We've Come a Long Way, Baby

Yesterday on CNN, Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J. and Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J. debated whether pro-abortion politicians should receive Holy Communion.  Fr. Pacwa is against Communion for pro-aborts; Fr. Reese thinks otherwise.

How did we ever get to the point where two Jesuits could lock horns on this painfully obvious issue?

What I Will Be Putting in the Collection Basket

Dear USCCB,

Please be advised that I will not contribute to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.  This is because of the CCHD's history of financial support for large-scale voter fraud, abortion, contraceptives, gay "marriage" and New Age practices via grants to organizations like ACORN, the Los Angeles Community Action Network, and the Chinese Progressive Association.   One organization that will be cashing in on Catholic donations from the pews this year is the Gamaliel Foundation, via several affiliates.  In 2007, the Gamaliel Foundation received $150,000.00 from leftist gazillionaire George Soros. That George Soros backs the Gamaliel Foundation tells me everything I need to know about whether I should do likewise.

Although the CCHD, compelled by embarrassing publicity, has defunded some of the more blatantly egregious donees, I am still boycotting it because the bulk of its donees continues to be political organizations, apparently leftist or left-leaning, the primary purpose of which is "community organizing."   I am hard-pressed to come up with a difference between "community organizing" and bread and circuses.   "Community organizing" is the ultimate in stealing from the poor to give to the rich -- rich demagogues whose stream of income would be instantly dammed up if they ever really achieved their stated goals.  It is also a distraction from the Church's mission to go out and make disciples of all the nations.  We hear a lot of talk about the number of poor people who could have been fed with the money that was spent on a statue or a chalice; but what about all the people to whom the Good News could have been brought by the $996,000.00 that ACORN got in 2007, or the $160,000.00 that affiliates of the Gamaliel Foundation received in 2009?  Must we compound the material poverty of the poor with spiritual poverty?

Such money as I have to give will go to legitimate Catholic apostolates.  That leaves me with nothing for the CCHD.

Yours in Christ,

Anita Moore, Esq., OPL

Stars and Stripes Forever

It's not a holiday or anything; no particular reason to be patriotic today.  But I have just been watching one of my favorite movies, Heartbreak Ridge, which closes with "Stars and Stripes Forever." And that made me start surfing the Internet for information about this magnum opus of John Philip Sousa, the Marine and gentleman pictured to the left.  Which in turn made me put together this post.

Sousa composed "Stars and Stripes Forever" on Christmas Day, 1896.  It was such a hit that it is practically universally recognized, and known by heart by any band musician.  This is probably why, in the circus, it serves as the "disaster march": the signal for dire emergency (such as the deadly Hartford, Connecticut circus fire of 1944) that calls circus staff to action without instantly panicking the audience.  

Did you know "Stars and Stripes Forever" has lyrics?  Here they are:

Let martial note in triumph float
And liberty extend its mighty hand
A flag appears 'mid thunderous cheers,
The banner of the Western land.
The emblem of the brave and true
Its folds protect no tyrant crew;
The red and white and starry blue
Is freedom's shield and hope.
Other nations may deem their flags the best
And cheer them with fervid elation
But the flag of the North and South and West
Is the flag of flags, the flag of Freedom's nation.

Hurrah for the flag of the free!
May it wave as our standard forever,
The gem of the land and the sea,
The banner of the right.
Let despots remember the day
When our fathers with mighty endeavor
Proclaimed as they marched to the fray
That by their might and by their right
It waves forever.

Let eagle shriek from lofty peak
The never-ending watchword of our land;
Let summer breeze waft through the trees
The echo of the chorus grand.
Sing out for liberty and light,
Sing out for freedom and the right.
Sing out for Union and its might,
O patriotic sons.
Other nations may deem their flags the best
And cheer them with fervid elation,
But the flag of the North and South and West
Is the flag of flags, the flag of Freedom's nation.

Hurrah for the flag of the free.
May it wave as our standard forever
The gem of the land and the sea,
The banner of the right.
Let despots remember the day
When our fathers with might endeavor
Proclaimed as they marched to the fray,
That by their might and by their right
It waves forever.

"Stars and Stripes Forever" is, by law, the official march of the United States.   In 1998, in a rare fit of brevity, Congress enacted what is now codified as 36 U.S.C.A. § 304, which reads in its entirety:

The composition by John Philip Sousa entitled "The Stars and Stripes Forever" is the national march.

Finally, in the (highly unlikely) event you have never heard "Stars and Stripes Forever" -- or you have heard it, but would just like to hear it again, links to two audio files:

A one-hundred-year-old recording of "Stars and Stripes Forever," performed by Sousa's Band for Edison Records

A more recent (and first-rate) performance by the U.S. Marine Band

Nature Break

A few woodpecker shots.

November 15th: St. Albertus Magnus, O.P.

Today is the feast of St. Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great), Dominican priest, bishop, and one of three Dominican Doctors of the Church. Albertus was a man of wide and deep learning, of whom it might perhaps have been truly said that he knew everything there was to know -- at least everything there was to know in his day, from theology to the sciences.

It was Albertus Magnus who recognized the genius of Thomas Aquinas, whose master he was; so devastated was he by the death of his pupil that it is said his tears flowed at every mention of his name. He died on November 15, 1280 in Cologne; was beatified by Pope Gregory XV in 1622; and canonized and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1931 by Pope Pius XI. His patronage includes scientists, medical technicians and schoolchildren.

Prayer to St. Albertus Magnus

Dear Scientist and Doctor of the Church, natural science always led you to the higher science of God. Though you had an encyclopedic knowledge, it never made you proud, for you regarded it as a gift of God. Inspire scientists to use their gifts well in studying the wonders of creation, thus bettering the lot of the human race and rendering greater glory to God. Amen.

Use a Banana, Go to Jail

So now this scene, played out in a school cafeteria:

...is a misdemeanor.  At least it is in Chicago, where good-old-fashioned Chicago political thuggery has evolved into the criminalizing of school disciplinary problems.

On November 5th -- the same day as the terrorist massacre at Fort Hood -- 25 kids at Perspectives Charter School south of Chicago were arrested -- cuffed, transported, booked into detention, charged -- for having a food fight.

I am not a fan of crime and disorder.  But as someone who works full-time in the criminal justice system, I'd like to address some points to the "zero-tolerance" crowd, which is merely a finger on the claw of liberalism, and is not an affliction only in Chicago:

-- The root cause of disorder in society is Godlessness.  The undermining of Church and family, the creeping secularization, political correctness, and tolerance and even encouragement of deviancy in our civil institutions -- which, as liberals, you put there -- has led to our failure to govern our passions.  In fact, political correctness and the mindless drive for "diversity" have led many to believe that they have a positive right to refuse to govern their passions.  We should not wonder at the results.

-- You ignore the costs, usually paid by others, of abandoning the principle of subsidiarity.  Student disciplinary problems are best handled by the schools -- or even better still, in families, which you have worked hard to destroy.  But by involving the police powers of the state, you set all kinds of costly mechanisms in motion: the police; the prosecutors; the public defenders (jailable offenses, however minor, trigger a right to court-appointed counsel); the courts; and the courts' whole constellation of "rehabilitative" machinery, including probation officers and counselors and proprietors of drug and alcohol schools.  In short, you use a Howitzer to kill a flea.

-- But the cost of all this heavy equipment lies not only in the amount of money it takes to run it, but -- what is more important -- in the amount of resources that cannot now be devoted to things that really matter.  The police and prosecutor manpower and time devoted to junior high food fights now cannot be devoted to the pursuit of real criminals.  The courts are jammed with petty affairs that squeeze out the adjudication of major matters.  And -- my personal gripe -- public defenders are forced to waste inordinate amounts of time on relative trifles, to the detriment of clients with really serious and complicated problems.    

As bad as federal government corruption is, we cannot afford to go on ignoring the same corruption at the county, city and state levels.  The criminalizing of life's every nitpick is a local-level power grab every bit as cynical and tyrannical as any perpetrated by the feds.  And our failure to govern ourselves gives the power-grabbers their excuse for wiping out our freedom.   

A Great President on a Great Anniversary

For Veteran's Day: President Reagan's speech at Point du Hoc, June 6, 1984 -- the 40th anniversary of D-Day.

Two of the Greatest Minutes in the History of Oratory

For Veteran's Day: the Gettysburg Address. The address was so short that there was no time to photograph President Lincoln in the act of delivering it.

The keynote speaker at the ceremony dedicating the cemetery at Gettysburg was Edward Everett of Massachusetts, a man of many accomplishments who was acclaimed as the greatest orator of his day. He delivered a two-hour oration. President Lincoln followed with a short speech that he had composed after arriving at Gettysburg. "I should be glad," said Edward Everett to the President, "if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes."

Incidentally, we are eight days away from the 146th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal."

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people by the people for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

For Veterans' Day...

...an old classic.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Some Justice

John Allen Muhammad, the convicted Beltway Sniper, is to be executed by lethal injection at 21:00 Eastern Time.  In October of 2002, and his juvenile co-defendant, Lee Boyd Malvo, went on a murder spree that left 10 people dead in D.C., Maryland and Virginia.  Muhammad, a member of Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, and Malvo, who is serving a fixed life sentence, shot their victims from the trunk of a car, through a hole cut for the purpose, with a semiautomatic rifle at long range.  Their motive was jihad.  This is one of Lee Malvo's drawings in praise of Osama bin Laden.   

Since the lion's share of media attention today is bound to be devoted to John Muhammad and liberal opponents of capital punishment, it pays to be reminded of the people who are now dead because of John Muhammad and his 17-year-old fellow assassin.

James Martin, 55, killed October 2, 2002 in Wheaton, Maryland
James Buchanan,    39, killed October 3, 2002 in Rockville, Maryland
Premkumar Walekar, 54, killed October 3, 2002 in Aspen Hill, Maryland
Sarah Ramos, 34, killed October 3, 2002 in Silver Spring, Maryland
Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera, 25, killed October 3, 2002 in Kensington, Maryland
Pascal Charlot, 72, killed October 3, 2002 in Washington, D.C.
Dean Harold Meyers, 53, killed October 9, 2002 in Manassas, Virginia
Kenneth Bridges, 53, killed October 11, 2002 in Fredericksburg, Virginia
Linda Franklin,    47, killed October 14, 2002 in Falls Church, Virginia
Conrad Johnson,    35, killed October 22, 2002 in Aspen Hill, Maryland 

In a way, the death penalty is insufficient: one life is not a sufficient price to pay for the wanton destruction of ten.  But there is a limit to the reach of human justice, and the totality of his life, liberty and property are all John Muhammad has on earth to pay with.  God have mercy on his soul.

November 9, 1989: The Fall of the Berlin Wall

This is a piece of the Berlin Wall that is preserved at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California. I remember that when the shipment of this piece of the Wall to Simi Valley made the news, a poli-sci professor at my university scoffed: "As if RONALD REAGAN had anything to do with the fall of the Berlin Wall!"

Waaal, my dear Prof, here's a little taste of what Ronald Reagan had to do with the fall of the Berlin Wall (which you probably regretted anyway):

Dies Irae

November 8th is the day on which the Order of Preachers remembers and prays for its deceased members. Today at 7:00 p.m. the Bl. Margaret of Castello chapter will recite the Office of the Dead (Vespers) for deceased Dominicans in the day chapel at St. John's Cathedral in Boise. We will begin by chanting Dies Irae (though we don't expect to sound anything like the men and boys' choir in this video).

Dies Irae is the traditional sequence of the Requiem Mass. It is widely regarded as a masterpiece of Latin poetry; its beauty is apparent even to those of us who have very little Latin.

St. Thomas More teaches that meditation on the Four Last Things (Death, Judgment, Hell, Heaven) is a first-class remedy against sin. Dies Irae, rich in food for such meditation, has unfortunately been squelched in the Ordinary Rite by those who (unjustly) consider it morbid; but since it survives in the 1962 Missal, the door is open for its comeback.

Nun the Worse

Let's see now...

ITEM: With the support of her prioress, a Dominican sister has aided and abetted abortion by escorting women past demonstrators into abortion mill

ITEM: Three elderly nuns, along with two priests, burglarize a naval base near Seattle in order to brandish kindergarten scribblegrams and scatter sunflower seeds in protest of nukes

ITEM: A nationally known Benedictine nun writes inane columns for an infamous liberal rag

ITEM: A significant number of women religious regularly assemble, in various groups, for the purpose of promoting dissent from the Magisterium

ITEM: The number of women religious declined 54% between 1965 and 2000

So what is the point of the apostolic visitation?

The Heroine of Fort Hood

On Thursday, November 5th, members of the 36th Engineer Brigade milled around the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, near Killeen, Texas. They were about to be deployed overseas, and were waiting to undergo medical exams. They were unarmed.

A little after 1:20 p.m., a man wearing combat fatigues and carrying two handguns entered the processing center. He was Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, an Army psychiatrist who was himself about to be deployed to the Middle East. According to witnesses, Hasan, a Muslim, shouted "Allahu akbar!," opened fire into the crowd of unarmed soldiers, and went around with his gun pointed downward, methodically shooting those who had fallen or dove for cover. The shootings took place in two adjacent facilities on the base, and at one point, the shooter chased a wounded soldier across an open courtyard in an apparent attempt to finish the soldier off.

Enter Sgt. Kimberly Munley, 34, wife, mother and civilian police officer. The slightly built sergeant and her partner happened to be in the area and responded to the scene within about three minutes. Sgt. Munley promptly approached and engaged the shooter. A gun battle ensued. Although she took two shots through her legs, Sgt. Munley persisted and brought the shooter down. Said Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, the commander of Fort Hood: "It was an amazing and aggressive performance by this police officer." Although she was initially reported to have been killed, Sgt. Munley is alive and presently in stable condition.

There were many acts of selfless devotion at Fort Hood on that dreadful Thursday, when soldiers, some of them heedless of their own wounds, leaped to the aid of their fallen comrades, administering first aid and using their own clothes as bandages and torniquets. Even the shooter was promptly attended to -- a courtesy that would probably not have been extended to a non-Muslim American soldier similarly situated in the Arab World.

Pray for Sgt. Munley and her family, and for all the wounded and dead and their families.

November 2nd: Feast of All Souls

Today is the feast of the Poor Souls in Purgatory. Per the Enchiridion of Indulgences, we can obtain the following indulgences for the Poor Souls on or around this feast day by:

-- Visiting a Cemetery. By devoutly visiting a cemetery and praying for the souls of the departed, we may gain a plenary indulgence applicable only to the Poor Souls from November 1-8. The indulgence is partial on other days.

-- Praying the Requiem Aeternam. We may gain a partial indulgence applicable only to the Poor Souls by praying the following prayer:

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen.

-- Visiting a Church on All Souls' Day. We may gain a plenary indulgence applicable only to the Poor Souls by visiting a church or public oratory on the Feast of All Souls and praying the Our Father and Apostle's Creed.