means is that the problem is not pervasive in the priesthood, as a percentage of priests. Only a very small percentage of priests actually committed these heinous acts. That doesn’t excuse the ones that did so or the hierarchy for failing to act, but it does not do the cause of reform and resolution any good to sensationalize the situation.
The article does highlight one disturbing aspect of the whole case that I think explains a lot. The cardinal appeared “clueless” in several circumstances, admitting he allowed his secretary to respond to letters about serious matters in his name and delegating important personnel matters to his auxiliaries.
“The way in which these matters were handled was through delegation,“ Law said. “My expectation was and is that allegations would be looked at, would be examined, and that credible allegations would be acted upon.
“A number of things come to your attention every single day,“ the cardinal said at one point. “If they’re going to be handled well and expeditiously, delegation is a good way for that to happen.“
That may be fine for some things, but on matters of priests who have shown serious psychological problems and that are a danger to themselves or others, I think that warrants some top-level attention. As in the military, one can delegate authority, but not responsibility. If a warship runs aground, even if it was in the middle of the night and the captain was in bed, he will still lose command, because the actions of all his subordinates are still his responsibility. He should not delegate authority until he is satisfied that the subordinate is ready and prepared to do the right thing.
In the same way, the cardinal is responsible for the failures of his subordinates because his responsibility is the care of the people of God in this archdiocese. Failure to oversee and check up on them is a serious offense before God and man. And it shows a serious lapse in judgment.
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Herod’s handmaidens
Planned Parenthood’s at it again… I wonder if they see the ironic connection to the slaughter of the innocents after Christmas. Probably not.
Planned Parenthood Mocks Christianity With “Choice On Earth” Cards
NEW YORK, Nov 20, 02 (LSN.ca/CWNews.com) - “In its never-ending effort to promote the gospel of ‘choice,‘ Planned Parenthood has chosen to mock the Christian faith by issuing a holiday card with the message, ‘Choice on Earth,‘“ said Jim Sedlak of STOPP International (a project of American Life League). “Planned Parenthood likes to portray itself as a tolerant organization constantly searching for diversity. But this blatant attack on Christian values—and Christ Himself—is just another demonstration of the truly bigoted nature of Planned Parenthood.“
Planned Parenthood recently announced the release of its line of holiday cards. Each card reads, “Choice on Earth.“ One card adds, “Warmest wishes for a peaceful holiday season.“
“By replacing ‘peace’ with ‘choice,‘ Planned Parenthood is essentially saying ‘abortion on Earth,‘“ Sedlak said. “This is an extremely repugnant message to be spreading during the Christmas season. Planned Parenthood has insulted Christians and Christianity by deforming a slogan that refers to the Peace of Christ.“
Sedlak said in Planned Parenthood’s world, “there will be no children to celebrate the birth of the Christ child on December 25. There will, instead, be graves and empty playgrounds. The time has come for Americans to reject this hateful organization. What more proof do we need of its unacceptable moral principles? That Planned Parenthood could be supported by even one person in America after this blatant attack on Christianity is beyond belief.“
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Take my welfare, please.
In typical liberal fashion, the Mass. government is promoting food stamps among the poor. The liberals have their knickers in a twist because the state has the lowest participation rate in the food stamps program.
And that’s a problem? The biggest danger to the liberals is that the federal goverment would actually reduce the allotment of money to the program and the worst possible thing in the world is to get a decreased budget. Never mind that for once the taxpayers would be able to stop footing the bill for something.
Maybe these “poor” people don’t want to be on food stamps. Maybe they don’t need them. But no matter to the liberals. We must force them to understand how important is to keep the program running and keep all those government employees employed. Isn’t that what this really is about after all? It boils down to taxpayer-funded welfare for state employees. Maybe if they lose their jobs, then they could apply for food stamps and everyone would be happy again.
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Attack of the Clone[d room]
That George Lucas is so clever. Not only was there the obvious cloning in his latest installment in the Star Wars saga: “Episode II: Attack of the Clones,“ but there was the subtle cloning going on in the sets. Or was there?
Oops, it seems the Jedi library in the movie is almost an exact replica of the Long Room Library of Trinity College in Dublin. And they’re not happy about it. The college has called in Darth Sidious and his apprentices… I mean, their lawyers. I didn’t know you could copyright a room, but there you go. The linked page has photos of the two “rooms.“ I don’t see how you can deny they’re the same room, but the Lucas spokesman does so anyway.
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Huh?
This column in a Hartford newspaper makes no sense to me. What exactly is the point the writer is trying to make?
She interviews a local pastor who just had a small-time fundraising dinner in his parish ($8 a head for 450 people). Then she brings up the story that the Archdiocese of Boston (not even the same state!) may sue one of their insurers to force them to pay out settlements. Then she says this Connecticut priest has been bugging his diocese for months to provide details on what they’re paying out. And that’s it.
If I were her editor, I would have sent the column back for re-write and tell her to get to the point. If anyone else can divine her meaning, please enlighten me.
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How much would you pay for poetry?
An heiress to the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical fortune gives $100 million to a shoestring poetry magazine. It’s her money and she can do what she wants with it, but think of how many starving people could be, how many churches could be built in the Third World. What could the Missionaries of Charity do with that money?
That’s not to say that supporting culture and the arts is unnecessary. The Vatican is often criticized for the elaborate museums full of art that they say could be sold for charity. (I think the Vatican has a role in being a guardian of our art and culture, but that’s another tangent).
So a donation to the poetry magazine isn’t ridiculous, but $100 million for a 10,000 circulation periodical on poetry? It’s almost too much because how could you even spend it properly? Sometimes there’s such a thing as too much money to be thrown at any one cause.
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Goldberg on the bishops and Iraq
Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg examinedthe recent letter from the US bishops on war with Iraq. While he respects their moral voice in saying it is difficult to justify attacking Iraq because there is no evidence of an imminent attack, he says they labor under some misconceptions.
Quoting the bishops:
- “We have no illusions about the behavior or intentions of the Iraqi government. The Iraqi leadership must cease its internal repression, end its threats to its neighbors, stop any support for terrorism, abandon its efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction and destroy all such existing weapons.“
And Goldberg’s reply:
Saddam has invaded two countries, and not a single student of the dictator thinks he’d hesitate to do it again if he could get away with it. And, the only way he can get away with it is to get a nuclear bomb that would make a Desert Storm-style American intervention next to impossible.
By the time the bishops get their “evidence of an imminent attack of a grave nature,“ it will be too late to stop such an attack. Sanctions, inspections, negotiations and forceful letters from American clergy didn’t deter Saddam before, and, judging from this letter, they aren’t any more likely to deter him now.
The bishops are under the illusion that Saddam can be talked out of being Saddam. The Iraqis don’t suffer from that illusion.
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Armed Marines protecting the Eucharist
Eric Johnson at Catholic Light, a reserve Marine describes for us that on Navy ships, the Eucharist is kept in the ship’s safe—along with all the top sescret stuff like cryptographic codes—and protected by armed sentries. Cool!
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Hit the head on the nail
Pat Buchanan hits the nail on the head with his column on the bishops’ meeting. He connects the common acclamation that nobody will listen to the bishops on war with Iraq because of their loss of moral authority. But the authority was not lost overnight to the Scandal, but over 40 years as many of them consistently compromised with a culture of death rather than give it “zero tolerance.“
But can the bishops do anything to regain that moral authority among the press? Maybe not, even though as Joe Fitzgerald, a columnist for the Boston Herald points out so many moral midgets who should have lost their voices regained them:
Mass. Congressman Barney Frank’s gay lover was found to be running a gay brothel out of Frank’s Washington, DC, basement and the Boston Globe called for his resignation. Now he’s running around everywhere, bloviating on every subject. Similarly and relevantly, Mass. Congressman Gerry Studds was censured by his colleagues, 420-3, for having sex with a teenage boy working for the House of Reps. He was re-elected six times. Bill Clinton, James Carville, the list goes on in the column. The common thread is that these “moral voices” are the liberal voices of immorality.
So here’s what I predict: Every bishop who mouths liberal pieties, whether it be Archbishop Rembert Weakland or Cardinal Roger Mahony, will quickly be rehabilitated by the press and allowed to become a “moral leader” again—at least on their TV cameras and the pages of their newspapers. And every bishop who remains solidly orthodox and resists the culture of death will remain marginalized, even more than they all were before. Every time a bishop speaks about the pro-life ethic and the life of the unborn child, the liberal press will place that side-by-side in their stories with reminders that such-and-such bishop didn’t care so much for the welfare of children abused by Fr. What’s-his-name.
What to do? The bishops must stand strong and do what must be done. Look at the lessons of the last election: Despite an almost universally liberal media, conservatives and conservative policies have begun to creep into power and bring about changes. So the bishops need to adapt, to use their bully pulpits to get the message out, to enforce orthodoxy among the priests and bring recalcitrant Catholic colleges in line.
The thing is a moral voice and moral authority is not something you get because you wear a special hat—that works for a few days after you get the hat. That standing remains only if the bishop shows by word and deed that he is a moral man and man so intensely in love with Christ, His Word, and His Church that he can’t stand sin and the rejection of Christ’s Church.
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I’m surprised ... not.
Bishop John McCormack of Manchester, NH, says gays should not necessarily be excluded from the priesthood. Am I supposed to be shocked? This is the guy who was such good friends with Paul Shanley that he stayed at the latter’s gay hotel in California (where sex took place out in the open) and who assigned a priest to a parish in New Hampshire without telling anyone that the priest had been in a gay sexual relationship with a teenager.
- McCormack said he does not think the Roman Catholic Church has ever accepted a man who it knew was living openly gay.
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The changes begin
The Diocese of Burlington, Vermont, has announced that it will no longer immediately report cases of sex abuse to the police. Instead, as now allowed under the revised Charter for Protection of Young People, it will conduct an initial investigation to determine the credibility of the accusation. This only makes sense; otherwise, if some kid gets mad at his pastor for telling him to stop fidgeting during Mass, he could start a police investigation by saying something without any substantiation. Even if it’s apparently ridiculous, it would have to be reported under the old guidelines.
Again, this policy does not prevent a victim from going straight to the police. No one should be going down to the chancery to report abuse and leaving it at that, relying on the diocese to contact police. If you believe someone’s committed a crime against you, the police are very interested in hearing from you.
As for the potential for cover-ups by the diocese, yes, it’s still there. But then everyone who’s given it a moment’s thought realizes that the Charter doesn’t do any good if the bishops don’t reform themselves. Cover-ups can still occur if bishops don’t learn anything from the past year—I have a feeling some of them won’t.
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Bush a deserter?
Reader Bill, commenting on a blog from last week about unpatriotic commercials for jeans and whether Bush and Clinton were similarly draft-dodgers sent me a link to a Toronto Star opinion column that says that GW Bush was, at best, gone AWOL from the air national guard for a year, and at worst, a deserter. That’s serious stuff. I’m going to do some research, but does anyone have some evidence against that assertion?
I just have a hard time believing that Bush would get a free pass on that from the rabidly liberal media and I do note an anti-Bush animus behind the column.
Update: Yes, I know about the anti-Bush web sites and the original articles. What I want is the other side, i.e. responses to the accusations.
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The bishops’ meeting
My pastor asked me to write up something for this week’s parish bulletin explaining the results of this week’s US bishops’ meeting for parishioners who may only have heard what the secular media had to say about it. Feel free to cut and paste and mail this to your pastor for inclusion in your parish’s bulletin:
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There has been much reporting in the secular press about the US bishops and the Vatican-revised Charter for the Protection of Youth, some of it inaccurate or sensationalized. Here are the facts:
1. The Vatican did not “water down” the norms as approved by the bishops in Dallas in June. Instead, it wanted certain vague provisions spelled out. For instance, sexual abuse was not adequately defined in the original charter—did it include the spoken word or a passing glance?
2. The revisions also spelled out the rights of priests. In US law, we enshrine the right of the accused to due process and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. The revised charter now does that, too. An accused priest does not lose all his rights just because he’s accused. The credibility of the accusation is now weighed first, and if it is credible, further action is taken and investigations pursued.
3. The law review boards were not downgraded. In fact, the review boards never had any power over the status of priests. A priest acts as an extension of his bishop, and only a bishop has the right to strip a priest of his faculties to minister the sacraments and only the Pope has the right to laicize a priest—strip him of his right to live as a priest. The Vatican revision just spells out the review boards’ actual role as advisory—and a smart bishop will not ignore their advice.
4. A statute of limitations was imposed so that a victim needs to make his accusations before his 28th birthday. That does not mean that he cannot pursue the priest in the civil courts. In fact, a victim should go to the police before he goes to his bishop. The statute of limitations protects the innocent from accusations that are so old that no evidence remains to exonerate him. However, the Vatican did stipulate that a bishop must request an exemption to the statute if the accusations are credible and notorious, such as when multiple people come forward to accuse.
There were other changes made to the Charter, but those were the substantive ones. The important point now is that no policy will protect children unless we all are vigilant—bishops, priests, and laypeople. We should not excuse sexual misconduct by anyone and we must hold one another accountable. That is the true norm for protecting children.
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Pope-bashing
I’m not a Pat Buchanan fan, but his magazine American Conservative has an interesting column that addresses the current fad of blaming the Catholic Church, in general, and Pope Pius XII, in particular, for the Holocaust. Lest we forget or buy into the lies:
The “bad” reputation of Pius XII owes a great deal to the notorious Hochhuth fictional play of 1963. Rolf Hochhuth was a former member of the Hitler Youth whose play “The Deputy” single-handedly managed to convince lots of people who were only too pleased to be convinced that Pius XII was lenient towards Hitler. (A film titled “Amen,“ by Costas-Gavras, another opportunist and cheap-shot artist par excellence, based on “The Deputy” is being released this year.)
Here are the facts: Pope Pius XII was forced to devote himself to secretly helping the Jews for obvious reasons. The Germans considered the Vatican to be obstinately against their anti-Jewish policies and were threatening to accelerate deportation of Jews if the Vatican continued to resist. In other words, the Pope had to be careful in his pronouncements lest they do more harm than good. Before the warning, the Pope had issued non-stop public denunciations of Nazi racism, first as papal nuncio in Bavaria, as secretary of state under Pius XI, and finally as Pope. So much so, in fact, he was lampooned as a Jew-lover by German newspapers and accused of being Jewish. Pius also had an intolerable burden within his flock: the neutral Irish (with de Valera an open admirer of Hitler), the neutral Spanish, Portuguese, and pro-Axis Italians.
I didn’t realize that about some of the Irish, but I see how sizable populations of Nazi sympathizers within the Church could have been problematic for the Pope.
The point is that until the former Hitler Youth’s play in the 1960s, Pius XII was unanimously cheered by Jews and non-Jews alike and was credited with saving 700,000 Jewish lives by his measured, yet faithful actions.
- ... the people who showered official and public praise on Pius XII include Albert Einstein in 1940; Chaim Weizmann in 1943; the Chief Rabbi of Israel in 1944; the secretary of the World Jewish Congress in 1945; Moshe Sharett, Israel’s second prime minister in 1945; the State of Israel in 1955; and Golda Meir on his death in 1958.
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Domenico Bettinelli, Jr.
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