Five young men cycling to raise awareness of the plight of child soldiers

I met an inspiring group of young men today on Parliament Hill. They are planning to cycle from Ottawa to St. John's, Newfoundland to raise awareness of the plight of child soldiers around the world.

They're going to blog and vlog their journey and have some good links at their website childsoldiercycle.ca on the extent of this horrendous problem. Here's some info from their website:

Do you know anyone between the ages of nine and seventeen…and are they generally happy, well-fed, and protected?

Of course, right? But did you know that if you lived in parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America or Europe…the kids you’re thinking of could be among a quarter of a million children serving—or being forced to serve—in a military capacity?

Child Soldiers…

Imagine children signing up to become soldiers. Voluntarily—out of fear, a lack of alternatives, peer pressure, or a desire for revenge in a violent society. Imagine others being forcibly abducted by military groups, and kept as slaves.

They leave on Sunday after receiving a blessing at St. Joe's parish and a little rally on Parliament Hill.

This is not fundraising campaign but an attempt to get people to sign hand prints indicating they want the media to cover this largely untold story.

So I did mine.

Their names are Benjamin Gunn-Doerge, 18, who is going to St. F-X in the fall. Jamie MacDonald, 18, also of St. Joe's, who is going to Queen's this fall; his brother Sandy MacDonald, 15, who is going into grade 10, Matthiue Halle,, from St. Joseph the Worker parish in Victoria, B.C. , 18, and Philip Schliehauf, 19, who is in his second year at Queen's and also attends St. Joe's.

Phil is the one on the unicycle. Last year he unicycled along from Victoria to Ottawa last year collecting funds for Invisible Children.

Off doing summer things in Merrickville

I had never been to Merrickville, so on Tuesday, I drove down there with a couple of friends. We had lunch on a sheltered patio at the Yellow Canoe, and visited every little shop and well, shopped.

A young man reads The Defilers and likes it!

I got this email this morning, which cheered my day:

Deborah, I just finished reading your book! I started reading it a few days
ago & I seriously couldn't put it down!! It was quite a story & I
enjoyed it. I especially loved reading about spiritual realities from a
true perspective, & what's more, it was free of nihilism, with a
redeeming hopeful point to it!

Thank you.

Interesting article on celibacy

Here's a link to an interesting look at celibacy in the priesthood, but please note the paragraphs on marriage. This is by ABC's Sarah Coakley via David Virtue's site. My bolds for those readers who like to skim.

Yet one might well say, as did David Brooks in 2003, that our age is in a crisis - not so much of homosexuality - but more generally of erotic faithfulness. However, this is scarcely a chic reflection, granted the current prurient obsession with homosexuality, and the accompanying diversion from heterosexual failures.

A third, and final, "cultural contradiction" that I want to propose hovers over the common assumption that celibacy and marriage are somehow opposites: one involving no sex at all, and the other - supposedly - involving as much sex as one or both partners might like at any given time. But this, on reflection, is also a perplexing cultural fantasy that does not stand up to scrutiny.

The evidence provided by Richard Sipe's book, Celibacy in Crisis, is revealing here. Not only does faithful (or what Sipe calls "achieved") celibacy generally involve a greater consciousness of sexual desire and its frustration than a life lived with regular sexual satisfaction. But married sexuality, on the other hand, is rarely as care-free and mutually satisfied as this third "cultural contradiction" might presume.

Indeed a realistic reflection on long and faithful marriages (now almost in the minority) will surely reveal periods of enforced "celibacy" even within marriages: during periods of delicate pregnancy, parturition, illness, physical separation, or impotence, which are simply the lot of the marital "long haul."

And if this is so, then the generally-assumed disjunction between celibacy and marriage will turn out not to be as profound as it seems. Rather, the reflective, faithful celibate and the reflective, faithful married person may have more in common than the unreflective or faithless celibate, or the carelessly happy, or indeed unhappily careless, married person.

Now I shall return fleetingly to these three "cultural contradictions" later, For by then, I trust, we shall have gleaned some resources for addressing them. But for now, we cannot go further without attacking a different sort of cultural presumption head-on: that of the supposed pyschological dangers of celibacy or of any so-called "repressed" sexuality.

Here we may be surprised to discover what Freud himself said on this matter, and to him we shall now turn. Could it be that Freud actually gives us, despite himself, certain back-handed resources for thinking afresh theologically about the nature of "desire"?

Even Richard Sipe - who wishes, despite his sustained expose of clerical failures in celibacy, to defend the estimated 2% of Roman Catholic priests who he thinks do (as he puts it) "achieve" celibacy - argues that this "achievement" is always at the cost of earlier "experimentation" and fumbling, through which the priest must inevitably pass en route to something like mature sexual balance.

Underlying these gloomy figures (Sipe estimates that nearly half of so-called "celibates" are actually not so at any one time) seems to lurk the psychological presumption - often attributed to Freud - that celibacy is unnatural and even harmful. Or, if celibacy is not inherently "unnatural," then it is deemed distinctly "unusual" and even "utopian."'

It may come as some surprise, then, to find that Freud's own views on what he called "sublimation" (or unfulfilled and redirected sexual desire) were not only malleable over time, remaining finally somewhat unclear and inconsistent, but that he moved distinctly away from his early, and purely biological, account of "Eros" (sexual desire) and its power for redirection.

At no time, in fact (as far as I can see), does Freud's position provide a mandate for the view that "sublimation" is harmful - or, at any rate, that it is any more harmful than the psychological repressions we necessarily negotiate all the time, according to Freud.

The "Who goes Nazi?" Parlor Game

As someone who grew up in the 1950s, and a child of a mother, aunt and grandparents who were stateless persons in France and would have been sent to the Nazi death camps had they not found refuge in the United States, I have always had a horror of the Holocaust. I also grew up an American of Russian descent at the height of the Cold War, when my little neighbor, a boy of about five, used to cry when an airplane would fly overhead because it might drop "The Bomb."

The Korean War was on, and brainwashing was in the news, and as a fifth grader, little boys would pantomime killing me with machine guns when I said my unusual last name (not Gyapong back then) was Russian not Irish or Italian. I used to wonder "Would I tell?" if I were captured by the Communists? Would I betray my country? I found out years later that a lot of other kids questioned themselves the same way. I have always had an equal horror of the Gulag and the totalitarianism of Communism, for that is what drove my grandparents on my mother's side out of Russia.

Now there's a parlor game "Who Goes Nazi?" making its rounds again from a 1941 Harper's article) that has me remembering my childhood. (H/t The Anchoress), The game's object is taking a look at your wide circle of acquaintances and figuring out which ones would become a Nazi were the circumstances right.

It’s fun–a macabre sort of fun–this parlor game of “Who Goes Nazi?” And it simplifies things–asking the question in regard to specific personalities.

Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes–you’ll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success–they would all go Nazi in a crisis.

Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi. Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them.

Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t-whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi. It’s an amusing game. Try it at the next big party you go to.

Today small-government conservatives, or American Tea Partiers are routinely called Nazis. But Nazi is a contraction of National Socialist and a fascists loved a huge, intrusive state. While the racial component made its form of totalitarianism different from the class-based dictatorship of Communism, both systems killed millions of people and violently suppressed dissent.

I have also come to see that the Holocaust (and other genocides, as well) happened because so many normal people were in willful denials about those cattle cars full of people even as they dutifully did the paper work. Many were subject to fear that if they spoke out, they might be on the next train themselves. Or thought it was truly impossible that fellow Germans could be so barbaric. As I have capitulated in small ways merely to be popular in my life, how would I respond if my life were endangered? Would I stand up for the truth?

As a Christian, would I betray Jesus Christ if I faced torture or death or doing so? What about the loss of my job? The loss of my reputation?

I hope and pray the answer would be no, and I would, I hope, beseech God to grant me the grace to die for Him if need be. But I betray Him in so many little ways even without such big temptations. I don't even bother to ask for the grace, which is in itself a betrayal. But then, I think that often people who become Nazis or totalitarians or utopian thinkers is that they do not know their own capacity for evil. They have not reached a deep realization that "There but for the grace of God, go I." They manage to think they are good people because of the civilized bonds of society, but whoa if those bonds break down.

Of course we all think we would not be a Nazi, it's only the other guy. But all of us are vulnerable to being caught up in this kind of thing, which includes deep deception, and appeals to instinct and unconscious drives that most of us have never done the spiritual work to discern in ourselves. We're too busy projecting what is wrong with us onto others.

Interesting game. But first, make sure you do not neglect examining yourself.

The exhaustion of talking about the relationship

Interesting article about a Lesbian and what it was like to have relationships with other women.
Heh heh heh. This reminds me of a friend of mine lamenting, "The problem with my husband is he tries to understand me!"

Despite the closeness of her relationships, Clune admits that the hyper-emotional world of a female-to-female sexual bond was "exhausting." "The women I went out with were by and large more inclined to be insecure and to need reassurance and I found myself in the male role of endlessly reassuring my girlfriends," she writes. "The subtle mood changes of everyday life would be picked over inexhaustibly."

Clune describes how one lover was so jealous and insecure that "every single time we enjoyed a night out ... we would have a row and have to leave." "Back home, we would then spend the next four hours arguing about our relationship and my feelings of loyalty, fidelity and so on," she writes. "It was never-ending."

"Can you imagine waking up beside a woman when you've both got raging PMT (premenstrual tension)?" she adds.

Ultimately, she says, the emotional rollercoaster forced her to reconsider her lesbian plunge - something she clearly says she "chose," and was not born into. "Unlike most men, women, of course, offer each other endless support and there's hardly ever any lack of communication," writes Clune. "But - bizarre as it may seem - I found myself longing for exactly the opposite."

Following "a calculated decision to try men again," Clune says that she found in her future husband Richard a "quiet kindness" and "lack of neediness" that appealed to her. "I felt we were walking alongside each other rather than spending life locked in face-to-face intimacy or combat," she writes. "It felt natural and not at all scary. He was sanguine about my past and never suffered the insecurities I had come to expect."

"It was a breath of fresh air. I've always been fiercely independent and felt I could be myself with him."

Yeah, it's nice to find a man like that.

Bishop Edwin Barnes homily on St. James

Here's an excerpt from a courageous post at The Anglo-Catholic:

If we do not value our faith, then those who taught us the faith slip from our memory. Then we become vulnerable; open to every sort of superstition and false religion. As Chesterton said, ‘when people cease to believe in God, they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything’. So the Beatles toyed with Hinduism, some people turn an octopus into a prophet who can predict the outcome of football matches, and young women whose parents and grand-parents failed to hand on to them their Christian faith suddenly feel attracted, of all things, to Islam and wearing the Burkha.

In England, we simply don’t understand those cultures where Christianity is still valued. Take, for instance, Romania. For centuries that was at the very edge between the Christian West and the Islamic East. Their great national hero, who stood out against the invaders, was prince Vlad. In the West we have turned him into a comic book villain, Vlad the Impaler. For the Romanians he is one of the great figures of their history, who stood against the armies of the crescent and ensured the survival of the Orthodox Faith in their country.

So honour James your Patron, missionary to the far west of Europe, whose memory and prayers protected Spain when it was threatened by an alien culture and belief system. Ask though whether maybe we should be as bold as his followers were, in defending our own faith. Today we are confirming seven candidates; making them strong in their faith, which is what con-firming means, so that they can give an account to others of the faith which is in them, and stand upright against all those who would insult Jesus and the Church.

Two weeks ago I was in a parish in Birmingham. The priest there told me that down the road, as you enter that district, a black flag flies. It announces that this is Taliban territory. Next door to the Vicarage a new mosque is being built. Every pub for miles around has been turned into a mosque. You will find a similar story in Bradford and Leicester and many English Provincial Towns. If we do not value our faith, we shall lose it. Our church has been too accommodating to people of other faiths, implying that every religion is as good as every other. We have allowed Muslim cultural centres and mosques to be opened everywhere, yet we have not complained when Christians in Jordan and other Arab states are forbidden to practice the faith publicly.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why many catholic Anglicans are seriously contemplating the offer from the Holy Father. In the Church of Rome at least we shall not, for political correctness’ sake, be forbidden to wear the crucifix, or forbidden to pray with patients in hospital, or forbidden to tell others about Jesus. Maybe it was inspired of your forebears to have James as your patron; not just the first Apostle to be martyred, but also the protector of the faith against the Muslim invaders. Holy James, we need your prayers and protection now as never before. Pray for us and all who hold and teach the catholic faith.

I wonder what he thinks of Anglicanorum coetibus?

From David Virtue's site, a story about Archbishop Nicholas Okoh, the new primate of the Anglican Church in Nigeria, the largest province of the Anglican Communion. (Of which I am not a part) My bolds:

“The Church in the West had vowed to use their money to spread the homosexual lifestyle in African societies and Churches; after all Africa is poor. They are pursuing this agenda vigorously and what is more, they now have the support of the United Nations. We therefore call on parents to ensure that their children obtain their first degree in Nigeria before travelling abroad. Parents and guardians should closely watch and monitor the relationship which their children or wards keep so that deviant behavior could be timely corrected. The sin of homosexuality, it must be reemphasized, destroyed the communities of Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Okoh ripped the comparison of those who ordained gay bishops with those who cross borders for “pastoral work” and had been accused of breaking the call for a moratorium.

“We reject being put in the same category with churches conducting gay ordination and same sex marriage, and the equating of our evangelical initiative (for which we should be commended) with those who are doing things unbiblical. But for the Nigerian initiative and others like her, many of our faithful Anglican American friends who cannot tolerate the unbiblical practices of the Episcopal Church in America could have gone away to other faiths. The great commission to go in to all the world to save souls is our compelling constitution.”

Okoh called the step taken by the [Archbishop of] Canterbury “ill-advised and does not make any contribution towards the healing of the ailment in the Anglican extended family.”

“Our main thrust as a Church remains the evangelization of our people. The Gospel is not only proclaimed as a religious faith but a means of godly civilization. By evangelism we mean the spreading of “the faith once for all delivered to the Saints” (Jude 3). We equally mean effective teaching and discipling to reduce the yearning gap between profession of faith and morality. It also includes getting deeply involved in the work of mission by providing some amenities and support to individuals and rural communities so as to reduce poverty and complement the effort of Government that the people may have life more abundantly.”

The archbishop also attacked Nigeria’s numerous social evils and said he would not draw back from addressing them. “Like Biblical prophets of old who were champions of moral, socio-political and economic destinies of their nations, we do not intend to abandon this divine responsibility.”

“I wonder why we still lack vision and mission such that can explore resources to employ and feed all our people; why do most people hunger when God has so endowed us. There is clearly poverty in the land as evidenced in our housing, food and clothing in most rural communities. In spite of this, corruption is still growing in all segments of society; leaving the most vulnerable in society completely dispossessed. There is warning everywhere that fossil oil will not continue to rule the world. Serious scientific research is going on around the world to find viable alternatives.”

So far, I love this guy. Now, where does he stand on priestesses? Wouldn't it be great if he brought all those Anglicans into the Catholic Church under a personal ordinariate?

Father Z is hilarious

I'm listening to Father Z's podcast. He is hilarious.

Boney M song banned from West Bank

From American Thinker:

Palestinians are hosting an international arts festival this week -- with performances in Ramallah and other major West Bank cities. Among the performing artists was the Boney M disco group, known for its world-famous "Rivers of Babylon" song.

But before the singers could mount the stage in Ramallah, they were told that "Rivers of Babylon" was out. Why? Because according to an Associated Press report, festival officials would not countenance lyrics about Jewish longing and ties to biblical Israel.

To be precise, these are the words that are verboten in Mahmoud Abbas's West Bank:

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down

"Yeah, we wept, when we remembered Zion"

-snip-

But it shouldn't come as a shock why such seemngly innocent lyrics couldn't be heard in Ramallah, why they're impermissible in Fatahland, where Palestinian leaders from Abbas on down stoutly deny historical Jewish ties to the Holy Land. This, after all, is a song that evokes Jewish connections to the land dating back some 2,500 years. And not only does it refer to the Jews' relatively brief exile in Babylon but also to their memories of hundreds of years of Jewish sovereignty in Zion before the Babylonian exile.

Yeah, the fashionable position these days is to argue that the state of Israel itself is illegitimate. Someone was telling me of a conservation she had in Israel, and one of the people she met was touting the one state solution. "What would happen to the Jews then?" my friend asked. "Pfffft! " said the man, making a gesture with his hands.

If you want to listen to the song, here it is on YouTube.

How the Pope spends his summer holiday

Il blog degli amici di Papa Ratzinger [3]: Il ritratto del card. Ouellet secondo la giornalis...

Il blog degli amici di Papa Ratzinger [3]: Il ritratto del card. Ouellet secondo la giornalis...: "Clicca qui per leggere l'articolo segnalatoci dal nostro Alberto. Qui una traduzione."

From Pajamas Media about those youths rioting in Grenoble

You probably didn’t hear about it, but Muslim youths rioted in Grenoble, France, on July 16, sparking some of the worst instability the country has faced since the 2005 riots. Now, like then, most of the media declined to mention the religious or ethnic background of the rioters, instead painting them as unruly youngsters and covering the eyes of the public to the slow dissolution of France as we know it.

snip

Over fifty cars were set ablaze. Stores were also burned and a tramway stoned. Gang members carrying baseball bats took over buses. When the police arrested one rioter, things got worse. Law enforcement officers were fired upon and targeted with stones and Molotov cocktails. It wasn’t for four days that a level of calm returned.

This is France today. Police must fear that any use of force against a criminal with a Muslim background could be interpreted as an act of brutality and racism that must be responded to with violence.

The country was first forced to recognize the problem in 2005 when riots broke out in 300 towns for three weeks following the deaths of two Muslim teenagers who were electrocuted when they hid in a power station believing they were being chased by police. Fires were set to over 300 buildings and over 9,000 cars. A state of emergency was declared and nearly 3,000 rioters were arrested and 126 police officers were injured. Schools, gyms, stores, churches, and police stations were attacked as the rioters clashed with police. Saudi Prince al-Waleed bin Talal would later boast that he convinced Rupert Murdoch to order Fox News to stop describing the rioters as Muslims.

It didn’t take long for the disgruntled Muslim urbanites to go for a second round. In May 2006, about 100 youths with baseball bats fought with police on the same battlefields from the previous year. The mayor had to flee his home when it was stoned, homemade explosives were tossed at the town hall building, trash cans were in flames, and four cars were blown up. It is not clear what exactly sparked the violence, but two arrests for separate incidents did precede the upheaval.

Then in November 2007, a police officer arrived at a traffic accident involving a police vehicle and motorcycle that killed two teenagers. The officer’s car was set on fire before he could escape. He ended up in the hospital with several broken ribs and a punctured lung from being beaten with baseball bats and iron bars. Clashes with police continued for two days as gang members, armed with shotguns, fired at police as they committed acts of looting and arson. About 130 police officers were injured, 70 cars were burned, and various buildings were attacked including a library and two schools. One police officer described the scene as an “open rebellion” by “urban guerillas.”

These hubs of impoverished, mostly Muslim immigrant communities exist because the French government has designated them as “sensitive urban zones.” These are areas where the police do not have control, effectively making them “no-go zones,” as Dr. Daniel Pipes describes them. Almost five million people live in these areas which are left to themselves, allowing gangs and hostility to authority to breed.

I didn't know this

Via Kathy Shaidle, my bolds, as I did not know this:

The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed. But the extrapolation of this logic to all "people of color"—especially since 1965, when new immigration laws dramatically altered the demographic makeup of the U.S.—moved affirmative action away from remediation and toward discrimination, this time against whites. It has also lessened the focus on assisting African-Americans, who despite a veneer of successful people at the very top still experience high rates of poverty, drug abuse, incarceration and family breakup.

Those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia, Latin America and Africa did not suffer discrimination from our government, and in fact have frequently been the beneficiaries of special government programs. The same cannot be said of many hard-working white Americans, including those whose roots in America go back more than 200 years.

Contrary to assumptions in the law, white America is hardly a monolith. And the journey of white American cultures is so diverse (yes) that one strains to find the logic that could lump them together for the purpose of public policy.

The clearest example of today's misguided policies comes from examining the history of the American South.

The old South was a three-tiered society, with blacks and hard-put whites both dominated by white elites who manipulated racial tensions in order to retain power. At the height of slavery, in 1860, less than 5% of whites in the South owned slaves. The eminent black historian John Hope Franklin wrote that "fully three-fourths of the white people in the South had neither slaves nor an immediate economic interest in the maintenance of slavery."

And what about those Americans like me and my immigrant ancestry. Maybe way back we oppressed some serfs in Russia but lost everything in the Bolshevik Revolution, then lost everything again in France during World War Two. The other ancestors were peasants from the Carpathian Mountains. We had nothing to do with oppressing black people or native people.

Unfortunately, a lot of the racism of poor whites stemmed from a desire to find someone they perceived to be lower than themselves. Very sad and ugly.

Richard Sipes writes on "Beneath the child abuse scandal"

Interesting article in the National Catholic Reporter. This is not an area I know much about here in Canada. My bolds:

The attitudes, values, and practices of clerical culture are bound by secrecy. Sexual secrecy is the key to the clerical culture. It beats at the heart of the crisis. Currently clerical culture, on balance, is corrupt. Priests -- even good priests -- live, breath, and have their being in a culture of hypocrisy. Sexual secrecy dominates the culture from seminary training through the episcopacy to the Vatican. There is a great deal more at work in the operation of clergy and the clerical system than "passion for the Gospel" that the pope extols.

Few people want to dirty their hands with the crisis. Who from inside the clerical culture has spoken up and reported abuse? (10) Many folks are sick of hearing about clergy abuse. Fr. James Martin, an editor of the Jesuit magazine America told The New York Times, "I don't think editors realize how tired Catholics are of seeing the church portrayed through the lens of sex abuse." (11)

That poses the real conundrum: percolating behind the scandal of priests preying sexually on minors and vulnerable women and men only waiting to be served up steaming hot is the secret system where priests and bishops enjoy the sexual favors of willing adult women and compatible adult men; (to say nothing about pornography and masturbation). The questions about clerics' mistresses, their children, the abortions of their companions (often instigated by them) and widespread homosexual activity cannot long be ignored. (12) A more powerful lens is waiting to focus on the clerical culture that will render the crisis in ever more precise dimensions.

Beneath the child abuse scandal is a clerical world of sexual reality. Besides avoidance and denial of that reality is a system of moral disbelief sustaining the crisis. Many priests simply do not believe a host of church moral dictums about human sexuality. A more perfect example is not possible than a top official in the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy who was caught on television in 2007 claiming he "didn't feel he was sinning" by having sex with gay men (13) -- unless it is a monsignor acting out in his Vatican office, or a Vatican chorister in 2010 allegedly procuring male prostitutes for papal gentleman-in-waiting.

If you do not believe what the Church teaches--and the moral dictums flow from the Gospel, they are not optional add-ons or part of the cafeteria menu, then you will not have the Holy Spirit's power to resist sin. The chastity required for priestly celibacy (or for single lay people) or a continent married life is not easy to do on one's own power, especially in our sex saturated, "grab the gusto" culture. We're required not only to follow the moral dictums outwardly, but inwardly as well.

Thankfully, I know a whole lot of priests and bishops who seem to be doing this right, as the Church teaches and that is a beautiful thing to see.

A great essay on America's ruling class

It could even be worse in Canada. From the American Spectator, a must read essay The American Ruling Class and the Perils of Revolution by Angelo M. Codevilla:

Today's ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters -- speaking the "in" language -- serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America's ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.

The two classes have less in common culturally, dislike each other more, and embody ways of life more different from one another than did the 19th century's Northerners and Southerners -- nearly all of whom, as Lincoln reminded them, "prayed to the same God." By contrast, while most Americans pray to the God "who created and doth sustain us," our ruling class prays to itself as "saviors of the planet" and improvers of humanity. Our classes' clash is over "whose country" America is, over what way of life will prevail, over who is to defer to whom about what. The gravity of such divisions points us, as it did Lincoln, to Mark's Gospel: "if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand."

snip

Professional prominence or position will not secure a place in the class any more than mere money. In fact, it is possible to be an official of a major corporation or a member of the U.S. Supreme Court (just ask Justice Clarence Thomas), or even president (Ronald Reagan), and not be taken seriously by the ruling class. Like a fraternity, this class requires above all comity -- being in with the right people, giving the required signs that one is on the right side, and joining in despising the Outs. Once an official or professional shows that he shares the manners, the tastes, the interests of the class, gives lip service to its ideals and shibboleths, and is willing to accommodate the interests of its senior members, he can move profitably among our establishment's parts.

Do read the whole thing.

It's been a maudlin day

My favorite saint's day. Because God really does give beauty for ashes.

O ALMIGHTY God, whose blessed Son did sanctify Mary Magdalene, and call her to be a witness to his resurrection: Mercifully grant that by thy grace we may be healed of all our infirmities, and always serve thee in the power of his endless life; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen.


From Father Z, who includes recipes:

Today is the feast of St. Mary Magdalene.

The 3rd c. writer Hippolytus in his Commentary on Song of Songs identifies Mary Magdalene with both Mary of Bethany the sister of Martha and Lazarus (Luke 10:38-42; John 1:10) and also the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet (Luke 7:36-50)

Mary Magdalene and/or Mary of Bethany are often identified as sinners. Pope Gregory I "the Great" called her a peccatrix, "sinner". Eventually she came to be called meretrix, "prostitute".

There is no way to arrive definitively at the identity of the figure of Mary Magdelene. It is possible that Mary Magdalene was none of these women. The Catholic Church has no position about this. Commonly, however, Catholics sometimes identify all three women as the same Mary.

There is also another version, namely that Mary Magdalene was the woman Jesus saved from stoning after being caught in adultery. Scholars believe Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, the woman Jesus rescued, and the woman who anointed His feet are all different women.