Are we not men? We are .... persistent vegetables

May 23, 2006
Joseph Bottum writes:
An amazing story in the Guardian today: Patients who were unconscious for years, diagnosed as being in “persistent vegetative states” came awake when they were given a new experimental medication. As Wesley J. Smith emails to note, “They interacted with their environment. And then, after four hours, became unconscious again. The story says ‘permanently unconscious,’ but I doubt that phrase applies any more.” It illustrates that “we really don’t know what is going on inside the minds of people diagnosed as permanently unconscious,” and it should cause great hesitation before pulling the tube by which people are fed. The doctors involved also claimed that the drug could have wider application, hoping that “the drug could have uses in all kinds of brain damage, including Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s.”

One of my favorite pastimes

It may seem cheezy (like my favorite "Space Channel" movie show, sci-fi great 'Mystery Science Theatre') and it may not be "South Park" or "Ali G.", but it is truly entertaining and stimulating -- and as far as I know, it may be just another trendy cable show -- but watching Off Beat Cinema is one of my long-time, favorite past-times. And yes, they do show movies like the all-time great , O. Welles' The Third Man.

For coffee lovers, and for old-timey-flick fans, this show is a must:

'Off Beat Cinema is a two hour hosted movie show that airs on television stations throughout North America, featuring the finest in cult movies, movies that MUST be shown, "the Good, the Bad, the Foreign"...
In each episode, Maxwell Truth--along with his beatnik buddy Bird the painter, and the lovely Zelda--discuss the movies they show, and the proper coffee to consume while watching these flicks. Each week they're joined by whacked-out friends and top national music acts as they guzzle espresso and talk flicks.

Movies range from horrific thrillers like "Night of the Living Dead" and Orson Welles in the "Third Man," to Pia Zadora's film debut in "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" and everything in between.'

I wrote too soon, Steyn is a veritable slugger...

Regarding The Da Vinci Code, or even the newly translated "Gospel of Judas", I could say quite a bit. But, as the man said, brevity is the soul of wit:
1) TDVC is a bad piece of literature;
2)TDVC is nasty propoganda posing as literature;
3)TDVC is nasty propoganda posing as literature which has been made into a poor movie.
4) The "Gospel of Judas" is simply one more document from post-second century which illustrates precisely what the early Christian Church was up against vis-a-vis the Gnostic system of beliefs or dogmas. As Steyn's quote of a Universtiy of Aberdeen professor succintly notes: "the alleged Gospel of Judas 'contains a number of religious themes which are completely alien to the first-century world of Jesus and Judas, but which did become popular later, in the second century AD. An analogy would be finding a speech claiming to be written by Queen Victoria, in which she talked about The Lord Of The Rings and her CD collection.' "

There are many resources available to an average internet user which should/could debunk all of the "mystique" surrounding TDVC. But Steyn's article (http://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/article.jsp?content=20060515_126652_126652 ) briefly and devastatingly cuts short any attempt to find anything novel or valuable in either TDVC or the newly translated "Gospel of Judas".

And, as usual, Steyn is hilarious and admirable in terms of his writing skills and style, as well as his imagination. He is surely one of the greatest living writers currently being published in English-speaking journals and newspapers.

Steyn still a great pinch hitter...

For some reason, I thought this article well worth the read.

http://www.steynonline.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=21

"... Christopher Hitchens said on the Hugh Hewitt show recently that he “dislikes” the Republican Party but he has “contempt” for the Democrats. I appreciate the distinction, though I’m not sure I could muster even that level of genial tolerance."

R.I.P. Jaroslav Pelikan

"Jaroslav Pelikan died on Saturday at age eighty-two. The funeral is Wednesday morning at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary in Crestwood, New York, beginning at nine o’clock. Jaroslav Pelikan was in the estimation of many the twentieth century’s most distinguished historian of Christianity. He taught at Yale from 1962 to 1996 and was the immediate past president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A pastor and the son of a pastor of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, Pelikan entered into communion with the Orthodox Church in 1998.

In one of the first issues of First Things, David Lotz wrote “The Achievement of Jaroslav Pelikan,” summarizing Pelikan’s magisterial five-volume history of the Christian Tradition. A further appreciation of Pelikan’s person and achievements—by Robert Louis Wilken, his student and friend—will appear in a forthcoming issue of First Things. May choirs of angels welcome Jaroslav Pelikan home. "

from "First Things" weblog.
http://www.yale-university.com/history/faculty/pelikan.html

The Duh Vinci Con (undrum) by gullible

http://www.carl-olson.com/articles/duhvinci_con1.html

Thought this was an interesting waste of time -- his book, The Da Vinci Hoax is a much better waste of time. Neither reads, of course, are a waste of time.

Recently, CBC producer Peter Kavanagh had this to say:

"What's the difference between James Frey [of 'Oprah' fame], the author of A Million Little Pieces, and Dan Brown? Above all, it is the nature of the lies. That and millions and millions of dollars, and for James Frey the bad news is that the difference is going to become even more exaggerated....
....The comparison between James Frey and Dan Brown isn't as odd as it might seem. Frey wrote a non-fiction work, which turned out to be in part fictional, and he was pilloried. Brown wrote a novel, claiming that everything apparently based in historical fact was true, which turned out to be a lie, and became rich and famous. And it says something about our slippery grasp of the idea of truth that this bothers very few of us. Frey's lies were personal; Dan Brown's are historical and institutional."
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1147297811906&call_pageid=970599119419

Once one stops believing in Something, one will believe anything.
-- G.K. Chesterton

When Liberals were liberal

Finally, some sign that Liberals can be taken at their word, and be true to traditonal liberal thought:

http://eustonmanifesto.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=38

I may be impulsive, but I agree (even) with the preamble:

"We are democrats and progressives. We propose here a fresh political alignment. Many of us belong to the Left, but the principles that we set out are not exclusive. We reach out, rather, beyond the socialist Left towards egalitarian liberals and others of unambiguous democratic commitment. Indeed, the reconfiguration of progressive opinion that we aim for involves drawing a line between the forces of the Left that remain true to its authentic values, and currents that have lately shown themselves rather too flexible about these values. It involves making common cause with genuine democrats, whether socialist or not."

Some more ecclesial weight behind most Americans' beliefs

A Letter from America's Religious Leaders

in Defense of Marriage

Throughout America, the institution of marriage is suffering. As leaders in our nation's religious communities, we cannot sit idly by. It is our duty to speak. And so across the lines of theological division, we have united to affirm, in one voice, the following:

-- For millennia our societies have recognized the union of a man and a woman in the bond of marriage. Cross-culturally virtually every known human society understands marriage as a union of male and female. As such marriage is a universal, natural, covenantal union of a man and a woman intended for personal love, support and fulfillment, and the bearing and rearing of children. Sanctioned by and ordained of God, marriage both precedes and sustains civil society.

-- Marriage is particularly important for the rearing of children as they flourish best under the long term care and nurture of their father and mother. For this and other reasons, when marriage is entered into and gotten out of lightly, when it is no longer the boundary of sexual activity, or when it is allowed to be radically redefined, a host of personal and civic ills can be expected to follow. Such a point has always been stressed by the world's great monotheistic religious traditions and is, today, increasingly confirmed by impeccable social science research.

-- Long concerned with rates of divorce, out-of-wedlock births, and absentee fathers, we have recently watched with extreme alarm the growing trend of some courts to make marriage something it is not: an elastic concept able to accommodate almost any individual preference.

This does not so much modify or even weaken marriage as abolish it.

The danger this betokens for family life and a general condition of social justice and ordered liberty is hard to overestimate.

Therefore, we take the unprecedented stand of uniting to call for a constitutional amendment to establish a uniform national definition of marriage as the exclusive union of one man and one woman. We are convinced that this is the only measure that will adequately protect marriage from those who would circumvent the legislative process and force a redefinition of it on the whole of our society. We encourage all citizens of good will across the country to step forward boldly and exercise their right to work through our constitutionally established democratic procedures to amend the Constitution to include a national definition of marriage. We hereby announce our support for S.J. Res.1, the Marriage Protection Amendment.

May God bless all marriages and all those who labor to protect the sanctity and promote the goodness of marriage throughout this nation.

Signed,

The Right Reverend Keith L. Ackerman, SSC -- Episcopal Bishop of Quincy, IL

Daniel Akin, Ph.D. -- President, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

The Right Reverend Peter H. Beckwith -- Episcopal Bishop of Springfield, IL

Bishop Charles E. Blake -- First Assistant Presiding Bishop, Church of God in Christ (COGIC)

Bishop Wellington Boone -- Founder and Sr. Bishop, Fellowship of International Churches

The Most Reverend Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. -- Roman Catholic Archbishop of Denver, CO

Charles W. Colson -- Founder and Chairman, Prison Fellowship

His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios of America -- Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in America

James C. Dobson, Ph.D.Founder and Chairman, Focus on the Family

David Dockery, Ph.D. -- President, Union University, Jackson, Tennessee -- Chairman, Board of Directors, Council for Christian Colleges and Universities

The Right Reverend Robert Duncan -- Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, PA; Moderator of the Anglican Communion Network

His Eminence Edward Cardinal Egan -- Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York, NY

His Eminence Francis Cardinal George, OMI -- Roman Catholic Archbishop of Chicago, IL

Timothy George, Th.D. -- Dean, Beeson Divinity School of Samford University -- Executive Editor of Christianity Today

The Most Reverend Jose H. Gomez -- Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Antonio, TX

The Reverend Ted Haggard -- President, National Association of Evangelicals

The Reverend Dr. Jack W. Hayford -- President, The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel; Founder/Chancellor, The King's College and Seminary; Pastor Emeritus, The Church On The Way

The Most Blessed Herman -- Archbishop of Washington and New York: Primate, The Orthodox Church in America

The Right Reverend John W. Howe -- Episcopal Bishop of Central Florida

Bishop Harry R. Jackson -- Senior Pastor, Hope Christian Church, Lanham, MD; President, High Impact Leadership Coalition

His Eminence William Cardinal Keeler -- Roman Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore, MD

The Reverend Dr. D. James Kennedy Chancellor, Knox Theological Seminary, Fort Lauderdale, FL

The Reverend Dr. Gerald B. Kieschnick -- President, The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

Dr. Richard Land -- President, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Southern Baptist Convention

Rabbi Daniel Lapin -- President, Toward Tradition

Steve W. Lemke, Ph.D. -- Provost, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary

The Reverend Dr. Peter A. Lillback -- Senior Pastor, Proclamation Presbyterian Church, Bryn Mawr, PA; President, Westminster Theological Seminary

The Reverend Herbert H. Lusk, II -- Senior Pastor, Greater Exodus Baptist Church President & CEO, People For People, Inc

His Eminence Roger Cardinal Mahony -- Roman Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles, CA

His Eminence Adam Cardinal Maida -- Roman Catholic Archbishop of Detroit, MI

Most Reverend Richard J. Malone -- Roman Catholic Bishop of Portland, ME

His Eminence Theodore Cardinal McCarrick -- Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington, DC

The Most Reverend Robert C. Morlino -- Roman Catholic Bishop of Madison, WI

The Most Reverend John Myers -- Roman Catholic Archbishop of Newark, NJ

The Most Reverend Joseph F. Naumann -- Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kansas City, KS

Elder Russell M. Nelson -- Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The Reverend Richard John Neuhaus -- Editor in chief of FIRST THINGS

The Most Reverend John C. Nienstedt -- Roman Catholic Bishop of New Ulm, MN

Rabbi David Novak -- J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies, Professor of the Study of Religion and Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto; Visiting Professor of Religion, Princeton University (2006)

The Most Reverend Thomas J. Olmsted -- Roman Catholic Bishop of Phoenix, AZ

His Eminence Sean Patrick Cardinal O'Malley, O.F.M., Cap. -- Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston, MA

Rev. Dr. Luciano Padilla, Jr. -- Senior Pastor, Bay Ridge Christian Center, Brooklyn, NY

Dr. Paige PattersonPresident, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

His Eminence Justin Cardinal Rigali -- Roman Catholic Archbishop of Philadelphia, PA

The Reverend Eugene F. Rivers, III -- Founder and President, The Seymour Institute for Advanced Christian Studies

The Reverend Samuel Rodriguez, Jr. -- President, National Hispanic Christian Leadership ConferenceNational Hispanic Association of Evangelicals

The Most Reverend Michael J. Sheridan,br -- Roman Catholic Bishop of Colorado Springs, CO

Rabbi Meir Soloveichik -- Associate Rabbi, Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun of Manhattan, NY

The Most Reverend John G. Vlazny -- Roman Catholic Archbishop of Portland, OR

The Reverend Dr. Rick Warren -- Founding Pastor, The Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA; Author, The Purpose-Driven Life

Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb -- Executive Vice President, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America

The Reverend David Welch -- Executive Director, U.S. Pastor Council

The Most Reverend John W. Yanta -- Roman Catholic Bishop of Amarillo, TX

Malcolm B. Yarnell, III, Ph.D. -- Director, Center for Theological Research Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

Institutional affiliations are provided for purposes of identification only.
Download Postcards
To download postcards to mail to senators click here.
Text of Amendment
Text of Marriage Protection Amendment (SJ 1)
More Information
A Letter from Civic Leaders in Support of the Religious Coalition for Marriage
A Letter from America's Religious Leaders in Defense of Marriage
Helpful Links
A Christian Declaration on Marriage, November 14, 2000
Catholic Bishops on Marriage
U.S. Bishops’ Reaffirms Support For Federal Marriage Amendment, March 15, 2006
Q and A about Marriage and SS Unions USCCB
For more, click here.
Home • About Us • email: RCMUSA@gmail.com

Happy Feast of Saint Joseph the Worker

I admire Mel Gibson's presentatation of Jesus as a carpenter.... but, alas, I cannot find on teh internet, probably one of the most important images from the movie "The Passion of the Christ" -- the table Jesus the carpenter wrought as a 20-something carpenter. Imagine it here.

And so it continues.... Sorry ( well, not so sorry) to be repetitive.....

And so it continues.... Sorry ( well, not so sorry) to be repetitive.....
May 01, 2006, 7:11 a.m.
Partial Truth
The press and partial-birth abortion.
By Ramesh Ponnuru

“I remember sitting in my office,” Kate Michelman recalled years later, “and James saying to me: ‘Kate. This is a disaster.’” Michelman was the head of NARAL, the abortion lobby, and its vice president, James Wagoner had just brought her a copy of a congressional letter on partial-birth abortion. It was bad enough that the Republicans had just taken Congress a few months previously. Now NARAL and its allies had to deal with a new issue that was tailor-made for their opponents.
They quickly came up with a few defenses. Partial-birth abortions, they claimed, were done rarely and only for medical reasons. Planned Parenthood explained, “The procedure, dilation and extraction (D&X), is extremely rare and done only in cases when the woman’s life is in danger or in cases of extreme fetal abnormality.” There were only 500 to 600 such cases a year. Moreover, NARAL and Planned Parenthood claimed, the fetus felt no pain, since anaesthesia given to the mother had already killed it.
The press bought it. The Los Angeles Times reported that there were only 200 such abortions a year. “Typically, it is used in late pregnancies to save a mother’s life or after the detection of severe fetal abnormalities.” A New York Times story also echoed the abortion lobby’s talking points. USA Today, the New York Daily News, and syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman all repeated the claim that anaesthesia killed the fetus before the scissors made contact. None of these stories even acknowledged that pro-lifers disputed these claims.
All of them were false.
The claim about anaesthesia was debunked first. Martin Haskell, the abortionist who had first brought partial-birth abortion to public attention, had said in a 1993 interview that the fetus was not dead before the D&X began. Dr. Norig Ellison, the president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, testified before the House that the claim that anesthesia killed the fetus was “entirely inaccurate” and dangerous to spread, since it could cause mothers to turn down anaesthesia to protect their unborn children. At this point, anaesthesia dropped out of the debate.
In September 1996—after Congress had passed a bill banning partial-birth abortion and Bill Clinton had vetoed it—Ruth Padawer, a reporter for the Bergen County, New Jersey, Record, disclosed that a local clinic performed 1,500 partial-birth abortions per year. That was more than the abortion lobby and much of the media had claimed took place nationwide. Within days, David Brown and Barbara Vobejda reported in the Washington Post that it was “possible—and maybe even likely—that the majority of these abortions are performed on normal fetuses.” Their finding tracked with Haskell’s remark that 80 percent of the partial-birth abortions he performed were “purely elective.”
Five months later, a bigger bombshell: Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, told American Medical News and the New York Times that he had “lied through [his] teeth” about partial-birth abortion. When Nightline interviewed him in November 1995, he had followed the party line: Partial-birth abortions were rare and performed only in extreme cases. In truth, he said, the vast majority were performed on healthy mothers with healthy babies. “The abortion rights folks know it, the anti-abortion folks know it, and so, probably, does everyone else.” He estimated that 3,000 to 5,000 were performed each year.
The Alan Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s research arm, maintained that there were “about 650” partial-birth abortions in 1996, or at any rate that the number fell between 500 and 1,000. It stuck to that line for several years. Later, it issued a new figure: There had been 2,200 partial-birth abortions in 2000. Either the number had tripled in four years, or one or both estimates were flawed. Since clinics’ participation in the institute’s survey is voluntary, both numbers are probably underestimates.
Assume, however, that there are 2,200 partial-birth abortions annually. Is this a big number? Its defenders point out, accurately, that it is a small fraction of the total number of abortions each year in America. Yet it is also true, as pro-life lobbyist Douglas Johnson notes, that “[i]f a new virus [were] killing 2,200 premature babies annually in neonatal units, it would be on the TV evening news every week.”
Many reporters continued to spread myths about partial-birth abortion long after they had been debunked. In 2003, the Wall Street Journal reported that partial-birth abortion was “typically” performed “for medical reasons.” The same year, the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Miami Herald made the same false claim.
Much of the press, led by the New York Times, avoided using the phrase “partial-birth abortion” (or placing it in distancing quotes) whenever possible. This impulse has led to some convoluted Times headlines: “House Acts to Ban Abortion Method, Making It a Crime”; “President Vetoes Measure Banning Type of Abortion”; “Bush Signs Ban on a Procedure for Abortion.” The kids at Hogwarts speak the name of Voldemort more freely than the Times editors use the phrase partial-birth abortion.
The press has not shown any general reluctance to adopt politically contested phrases. When Congress banned “assault weapons,” the NRA bitterly protested that the phrase had been made up and referred to no distinct class of firearms. Yet the press adopted it without resorting to locutions such as “a class of guns called ‘assault weapons’ by advocates of gun control” or “Congress Bans Type of Gun.”
When pro-life presidents cut off family-planning funding for groups that counsel women to have abortions, pro-choicers called the policy a “gag rule”—and the press did not handle the phrase with gloves and tongs. Headlines, including New York Times headlines, regularly used variants of the phrase. Linda Greenhouse casually referred to Rust v. Sullivan, which concerned the policy, as “the abortion gag-rule case.”
The conservative Media Research Center analyzed 217 stories about partial-birth abortion on ABC, CBS, and NBC that aired between 1995 and 2003. They found that only 18 of those stories explained what took place in a partial-birth abortion (and only three of them explained it between 1998 and 2003). They reported on congressional votes and Supreme Court decisions about partial-birth abortion, but refused to provide the facts that would make it clear what the fuss was about.
The partial-birth-abortion debate was, as Michelman predicted, a disaster for the abortion lobby. But the press did everything it could to contain the damage.