Terri's Final Hours: An Eyewitness Account - by Fr. Frank Pavone

Terri's Final Hours: An Eyewitness Account - by Fr. Frank Pavone. This is difficult but required reading. Hat tip: Amy Welborn's open book

St. Benedict, ready for prime time

I'm not a big fan of reality TV (or any TV, for that matter). But the show mentioned in this article by Jonathan Petre in the Telegraph sounds cool Read more . . .:

Five men, ranging from an atheist in the pornography trade to a former Protestant paramilitary, have found their lives unexpectedly transformed in the latest incarnation of reality television - the monastery. . . .The five underwent a spiritual makeover by spending 40 days and 40 nights living with Roman Catholic monks in Worth Abbey, West Sussex. . . . [The participants] faced the challenge of living together in a community and following a disciplined regime of work and prayer. By the end, the atheist, Tony Burke, 29, became a believer and gave up his job producing trailers for a sex chat line after having what he described as a "religious experience."

See the full article for more details.

Lexington school calls cops on dad irate over gay book

The Boston Herald reports on a disagreement at a Lexington school. Read more . . . David Parker, 42, complained because his six-year-old son took home a school storybook on families that used gay parents as one of the examples. The school officials refused his request to be notified whenever same-sex households were discussed with his son in school, Parker refused to leave, and the school called police and had him arrested.

I'm a little surprised that a man that age was driven to anger and became hostile in this fashion. Did it really blindside him? Did he really think that public schools would be more accommodating to his, ahem, "unenlightened" views?

Update: Michelle Malkin chimes in. While I can sympathize with the desire to make Mr. Parker a hero, do these actions make the point many of us would like to see made? Isn't this a little "late to the party?" The public school system has fallen and can't get up. How is this going to rouse the corpse?

Zarqawi's laptop

Apparently a raid that nearly resulted in the capture of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi did have one rather large payoff: we got his laptop. From this, our intelligence agencies have confirmed that he's working on recruiting and expanding his network outside Iraq. They now believe he is far more of a threat than Osama Bin Laden. He's reaching out to Ayman al-Zawahiri, for example.

No word on whether Zarqawi is a Mac guy or a PC guy.

Free Yosef Azizi Banitrouf and Reza Alijani

Reporters Without Borders reports that a reformist Iranian Arab journalist Yosef Azizi Banitrouf was arrested in a raid on his home on 25 April. It also demanded the release of dissident journalist Reza Alijani who has been in prison for two years and whose health is very bad.

"[Reporters without Borders] strongly deplore[s] the arrest of Banitrouf, who was simply expressing his personal opinion in articles and in interviews given to other newspapers. . . . As soon as a journalist speaks out in Iran, the authorities crack down, either by closing the paper concerned or throwing the journalist in prison. "

Matthew Yglesias, slip sliding away

It was only a year or two ago that Senator Santorum was ridiculed for suggesting that "discovering" constitutional protections for sodomy (e.g., Lawrence v. Texas) and gay marriage would be a slippery slope to, inter alia, state protection of polyamorous relationships and "marriages." Matthew Yglesias, a prominent voice in the blogosphere, is now openly championing polyamory rights Read more . . .
:

Probably if everyone in the United States circa 1960 had known that taking modest steps in the direction of feminism would, in fact, lead during their lifetimes to the legalization of sodomy, to gay men marrying each other, to a small but growing number of fathers staying home to take care of the kids, to legal abortions, etc., etc., etc. the public woud have overwhelmingly rejected those early steps. But the poo-pooers won the day, the people did not believe, and now majorities support most of those developments, and all signs are that the unpopular cause of gay marriage will grow more popular after some generational turnover.
Now I think it's just great that the slope has slipped as far as it does, and hope it will slip more. So I have mixed feelings about the pragmatic political necessity of convincing people that the slope will not, in fact, slip. But it seems to me that gay marriage probably will lead -- not as a matter of metaphysical certainty, but just as a matter of banal causal fact -- to some kind of legal recognition of polyamorous relationships at some point down the road. And I think that's fine.

Hat tip: Sara Butler.

(Not-so-)straight laced at Instapundit

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit links to this disturbing article on Snopes.com featuring "examples of a body modification practice known as corset piercing," a new trend in fetishism. Two rows of piercings are made in the skin. Hooks or eyelets are put in. They are then laced up to look like a woman's corset. (Warning, the photos may be a bit bracing.) Reynolds writes: "Whatever turns you on, I always say." Is it really that difficult to call this insanity by its proper name?

BBC'ing the light

BBC News runs these stories of hope from Iraq (formerly Quagmire Central): "Two years after the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in Baghdad, marking the fall of the city to US-led forces, BBC Arabic.com asked seven Iraqis for their thoughts on how life has changed for them since the conflict.
Here are their stories."

Inspirational. Hat Tip: Arthur Chrenkoff

President Bush, Saudi dissidents are watching

The New York Post reports on President Bush playing kissy face with Saudi Prince Abdullah -- literally:
Read more . . .

President Bush yesterday held hands with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and took him on a stroll through a field of bluebonnet flowers at his Texas ranch in a pitch to get the Saudis to pump more oil. They embraced and traded air kisses on both cheeks after the prince, clad in flowing robes, arrived nearly 30 minutes late for his second visit to the Bush ranch in Crawford.

It would be nice if President Bush remembered this passage from the book he said he was reading a few months ago, Natan Sharansky's The Case For Democracy:

Deceiving Ourselves

In Saudi Arabia, one can definitely be arrested or imprisoned for expressing one's views. While many people who grew up in liberal democratic societies would regard life in Saudi Arabia as oppressive, can it be said that the people of Saudi Arabia, who appear to agree with the prevailing ideology, live in fear? Aren't the Saudi Arabians simply living according to their age-old traditions? Though no one could claim that Saudi Arabia is a free society, does that necessarily make it a fear society?

This question assumes that the people of Saudi Arabia agree with the policies of their regime. But how do we know that? Because of what Saudis say publicly? Can we assume that what people living in a fear society are willing to say publicly is a true expression of their beliefs? The books of dissidents describing how Saudis flying to Europe hurry to change into their Western clothes while still on the airplane and adopt different modes of behavior when they are abroad are enough to convince me that Saudi Arabia is steeped in doublethink. Even if these stories only refer to the Saudi elite, the process of internal decay, when more and more people are conforming to a world they no longer believe in, is clearly under way. We must always keep in mind that the public statements of those who live in fear societies are motivated by fear. If we fail to recognize this, we will only be deceiving ourselves.

I'd like to think that President Bush isn't going wobbly on us. But we could use a little toughness with Abdullah. So could the Saudi dissidents that we should be counting on to begin democratizing. Oil production really isn't as important -- not at the cost of missed opportunities for those struggling for freedom. That's really expensive oil -- too expensive. As Sharansky writes, any security we buy from tyrants like Abdullah is illusory.

Politics, philosophy, poetry, and Providence

John Paul II's final book, Memory and Identity : Conversations at the Dawn of a Millennium, examines national identity, the role of the state, and the future of Europe. Drawing on history of Polish national identity, the late Pope sees both nations and the Church as proper repositories of memory, memory being that which makes possible the expression of identity. Read more . . . Europe is in danger of losing that notion of identity, of becoming unrecognizable to itself, of losing the humanism that Christianity has helped it to attain. The dangers in the West are not limited to obvious totalitarian movements like communism and fascism, but include more insidious forms of moral and spiritual decay. These are fruitful ideas to consider when thinking about the current Church, and Pope Benedict's choice of the name of the patron of Europe indicates that he and John Paul shared an enthusiasm for the importance of the continent right now.

In reflecting on intellectual history, John Paul attempts to fuse objective, realist traditions (Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas) with subjective, personalist ones (Augustine, Descartes, Kant, phenomenology). He makes a good effort to treat modern thought respectfully, calling attention to the good within Kant and the Enlightenment while also acknowledging their excesses and defects. These passages make him sound very much like Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor.

This last book in some ways is a good introduction to Wojtyla the intellectual, integrating his personalist philosophy, his political views, his poetic and dramatic visions, and his ecclesiology in one conversational book. Buy a copy and read it.

Listen to the Flower People

It's too easy to pick on junk science reporting, but you must check out this article on beautiful celebrities and Inuits doing their "traditional dance" to highlight global warming. It typifies the way the media genuflects before the altar of pseudo-scientific faith. Read more . . .

I am currently reading State of Fear, Michael Crichton's latest novel (currently ranked 97 there) which derides the threat of global warming, the shrill subculture of its proponents, and the hyperbolic fear-mongering employed to cow us into submission. One could be forgiven for reading the Newsday article and thinking that it was a parody. It has details that only a satirist could have thought of, like this:

From the air, photographers were able to see the humans spell out the words: "Arctic Warning: Listen." . . .

"Global warming is an abstract concept to most people; we know it's happening, but we can't really visualize its effect," [Jake] Gyllenhaal said. "Unfortunately, the Inuit people put a human face on global warming, they are literally melting away. They are the canary in the coal mine."

It's practically Spinal Tap's "Listen to the Flower People." Yes, Gyllenhaal did suggest that we, as a people, lack sufficient visualization skills. And yes, he did say that the Inuits are "literally melting away." I'm not literally laughing until I wet my pants, and this idiocy does not literally make my head explode.

What are the augurs that show the Inuits to be the "canary in a coal mine" of global warming, the signs that show that we are in the End Times of Perpetually Liquid Ice Cream?

1. Caribou are heading north (no reference provided)
2. It is "possible" that seals are headed for extinction (ref: "World Wide Fund for Nature," an obviously unbiased source)
3. The arctic ice will be completely melted at the end of this century (reference: somebody called "Natural Resources Defense Council," say, that doesn't sound like they make money from scaring people, does it?)

So, I’m listening, and what I hear is "Amen" from the choir. And the ringing of cash registers. And self-important movie stars patting themselves on the back. Jake Gyllenhaal actually talks about "visualiz[ing]" global warming. I am not making this up. We don't even get a photo of Selma Hayek in the article, who is at least easy on the eyes. The relevant science here isn't mathematical climatological models, it is the psychology of mass hysteria.

This is a news article, not an op-ed. The real shame about this silly noise is that it distracts us from being properly mindful and vigilant about our environment and our responsible dominion thereof. We should not ignore our communal and commercial waste. But we do need to get a grip.

Jay Cost: Be Not Afraid of Hillary

On RedState.org, Jay Cost wonders why Republicans are so concerned about Hillary. He finds it indicative of a great weakness in her political skills that everyone, left and right, is reporting on her attempts at positioning:

This is the sign of a bad politician. All politicians do the same things. They all change their views. They all move with the political currents. They are all flexible and pragmatic. What differentiates the good politician from the bad one is that you never notice that the good one is pragmatic. A good politician is as smooth as a well-aged, single malt scotch. Hillary is a bad politician. She is like that bottom shelf blended garbage the ABC sells for $12/handle.

Dancing Ox has written something similar on this blog, I believe. Maybe he's right. I'm still not letting my guard down.

Boxer drops abortion vote

Cause for guarded optimism - Boxer Drops Abortion Vote: "Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Thursday that rather than risk defeat, she decided not to seek to repeal a law that made it easier for healthcare organizations to refuse to provide abortions and related services."

I say "guarded optimism" because we talking about only making it easier for those who choose not to cooperate in evil to follow their conscience, not about actually restricting a malign practice. Boxer in effect sought to make it mandatory for hospitals to perform abortions. So much for "choice."

Also check out the last paragraph. Note that, following the script, the pro-abortion forces don't feel they need to worry about being defeated in the legislative process -- they're confident that they "will prevail in courts" where they couldn't in the legislature.

We need sane judges now.

Two Resign Over U.N. Oil-for-Food Inquiry

New York Times reports that two investigators in the "Oil-for-Food" probe have resigned because they think the final report played kissy face with Kofi: "Two investigators with the committee studying corruption in the oil-for-food program have resigned in protest, asserting that a report that cleared Kofi Annan of meddling in the $64 billion operation was too soft on the secretary general, a panel member said Wednesday."

Sullivan Alert Level

Because you asked for it! A clear monitoring system for Andrew Sullivan's fragile emotional well being!

Power Line: Planet of the Apes

Powerline Blog reports on an AP story that quotes some scientists to view the studies on apes as leading to insights in human nature, insights that might have utopian implications. John Hindraker demurs: "It's extremely unlikely that anything that could be observed about the bonobo would cause me to believe in the perfectibility of human nature. It's interesting, though, to contemplate the quest for insight into human nature via the apes in the context of news coverage of the selection of Pope Benedict. The conventional view is that religion in general, and Catholicism in particular, represents a backward, primitive way of looking at the world, and especially at human nature, compared to modern, progressive science. But who do you think has a more sophisticated understanding of human nature: Cardinal Ratzinger, the new pope, or the researcher who believes that studying bonobos can enable humans to construct an 'ideal world'?"

'The Maustro' admits connection to `Koreagate Man'

'The Maustro' admits connection to `Koreagate Man': "U.S. federal prosecutors are on the hunt for Park, who was charged on Thursday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office with allegedly accepting million of dollars from the Iraqi government while operating in the U.S. as an unregistered agent for Baghdad."

Tongsun Park!?!? Excuse me, I blinked. When did the trail in the Oil-For-Food scandal suddenly jump to this relic from the 70's Koreagate scandal? It's like tuning into a classic rock station by accident, only with scandals.

Brian Anderson on Air America radio

Since we've struck the red-hot iron with a Coulter discussion, I'd like to continue on to the topic of a conversation that Mr. T. and I recently had: Air America Radio. Here is Brian Anderson's take: "Air America's left-wing answer to conservative talk radio is failing."

Anderson is the author of South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias which has been getting some press lately (It's #61 on Amazon as I type this). I haven't had a chance to read it and form an opinion. Chapeau tilt: Instapundit.

MoDo has dibs on Nazi-baiting

Is Maureen Dowd the first to slur Benedict XVI as a Nazi?: "The white smoke yesterday signaled that the Vatican thinks what it needs to bring it into modernity is the oldest pope since the 18th century: Joseph Ratzinger, a 78-year-old hidebound archconservative who ran the office that used to be called the Inquisition and who once belonged to Hitler Youth. "

Does MoDo get a prize for being the first to call Benedict XVI a Nazi? Ratzinger was 14 when he was conscripted into the Nazi youth group. He was later in the Wehrmacht. He deserted in '44. There's no evidence that he was ever devoted to Nazism.

Waiting for MoDo to do the piece in which she mentions that Senator Byrd in the KKK for many years. As "Kleagle." As an adult. For years. Under no external compulsion whatsoever.

[Update: MereComments on Touchstone blog has a good summary of Ratzinger's history, including this on the WWII years: "Of course, this is all nonsense. Ratzinger, like all German boys was considered a member of the Hitler youth—and (did they tell you?) he resisted and skipped meetings. He was drafted into the army, which is what you would expect, and deserted, though was later kept, briefly, as a prisoner of war. His father, by the way, was a known dissident."

Fr. Dick Explains It All for You

Did you see NBC's "Today" program this morning? Father Richard McBrien was on, of course, to explain the new pontificate for us. But he was uncharacteristically surly -- and then suddenly he burst out in a rage over being "misquoted" in his embarrassing statement about then-Cardinal Ratzinger's homily on Monday. (In case you missed it, Father McBrien had said: "If Cardinal Ratzinger were really campaigning for pope, he would have given a far more conciliatory homily designed to appeal to the moderates as well as to the hard-liners among the cardinals.") Well, suddenly he told the co-hosts that, for fear of being misunderstood, he was swearing off ever talking to the media again. From now on, he said, he would only SING his sound bytes. And he had come prepared this morning to sing his take on Benedict's pontificate. Then a curtain parted, and -- I couldn't believe it -- there were the old St. Louis Jesuits at their instruments -- reconstituted for the occasion, three of them in leisure suits, one in clericals. As Father McBrien took the microphone, the guy at the piano started playing the opening chords to Al Stewart's "The Year of the Cat." Father closed his eyes and sang:

In a morning from the Dies Irae,
at a conclave where they turned back time,
he came chanting "Cum ecclesia sentire."
Then he slaughtered a mime.
He came out of the Sis-
tine in a vestment pris-
tine, looking papal in his pointy hat.
No need to ask for an explanation
'cause I'll tell you where we're at:
The Years of the Rat (dee dee dee, dee dee dee).

Swiss paper holds out hope for Buddy Christ

Catch the last three paragraphs of this round up of Swiss opinion: "The canton Valais paper Le Nouvelliste says it is likely that the new Pope will surprise everyone. It adds that during the Second Vatican Council of the early 1960s he was considered 'open to reform'.

Reform is at the top of a wish-list which Blick presents to the new Pope. 'We want a Pope who will engage in dialogue... a Pope with the courage to doubt and question himself... a Pope who will defend the poor and... who will do away with discrimination.'

Finally it hopes the new Pope 'will not be obsessed with sex'. 'Constantly harping on about sexual morality suffocates the liberating Christian message of love and hope,' it argues."

Providence Journal does both "Empire Strikes Back" and "Buddy Christ"

Pope tropes in Providence:

Rhode Island Catholics, whose numbers make the state the most Catholic state per capita in the country, yesterday expressed strong but mixed opinions on the selection of conservative Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany as the new pope.

Some praised Ratzinger, regarded as a disciplined keeper of Catholic orthodoxy, as someone who will guard church teachings.

Others criticized the choice, saying the 78-year-old Ratzinger is too doctrinaire, and that the church needs more of a shepherd to unify the faithful. ["Empire Strikes Back"]

But one prevailing thought mentioned by Rhode Island Catholics yesterday was that the elderly cardinal may just be a transitional pope, who will lead Catholics for the next 5 or 10 years, making no drastic changes, while the church considers its priorities for the next millennium.["Buddy Christ?"]

(See "Two Storylines" post.)

Megan Basham on Polygamy on National Review Online

Megan Basham on Polygamy on National Review Online: "On March 3, Utah attorney general Mark Shurtleff and Arizona attorney general Terry Goddard held a joint summit in St. George, Utah, to deal with allegations of abuse, molestation, incest, and fraud coming from within the twin border cities of Hildale and Colorado City. Approximately 10,000 members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) reside in the country's largest polygamist communities and for decades (thanks to a disastrous police raid in 1953) have remained largely beyond the short appendages of local law. The government offensive on the area that was then called Short Creek turned out to be a public-relations nightmare in which the press depicted the state as a malicious invader that ripped screaming children from the arms of their parents and separated loving husbands from their devoted wives. The event was defining enough that even 52 years later Goddard made a point of opening the conference by calling the Short Creek raid a 'shameful mistake' and asking polygamists present to 'let the past be the past.' From that time on, both Utah and Arizona's tacit polygamy policy remained 'don't ask, don't tell.'"

Two storylines to watch for in the media on Pope Benedict XVI

1. "Hardliner" takes reins, The Empire Strikes Back, score another one for the Evil Repressive Church.
2. Cardinals selected an older man, a transitional pope, does this mean the next pope will be the one who remakes the church in the image of "Buddy Christ"?

Keep your eyes peeled.

Habemus papam

"Joseph Ratzinger will be Pope Benedict XVI"

"A-List" of blogs from an "A-List" of rightie bloggers

Right Wing News has an interesting "A-List" of favorite blogs by prominent conservative bloggers. James Taranto and Glenn Reynolds are among the blog authors who were polled.

TIME Magazine: Ms. Right

John Cloud has a good piece on the Right's favorite rhetorical bombthrower, Ann Coulter (subscription or newstand code required).

High academic standards

MIT nerds pull a "Sokal": "In a victory for pranksters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a bunch of computer-generated gibberish masquerading as an academic paper has been accepted at a scientific conference."

Read the rest here.

Hat tip: Evan Sable.

"Border is right problem, 'Minutemen' wrong answer"

I haven't really been following the "minuteman" project controversy. USATODAY weighs in on the issue in an editorial. Their conclusion: while illegal immigration is a real problem, these ad hoc citizens' border patrols can't solve the problem.

That seems obvious. Their real intent is to apply political pressure to the President and Congress, to embarrass them by showing that independent citizens are willing to make more of an effort to enforce immigration laws than the federal government. The President's approach (which USA Today supports) is to give more of a carrot (the "guest worker" program, for example) to encourage legal immigration. Maybe. At some point, though, does enforcement also have to be beefed up? And don't forget that the Mexican government directly abets illegal immigrants, helping them to avoid interdiction. Should Bush be applying diplomatic pressure to President Fox?

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri code

Huge news for classical scholars: "For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure - a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible.
Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed."

Iceberg!

A great story is sometimes like an iceberg. The largest, most significant parts are below the surface, submerged, invisible in the text of the written account. Take David Kirkpatrick's story in The New York Times on Senator Frist's support of Christian conservatives in their battle for the judiciary, specifically against the use of the filibuster to derail devout Christian judges:

Asked about Dr. Frist's participation in an event describing the filibuster "as against people of faith," his spokesman, Bob Stevenson, did not answer the question directly.

"Senator Frist is doing everything he can to ensure judicial nominees are treated fairly and that every senator has the opportunity to give the president their advice and consent through an up or down vote," Mr. Stevenson said, adding, "He has spoken to groups all across the nation to press that point, and as long as a minority of Democrats continue to block a vote, he will continue to do so."

Please note that when writing about the press conference, Kirkpatrick did not state directly just what question was put to Stevenson. We are to take on faith that the spokesman was evasive (although Kirkpatrick is careful to imply that the spokesman was shifty without actually saying it explicitly).

When citing conservative activist Tony Perkins, Kirkpatrick writes:

"The issue of the judiciary is really something that has been veiled by this 'judicial mystique' so our folks [conservative rank and file] don't really understand it, but they are beginning to connect the dots," Mr. Perkins said in an interview, reciting a string of court decisions about prayer or displays of religion.

Please also note that Kirkpatrick does not see fit to indicate the string of court decisions to which Perkins objects. That might be helpful here in deciding what the conservative case is. (I guess we should be grateful that Kirkpatrick did not imply that this Tony Perkins also had the lead role in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.)

He ends the piece with a Schumer press release:

'The last thing we need is inflammatory rhetoric which on its face encourages violence against judges.'

Please, remind me again -- who's been encouraging violence against judges? Was Senator Kennedy looking to incite violence against Judge Bork almost 20 years ago when he suggested that Bork was looking to bring back segregation? Maureen Dowd's magic ellipses have their counterparts in these submerged stories on the front page. Does that make the Grey Lady to be the Titanic?

Virgil

Just finished The Aeneid. Will blog it later (yes, you've read it before, but I hadn't, so go easy on me).

Blogging will be light

from me for the weekend. Taking a small trip with the family.

Eric Scheske's mandate

The Daily Eudemon has a nice follow-up to the Times's "man date" silliness. Unlike the Girlie Men of Thumos, Eric Scheske now has worries about his marriage:

But here's our biggest concern: The examples they site of activities that don't count as "man dates" because they're too manly–going to bars, exercising together, and attending sporting events–were three staples in Eric Scheske's courtship of his wife. Any chance he married a lesbian? The New York Times has him quivering.

And he suspects he'll be sleeping on the porch tonight.

So Eric's marriage may lack a mandate. Or "man date." Er, or the man-woman equivalent of a "man date" which would be -- a romantic "date"? Or would that have been a date with no romantic tension? Oh, this business has us tied up completely in knots. How ever did we get along without the Times?

ScrappleFace Satire

ScrappleFace: Kerry Sends Legion of Lawyers to Monitor Pope Vote: "'While I never let my faith interfere with my politics,' said Mr. Kerry, 'I have a duty to make sure that my church doesn't impose a litmus test -- religious or otherwise -- on the papal candidates. If the Cardinals were to elect another extreme, dogmatic conservative, we would know that all of the votes have not been counted.'"

I heard that a party of unscrupulous orthodox Cardinals have distributed leaflets to all the cool, progressive Cardinals informing them that their conclave is next month. Those swine!

Why I'm leary of married Latin rite priests

Because Nick Kristof thinks it's a good idea. That's it.

Childish? Petulant? Silly? Maybe. You be the judge.
Kristof begins his op-ed on the subject: "Here's my prophecy about the next pope: He will allow married men to become priests."

Kristof begins fretting about the lack of clergy. Kristof has never explained why he thinks it's a good idea that the Church grow, so his advice is suspect. At the end, he indicates that his agenda goes further: "Ordaining women would also be an excellent way to provide a new source of clergy. . . One of his successors as pope will surely apply those precepts of equality to the church itself and allow the ordination of women. . . . " He hasn't mentioned openly active homosexual priests, but would that provide a new source of clergy as well? If that step is taken, why not sacramental gay marriage? In principle, priestly celibacy is a matter of Church discipline and obedience, but it's not clear that such discipline is not still needed.

Side note: if Frank Rich is going to cry about his supposed right-wing "culture of death" every time that it becomes news when a woman is starved and dehydrated to death, can we begin referring to two new phenomena: the Catholic "laity surplus," and the mainline Protestant "laity shortage"? This frames the real state of the world: explosive growth in Catholicism and universal diminishing of modernizing Protestant sects.

Kenneth Woodward at the Times

Kenneth Woodward nails it in his opinion piece at the Times on press coverage of papal matters: "In retrospect, two errors made consistently in interregnum papal journalism stand out. The first is how often the press has overlooked lines of continuity - how the innovations of a new pope were usually prefigured by his predecessor. Pius XII began planning a council before John XXIII convoked Vatican II; from his own writings we know that John's spirituality was of a more conservative kind, and it seems unlikely that he would have embraced all the changes that some progressives claimed were in his 'spirit.' Likewise, it was the cautious Paul VI who abolished the Latin Mass in favor of the vernacular and gave sanction to liberation theology. And it was John Paul I - not his illustrious successor - who first dropped the papal 'we' to speak in his own voice.
The second mistake the press tends to make is labeling any new pope as either conservative or progressive. The job of a pontiff is to conserve the patrimony of faith; 'progressive' is often a matter of style rather than theology or politics. "

Woodward: "Progressive, Conservative, or Rock Star?"

R.I.P., Andrea Dworkin

Radical feminist Andrea Dworkin is dead. Apparently she had been ill for some time. David Frum has a nice short piece on her, managing to find a bit of common ground. R.I.P.

Update: New York Sun has an obit here.

Does Frank Rich "get" literature?

It's not clear where Frank Rich should be in the Times format. Originally a theater critic, he was writing op-ed's for a while. The paper moved him back to the Arts section, where he insisted on continuing to write political op-ed's. Now they've moved him back to the opinion pages, but in a fourteen paragraph piece, eight paragraphs deal with movies (The Passion), TV series ("CSI" and "Revelations"), and novels (the "Left Behind" series), while two others deal with FOX News. So should be back on "Arts"? Not if this piece in any indicator.

Rich is in a bit of a bind. He's a dependable supporter of abortion, "death with dignity," and other progressive causes. It's clear that the phrase "culture of death" rankles him, because that makes him out to be the guy who backs death. So this column marks his attempt to commandeer the language.

So what does Rich mean by the culture of death? "Mortality - the more graphic, the merrier - is the biggest thing going in America." This is a pretty slender insight, if you can call it that. Americans are obsessed with death, and the stories they tell in novels and movies and the news they are interested in are all about death. Hmm. This new "culture of death" explains so much. Americans are fascinated by death, so they turn out entertainments with death in them, such asThe Passion.

And Quentin Tarantino movies.
And Hamlet.
And The Aeneid, The Iliad, and The Odyssey.
And The Tale of Genji.

Everyone, everywhere, at all times is interested in death. It's one of the most universally human preoccupations imaginable. How can a theater critic not know this?

And did Rich object to Ted Koppel reading of a list of names of soldiers who died in Iraq?

Rich also grants this about Pope John Paul II: "If there's one lesson to take away from the saturation coverage of the pope, it is how relatively enlightened he was compared with the men in business suits ruling Washington." Ah, relatively enlightened. If only he could have been absolutely enlightened, like, say, Frank Rich, he'd have understood this whole "culture of life"/"culture of death" business so much better.