Christian response to Brokeback Mountain breaks stereotype

One of the concerns I have as a Christian is how often we are demonized and stereotyped, especially by secularists who don't see a lot of difference between Christian believers and the Taliban.

Well, Michael Medved points out how much Christian North Americans defied the usual stereotyping in their reaction---or lack of one--to Brokeback Mountain.

The publicity blitz surrounding Oscar front-runner Brokeback Mountain not only challenged stereotypes about gay relationships, it simultaneously cleared away persistent misunderstandings about the nation's Christian conservatives.


Instead of reacting with outraged calls for censorship or condemnation, the much-reviled minions of the so-called religious right have mostly ignored the movie, allowing it to collect every sort of honor with shockingly scant controversy. While derided by prominent liberals as "the Taliban wing of the Republican Party," conservative Christian leaders have displayed a new sense of security and confidence, in dramatic contrast to the paranoid Muslim mobs that riot across the globe over a dozen disrespectful Danish cartoons.

This doesn't mean that cultural traditionalists in the USA have abandoned their principles and suddenly embraced the much-discussed "gay cowboy movie": People who revere biblical strictures against same-sex relationships can scarcely commend a film that provides a lyrical celebration of a homosexual affair that wrecks two marriages.

Nevertheless, the publicists and activists involved in promoting Brokeback Mountain seem almost disappointed that religious conservatives have expressed so little indignation.

-snip-

Eighteen years ago, Christian conservatives felt unsure enough about their position in society to react with horror and pain to The Last Temptation of Christ; 25,000 protesters rallied at Universal Studios to plead against the film's release - a response in no way echoed by religious organizations preparing for the arrival of The Da Vinci Code. Though Ron Howard's high-profile new project tells a story that contradicts Christian teaching about Jesus at least as thoroughly as The Last Temptation, even the Roman Catholic organization Opus Dei, portrayed by name in the film as a violent cult, pointedly plans to take "a less confrontational approach," according to The New York Times.

Opus Dei, by the way, is urging that people donate to missions in Africa rather than boycott or protest. That group is totally maligned in the DVC.

Thanks to LifeSiteNews.com for the link.

Manifesto against Islamism fine--but secularism? No thanks.

Michelle Malkin and Gateway Pundit have posted a Manifesto against Islamism that will be printed tomorrow in a French newspaper.

In part, the Manifesto reads:

Together facing the new totalitarianism

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present.

I have highlighted in bold some of the phrases that concern me. While I applaud the fact that people are standing up to the Islamists, I am not terribly sanguine about the commitment to free speech among secularists--though perhaps the signers of the manifesto are exceptions. For secularists, equality often trumps all other rights, including freedom of speech and religion. We have plenty examples up here in Canada, which is further down this road than the United States. Secularists are behind the push to get all religious symbols and belief out of the public square. Note I am making a distinction between the secular--which includes people of religious and non-religious belief--and secularism which is another ideology that proponents love to force on others.

I like living in a secular society. I like freedom of religion and association and the fact that no one denomination is forced on anyone. But religious folk are part of the secular and we have a right to be here along with non-religious folk, participating fully in public life. I don't have a problem with Muslims having freedom of religion, wearing their hijabs, praying five times a day even in public schools. I distinguish between Islam and Islamism, just as I distinguish between the secular and secularism.

France is a secularist society. You cannot home school your kids in France. You have to send them to French schools, where no religious symbols such as yarmulkes or crosses or hijabs are allowed. Now, maybe people think, okay, that's great if we can get rid of the hijabs, so what if other religious people's freedoms are restricted so that everyone is treated equally. Secularism is a new kind theocracy, only its gods are secular humanism and atheism.

While I believe in democracy and pluralism and a secular society where no one institutional church is favored, some secularists would probably accuse me of being a theocrat--falsely--merely because I take my Christian faith seriously and don't believe it should be sent into the closet or banished from the intellectual marketplace.

Also--I don't think that the kinds of freeoms and institutions and democratic values that the West has just popped up in a vacuum. They are rooted and grounded in our Judeo-Christian heritage, which took the best the Greeks and others had to offer. Successful democracies are also dependent on the development of virtue and character among the people and intervening social institutions like the family and churches. Many secularists think the state is the solution for everything, to hell with the family or any intervening institutions and they are all for social engineering---and enforced political correctness--in order to achieve their vaunted equality goals.

So...while I think we have to stand up to Islamism, I don't want to take on another -ism with a totalitarian mindset, albeit a much softer, gentler, more benign-seeming one. I'd chose the secularists over the Islamists, of course, but please, I think we can uphold democratic values, and pluralism and the idea of a secular state without going overboard in another wrong direction.

I urge caution on some aspects of this Manifesto. But I like the fact that it might be a first step in breaking some of the bizarre inability of the left to critique Islamism, perhaps because of the lure of cultural relativism.

This is the manifesto I can sign onto.

UPDATE: I'm not the only one with reservations about this Manifesto.

Kathy Shaidle over at Relapsed Catholic writes:

Manifestos are such a bad idea. They normally signal a movement in decline before it's begun, or one too esoteric to gain any popular traction.

I'm also a bit suspicious of repeated appeals to "secularism", of the presence of so many "apostates" and, in one instance, someone from Iran's "Workers-Communist Party". Maybe "suspicious" is the wrong word but I'm still half asleep.

Anyway, this is still a stirring call to "arms", and we need all the help we can get.

Brussels Journal is another.

While Islamism can be considered the perversion of religion, the three scourges of the 20th century – Fascism, Nazism (National-Socialism) and Stalinism – were secular ideologies. Neither Adolf Hitler nor Joseph Stalin were theocrats. It takes “French intellectuals” to use mankind’s experience with National-Socialism and Stalinism as motivation for a rallying cry to oppose “religious totalitarianism” and a call for “secular values,” which they hold to be “universal values.”

There is no doubt that Islamism is a threat to freedom and human dignity. However, as we have warned before, some people – undoubtedly brave, but nevertheless mistaken – are prepared to destroy certain basic freedoms, such as freedom of education, in their fight against Islam and religion in general. The question has already been put here:

Is Islam dangerous because it is a religion? Do Muslim values differ from European values because the latter are rooted in Christianity or because they are secular? These questions are at the heart of the debate in Europe today.

In our opinion, man is a religious being. Secularism destroyed the Christian roots of Europe and, in doing so, created the religious vacuum that is now being filled by Islam. The manifesto warns against

“battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. […] We must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.”

History in the past century, however, has clearly indicated that those fighting for an “egalitarian” world were the most “liberticidal” of all. Freedom is the right to live “unegalitarianly.” This is why The Brussels Journal defends the right of individuals – though not of the state – to “discriminate” (which, by the way, contrary to what the manifesto implies, is not the same as “oppress”). Indeed, it is no coincidence that the manifesto avoids referring to “Socialism” (and even “Communism”) among the scourges of the past century and prefers to speak of “Nazism” and Stalinism” instead. Half the manifesto’s signatories are probably Socialists, which explains why the manifesto obfuscates the secular, Socialist roots of these scourges.

The Da Vinci Code lawsuit--can facts and ideas be copyrighted?

I'm puzzled by the lawsuit launched by a couple of the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail against The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown for copyright violation.

Every lawyer in court yesterday was equipped with copies of both books. Mr Justice Peter Smith, who exhibits both a refreshing northern accent and a magnificent moustache, disclosed that he had read both — but not, he said, in an analytical way. Jonathan Rayner-James, QC, for the claimants, told the judge that Dan Brown had “appropriated” the central theme of HBHG. “The claimants are not alone in this. Many people all over the world have commented to the same effect since The Da Vinci Code was first published.” One who noticed was a letter-writer to The Times.

Brown, however, claims that HBHG was “incidental” to the creation of his book and was consulted only at the very end of its making.

“This is an extraordinary claim that would surprise anyone who has read The Da Vinci Code after reading HBHG,” Mr Rayner-James said. “HBHG is a book of historical conjecture setting out the authors’ hypothesis. The authors’ historical conjecture has spawned many other books that developed aspects of this conjecture in a variety of directions. But none has lifted the central theme of the book.”

At one point the judge, who appeared intent on keeping a tight grip on the case and on counsel, interrupted Mr Rayner-James to say: “You couldn’t blame Mr Brown for reading HBHG and thinking, ‘That’s a cracking good story’.”

Mr Rayner-James said his clients had invested a great deal of time, effort and skill in their book, while Dan Brown had “appropriated its architecture”, and had even copied some of the language. The author’s copy of HBHG was heavily annotated, it was alleged.

“It is not as though Brown has simply lifted a discrete series of raw facts from HBHG. He has lifted the connections that join the points up.”

I have objected from the start to Dan Brown's claims that his book DVC is based on historical facts, especially since I recognized influences of the allegedly non-fiction book HBHG in those so-called facts.

Which leads me to wonder about what has happened to the whole concept of facts.
Back when I studied for a year at Dartmouth College, my religion professor repeatedly said, "Facts are not self-evident." I've often thought of that statement and, perhaps without thinking about it too deeply, have agreed with it. The way I understood it, though, was that facts need to be arranged or set into a narrative in order to be evident, we select among facts, we determine which facts are important, we put them in hierarchies. But I never questioned whether there are in fact, facts, actual truths. Things that indisputably happened.

Now it would seem that even the non-fiction authors of HBHG think that the way they've arranged the facts makes it as much of a creation as a work of fiction. Well, in this case, I am inclined to agree! But this leads me to wondering whether our culture is losing respect for the concept of facts, for a sense of objective reality out there that can be measured and agreed upon.

Yes, we are discovering new things about memory, how plastic it is, how our memories are shaped by our self-image, our stories about ourselves. We know eyewitnesses often see different versions of the same crime and that authority figures can influence the way someone recalls an event. But does that mean the event did not happen in a certain way merely because memories are faulty, or memories conflict?

Several years ago, through I listserve I belonged to, I met someone who had read HBHG and was persuaded by that book that the Christian faith was bogus. He took word for word the authors' claims that Jesus never died on the Cross, that the Turin Shroud was wrapped around a living man whose blood still flowed and Jesus escaped the tomb and ran off to India or something. Can't recall it all.

Now, apparently Dan Brown doesn't want to go that far and deny the Resurrection, though he does deny the divinity of Christ in DVC, claiming the the Emperor Constantine created the idea Christ's divinity in the 4th Century and foisted it upon the Church, which up until then thought Jesus was a nice sage. (Not true, by the way!)

These are not the only books out there that erode faith in the facts of the Gospel.

Recently I had a conversation with a dear friend who has read several books that debunk the idea there ever was a historical Jesus, books that claim the Christian faith was merely a bunch of rising, dying vegetation God myths cobbled together from the surrounding societies. That friend now doubts whether Jesus ever did really exist as a historical person.

He still believes in Jesus, but Jesus has become mythologized, disembodied, spiritualized, it seems.

That is basically how Brown ends the DVC, talking about how all religion is just "myth," uplifting stories that might help us live better lives but have no historical basis in fact.

Is it a bit like saying facts don't matter? Is it like saying that facts don't even exist?

This all reminds me of the stand that Francis Schaeffer, founder of L'Abri, took against those who, following in Kierkegaard's footsteps, would sever the "upper story" of the Christian faith--the poetic, metaphorical, spiritual and psychological truths in the Bible--from the facts contained within.

For Schaeffer the facts were of crucial importance. They grounded the "upper story."

To me the historical facts of Jesus' existence are overwhelming.

And I agree with C.S. Lewis, who said:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

[CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book 2, Chapter 3, The Shocking Alternative]

Shrove Tuesday

From Wilkipedia

The origin of the name Shrove lies in the archaic English verb "to shrive" which means to absolve people of their sins. It was common in the Middle Ages for "shriveners" (priests) to hear people's confessions at this time, to prepare them for Lent.
Contents

Tonight I attended our annual Shrove Tuesday pancake supper at the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Ottawa.

And...I had my first sacramental confession. We still have "shriveners" in our parish.

So...I'm ready for Lent.

The picture shows my pancake supper just before I dug in.

Christophobia---the real persecution of Christians worldwide

There's a move afoot to make Islamophobia equivalent to anti-Semitism, as if Danish cartoons or the marginalization many Muslim communities in Europe experience can be equated with the holocaust. (And, if you look at Britian where people of the same racial background and color who happen to be Hindu or Sikh fare well economically, while those of Muslim background do not, then you have to ask whether some of that marginalization is self-imposed.)

While I think anti-Semitism in Europe is seriously under-reported and growing in virulence, the other great story that gets little or no ink in the West is the persecution of Christians.

Voice of the Martyrs says that more Christians have been martyred---and this is real martyrdom, not bizarre blowing yourself up to take out others kind of bogus martyrdom--in the last century than in all previous centuries combined.

Now Poland, thankfully still a Christian country, is mounting an awareness campaign.

Gateway Pundit has news about the campaign and pictures of the posters.

Morning and Evening Prayer--A Lenten Journey

First thing in the morning when I wake up I face a choice. Do I read the newspaper while I have my morning tea? Or do I crack open the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer and Psalter and do my prayers and readings?

I open the front door, smell the icy wind, hear the clang of the cast iron metal top of the mailbox as I pull the fresh paper out and I must say, the temptation to read it is strong. But if I do...and then start traversing the Blogosphere, soon I am appalled and dismayed and everything I read adds to that state of mind.

Last time I looked "being appalled" wasn't a fruit of the Spirit. While visiting one of my other Church families at the Baptist Church, I mentioned this to the Pastor, who said he thought my state of being appalled had something to do with a prophetic gifting.

If it is, the "being appalled and dismayed" state is not a position of strength. Yes, it has its own energy, but it is not holy.

When I am disciplined to do the prayers and readings first, I can see the same things, but it's as if I'm protected by a supernatural plexiglass shield. I can see clearly what's before me, but not have a negative reaction. My peace--the peace that passes understanding that only God can give--remains unperturbed. (For the most part....every now and then, the world lobs some rotten tomato or dead chicken that strikes me and tempts me to react and I fall to it.)

I am renewing my commitment to do both morning and evening prayer offices and blog the readings and the insight they engender as a Lenten journey and discipline. If you want to start a prayer discipline, why not join me?

Tomorrow is Ash Wedneday. We'll start then.

Nice story about the GG's visit with the Pope

Rocco Palmo writes:

Michaëlle Jean, the Governor-General of Canada, was received by the Pope this morning in private audience with her husband, the documentarian Jean-Daniel Lafond, and her six year-old daughter Marie-Eden.

-snip-

Jean, a CBC journalist who began her tenure in the post representing Queen Elizabeth II as Canada's head of state last September, seemed to have (for today, at least) laid aside her known predilection for pantsuits, adhering to the traditional Vatican protocol which calls for women in skirts and mantillas, arms covered, etc.

Thanks to Kathy Shaidle at Relapsed Catholic for the link. Photo by Alberto Pizzoli.

New diet book at Purgatorio

Check it out. Heh heh heh.

An atmosphere of lies

On the way into town this morning, I listened to CFRA Radio host Lowell Greene read an email from a listener that he found highly disturbing. So did I. The listener said that he like many Canadians had waved an American flag right after 9/11, but subsequently he had done some web surfing and come across sites that claimed no plane ever struck the Pentagon, and no plane ever crashed in that Pennsylvania field. These sites purported to have evidence that no bodies or plane parts were ever found in these sites.

The listerner's well-written, articulate conclusion was that U.S. President George W. Bush and his buddies had engineered the attacks that everyone saw on television and faked the others.

Lowell wondered aloud who was putting that kind of garbage out there. I don't like to say this, but I've heard strains of this thinking from a variety of sources, too. And I remember right after 9/11, when the Canwest chain did a survey of Imams across the country, nearly all of them said they found it inconceivable that Muslims could have carried out the attacks. It must have been the Jews and Mossad, some kind of conspiracy.

How dangerous is the mindset that believes this kind of outright manipulation of the facts? How dangerous are the purveyors of these lies that speak to resentment and blame and scapegoating? Very, I'd say. That's how Hitler mesmerized the German masses, by appealing to their resentment and blaming the Jews.

ShrinkWrapped has an excellent post today on the Information War, as well as several previous posts that look at the effects of lies on the plasticity of memory.

He writes:

Many years ago, a patient told me a story. She was trying to impress me with the power of her mother's personality and how her mother's hair trigger temper made everyone reluctant to challenge her. She recalled a summer at a lake in the country; her father would stay with them on the weekends and work in the city during the week. Her mother had found and rented the cabin and would not tolerate any criticism of their accommodations. One weekend night when her father was at the lake, there was a terrible rain storm; the roof began to leak. When her father mentioned the leak to her mother, her mother screamed at him that the cottage was fine, there was no leak, and he should go to sleep, whereupon her father dutifully rolled over ands went to sleep, with the ceiling dripping on him throughout the night. There was never any further mention of the incident.

And the most interesting aspect of the story?

When my patient told me this story, she suddenly realized that though she had not thought of it for years, she had been, to that moment, uncertain whether or not the roof had really leaked.

I mention this story for two reasons. First, it is important to recognize the importance of "authority" in shaping perceptions; second, the plasticity of perception and memory requires constant vigilance to safe guard reality.

His piece focuses on how the authority of broadcaster Walter Cronkite turned an American victory in the Tet offensive into a defeat, with disastrous consequences for the United States.

He also has some good analysis of the role the MSM is playing.

Bishop Henry yells a loud Yes! and pumps his fist into the air

Calgary Bishop Fred Henry writes in his Calgary Sun Column:

The brief prayer, "God bless Canada," uttered by Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the end of his election victory speech sent shock waves through much of Canadian society.

Although taken aback by such an unexpected conclusion, I was absolutely delighted and yelled out a loud "yes" in the solitude of my living room and pumped my fist in the air reminiscent of Tiger Woods reaction to sinking an impossible putt.

Why? All too many of our politicians and public figures have been inclined to be timid, even apologetic, in professing or witnessing any belief in God.

Rather than forbidding the mention of God, here was a prime minister actually mentioning God and asking for a blessing, this constituted nothing less that a modern day resuscitation.

The prime minister's conclusion, of course, dovetails perfectly with his call for government accountability and integrity, as ultimate accountability must be rendered to God.

Furthermore, his reference to God reflects our nation's history, the spirit of the founding fathers and mothers of our nation, our national anthem, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which begins: "Whereas Canada is founded upon the principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law."

Immediately, the Charter proceeds to list our fundamental freedoms.

The first one is the freedom of conscience and religion. The second is freedom of thought, belief, opinion, and expression.

In the Supreme Court case, known as Big M Drug Mart case, Chief Justice Dickson established the nature of religious freedom in broad terms: "The essence of the concept of freedom of religion is the right to entertain such religious beliefs as a person chooses, the right to declare beliefs openly and without fear of hindrance or reprisal, and the right to manifest belief by worship and practice or by teaching and dissemination ..."

Regrettably, it's mostly been downhill ever since.

After asserting our fundamental freedoms, the Charter then begins to spell out rights -- first democratic rights, then mobility rights, followed by legal rights, then equality rights, etc.

Section 15 (1) reads: "Every individual is equal before and under the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability."

More recently, not only has "sexual orientation" been read into the Section 15 (1) of the Charter, but the courts have ruled that protection for homosexual practices is part and parcel of the protection for "sexual orientation."

In 2002, the Ontario Divisional Court ruled that the owner of a print shop, Scott Brockie, could not refuse to provide services to an organization even if the organization's fundamental purpose violated his religious conscience.

Brockie, an evangelical Christian, had refused to print letterhead and stationary for the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives.

The court narrowed the acknowledgment of Brockie's religious beliefs. He could only refuse to print materials the content of which actually offended his beliefs. Meanwhile, he was fined for offending the dignity of his gay-rights accusers.

In 2005 a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal ruled a Knights of Columbus Council was entitled to cancel a hall rental when the Council learned the rental was for a lesbian "wedding" reception.

Nevertheless, beyond comprehension, the panel proceeded to rule that the complainants had suffered an affront to their "dignity, feelings and self-respect" and the women were therefore awarded $1,000 each.

All of this despite a number of efforts being made by the Knight to accommodate the couple in question with other options.

Bishop Henry goes on to list several more areas where equality trumps religious freedom.

For my American readers, the list is an eyeful.

A Lenten journey. . .want to join me?

I used to post links to The Daily Offices for Morning and Evening Prayer until I got too busy to do so more than a year ago. As I prepare for Lent and a renewed commitment to actually trying to do both of these daily offices, I am considering posting those links again and blogging here on my Lenten Journey.

Father Carl Reid, Dean of the Anglican Catholic Cathedral of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Ottawa where I worship, gave an awesome sermon on Lent on Sunday.

Here is an excerpt of what he said.

“Behold, we go up to Jerusalem,” Jesus says to His Apostles as they begin that final journey to the Holy City where the events of the Passion shortly were to transpire. “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished. For He shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on: and they shall scourge Him and put Him to death; and the third day He shall rise again.”
Surely, here is the most essential aspect of our Lenten journeys – we are to go up to Jerusalem – with Him. Through Lent, we are to walk with Jesus, knowing as He did, what was to befall Him; and, thus to share in His Passion, to acknowledge our own part in the events, in the sins, that put Him to death, but, finally, and joyfully, to gaze upon our Resurrected Lord, He Who is the Divine Love that transforms and heals us, Who makes us at one with God.

The Gospel passage tells us that, immediately after Jesus had finished His words to the Apostles about the events that were to take place in Jerusalem, “they understood none of these things: and this saying was hid from them.” Which is to say, in a sense, they were blind.

The episode that then follows on the road to Jerusalem involving the blind beggar, as real as it is in terms of the manifestation of the Divine Love as shown in our Lord’s compassion, as important as it is in teaching us about faith, is above all symbolically important. We, like the Apostles, are so very limited in our ability to see truly and thus to comprehend fully. We are also very much like the blind beggar, or at least we should recognize ourselves to be so, spiritually.
Wednesday past, we began our study of The Sermon on the Mount, beginning in Chapter 5 of the Gospel according to St. Matthew. What is the very first, arguably foundational, Beatitude? “Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Of the two Greek words for poor, Matthew chose the one that means absolutely destitute to communicate our Lord’s teaching that only when we admit our utter inability to save ourselves, only when we acknowledge our spiritual blindness, and therefore, only when we faithfully place our spiritual welfare completely in God’s hands, do we become clay fit for the heavenly potter.

“Lord, that I may receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, ‘Receive thy sight; thy faith hath saved thee’.” As we absorb this lesson that true faith is faith in God only, not faith in our own accomplishments or abilities – we cannot heal our blindness ourselves – a light begins to dawn. Like the Apostles and the blind man, but only through the compassionate Divine love, we leave darkness. Our Lenten journey with our Lord, then, is from darkness towards light, as we walk with Him, placing the outcome of our spiritual journey utterly and completely in His hands.

The whole sermon is worth reading, especially his "cautions" on the Stations of the Cross.

If you want to prepare for Easter with readings and prayer, why not join me?

Dr. Sanity has good posts on progress of democracy

Check out her No instant gratification post here.

Priests tell Vatican to ordain gays and recognize same-sex marriage

Montreal Gazette reporter Cheryl Cornacchia writes:

MONTREAL - Nineteen Quebec priests yesterday denounced the Vatican's opposition to same-sex marriage and its refusal to allow gay men into the priesthood.

In an open letter published yesterday in La Presse, the priests expressed the strongest public dissent to date on the Roman Catholic church's stand on homosexuality.

In the letter published under the headline "Enough is enough," the priests charge that by considering homosexuality a "disorder," the church is contributing to homophobia.

"There is no reason for the ban on homosexual men from entering the priesthood," said Rev. Raymond Gravel, a parish priest in the diocese of Joliette and one of the letter's 19 signatories.

In an interview yesterday, Father Gravel added, the church has invoked "natural law" to support its current ban against homosexuality, gay marriage and gay priests.

However, Father Gravel said, where it comes to "the mysteries of life," the Roman Catholic church has been wrong before in its 2,000-year history and it is wrong again now.

Father Gravel added he and the other Quebec priests who signed the letter felt they could no longer remain silent.

The letter, which runs about 1,000 words, calls on clergy throughout Quebec to open dialogue at the parish level.

The initiative is a response to the position against same-sex marriage taken by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and the publication of a Vatican directive forbidding gays from entering the priesthood.

Will be following this story.

UPDATE:

Here is LifeSiteNew's blistering response to this story.

My take? While I wish moments like this could be used as great teaching opportunities, bishops have pastoral concerns and responsiblities that I cannot fathom from the outside. And they face an unfriendly secular news media which has already made up its mind. For Catholics who are confused by the priests' letter and interested in finding out the bishops' position on same-sex marriage, for example, they can find plenty of material on the record already. Find some key documents here.

The bishops were on the forefront in the battle to save traditional marriage in Canada, so I have to give them credit for that. How individual bishops discipline or don't discipline priests is another matter. Fascinating story, but I will reserve judgement.

SpongJohn Square Pantheist

Thanks to Lisa Samson, I came across Purgatorio. Check out their new Anglican mascot SpongJohn Square Pantheist. Hilarious.

More good news from Iraq

This is the kind of news you are unlikely to hear or read about in the mainstream media about Iraq.

The gist of Gateway Pundit's excellent post is that the Islamofascist terrorists may be serving to unite Iraqis rather than divide them.

We must remember that Iraq has Syria on one side and Iran on the other and both those countries are sending in foreign fighters responsible for much of the so-called insurgency in Iraq.

Iran and Syria may also have played a key role in fomenting the over-the-top, rage about the cartoons.

While Iraq may not be slipping into the civil war meme that existed even before Saddam was deposed, an idea that was one of the main reasons why many on the left and maybe even President George H.W. Bush decided not to go all the way to Baghdad in the firt Gulf War, that doesn't mean we have clear sailing and peace ahead.

Something terribly evil is afoot, and I can't help but think, like many others, that we are in a similar place now as people were in the 1930s when Hitler was on the rise.

Of course most "reasonable people" thought he was a buffoon who couldn't possibly mean what he was saying. Maybe that's how people view Ahmadinejab in Iran.

I'm with David Warren on this one. He believes the cartoon controversy is the most important thing to happen since 9/11.

David writes:

This will be my 11th consecutive column, directly or indirectly on the “Danish cartoons” issue. The cartoons themselves were a red herring from the start -- a fake issue, trumped up by fanatical Muslims seeking grievances to abet a confrontation, and thereby extract concessions from the West. It is a fire, still being stoked around the world by radical “Islamists”, using shameless lies and misrepresentations. (See my previous columns.)

The reason I have written so copiously on this subject -- not the cartoons themselves, but what I have called the “organized apoplexy” in response to them -- is because it is important. In my judgement, it is the most important thing that has happened since the Al Qaeda attack on the United States, in 2001. It is important in combination with other fast-developing events, including the victory of the openly terrorist Hamas in a Palestinian election; Iran’s public promise to “wipe Israel off the map”; collapsing public order in Pakistan, Nigeria, and elsewhere; the recent Muslim riots, and continuing low-level Intifada in France; and now the destruction of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, triggering vicious sectarian strife in Iraq. And quite literally, hundreds of lesser events of the same nature -- each revealing an Islamic world in combustion, and a West retreating into contrived apologies and other confused gestures of cowardice and panic.

One cannot keep up with all these events -- the wheels of history are turning too quickly. The world in which we will find ourselves, a few years hence, will not resemble the world we inhabited a few years ago. Yet this is among the few predictions that can be safely made. The events will fall out as unpredictably as those Danish cartoons. The names, dates, and places are not yet recorded; but the shape and scale of events is already blotting the sun on our horizon.

Even after the experience of the Great War, and the Depression, people on the eve of the Hitler war could not appreciate what was coming. It is only in retrospect that we understand what happened as the 1930s progressed -- when a spineless political class, eager at any price to preserve a peace that was no longer available, performed endless demeaning acts of appeasement to the Nazis; while the Nazis created additional grievances to extract more.

I think he's right. It's a terrifying thought. But all the reason not to bury ourselves in denial.

What else is it going to take for people to wake up?

Render unto God the things that are God's

Fr. Tom Rosica's Toronto Sun column looks at what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God.

He writes:

In the end, we are left with two images -- the image of Caesar and the image of God. To the first image, Jesus asks a simple question: Whose picture is on the coin? The emperor's. Therefore, give the emperor the part of your possession that belongs to him. But Jesus also has a second, penetrating question: whose image and blessing is on humankind? God's. Therefore, give to God your entire being-- undivided.

Is service to God and to Caesar compatible? We face a perpetual temptation to accept the promise of material blessings and power from political, economic and even ecclesiastical systems in exchange for circumscribing our commitment to God. What is required is the courage and wisdom to give simple, truthful answers when we find ourselves in ambiguous and compromising situations.

I've added the emphasis. Good advice.

I agree. It's time for the West to wake up.

Mark Steyn today:

Something very remarkable is happening around the globe and, if you want the short version, a Muslim demonstrator in Toronto the other day put it very well:

''We won't stop the protests until the world obeys Islamic law.''

Stated that baldly it sounds ridiculous. But, simply as a matter of fact, every year more and more of the world lives under Islamic law: Pakistan adopted Islamic law in 1977, Iran in 1979, Sudan in 1984. Four decades ago, Nigeria lived under English common law; now, half of it's in the grip of sharia, and the other half's feeling the squeeze, as the death toll from the cartoon jihad indicates. But just as telling is how swiftly the developed world has internalized an essentially Islamic perspective. In their pitiful coverage of the low-level intifada that's been going on in France for five years, the European press has been barely any less loopy than the Middle Eastern media.

What, in the end, are all these supposedly unconnected matters from Danish cartoons to the murder of a Dutch filmmaker to gender-segregated swimming sessions in French municipal pools about? Answer: sovereignty. Islam claims universal jurisdiction and always has. The only difference is that they're now acting upon it. The signature act of the new age was the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran: Even hostile states generally respect the convention that diplomatic missions are the sovereign territory of their respective countries. Tehran then advanced to claiming jurisdiction over the citizens of sovereign states and killing them -- as it did to Salman Rushdie's translators and publishers. Now in the cartoon jihad and other episodes, the restraints of Islamic law are being extended piecemeal to the advanced world, by intimidation and violence but also by the usual cooing promotion of a spurious multicultural "respect" by Bill Clinton, the United Church of Canada, European foreign ministers, etc.

The I'd-like-to-teach-the-world-to-sing-in-perfect-harmonee crowd have always spoken favorably of one-worldism. From the op-ed pages of Jutland newspapers to les banlieues of Paris, the Pan-Islamists are getting on with it.

Dr. Sanity responds here.

I don't know about you, but none of the "one world" fantasies that I have ever had included me and my daughter wearing a burqha. Nor did they ever include substituting liberty for oppression or living in abject slavery to some religion's brutal and bloodthirsty god.
It is definitely time for the West -- particularly the left -- to wake up and get serious in dealing with this threat.

Is this the next J.K. Rowling?

When I saw that headline on an Ottawa Citizen article sitting on a table in the back of my church this morning, at first I wanted to object and say, no, I want to be the next J.K. Rowling. But when I looked further and saw the person in question was Matthew Skelton, the son of some dear friends in Edmonton, then I will gladly step aside.

Paula Simons writes:

EDMONTON - Once upon a time, there was a shy, studious kid from Edmonton named Matthew Skelton. Matthew wasn't a fast reader. But he loved books. He loved to buy them, to collect them, to own them. He dedicated himself to the study of literature and publishing. In 1996, at 25, he left Edmonton to study at Oxford.

He earned his doctorate, but he couldn't find a full-time job. So the impoverished young academic, living out of a suitcase on #12 a week, wrote a novel called Endymion Spring, about a young brother and sister who discover a haunted book in Oxford's Bodleian Library, a medieval book of all knowledge, which requires the blood sacrifice of an innocent child to yield its secrets.

Matthew didn't think his novel was good enough to publish. But a friend insisted on sending the manuscript to an agent. It ended up in a big slush pile, until someone found it and realized how special it was. Then Matthew sold his book to the world's most respected children's publisher for a huge sum, Endymion Spring was translated into 14 languages, the film rights were sold to Warner Brothers, and Matthew Skelton lived happily ever after.

Sound like a fairy tale? Well, meet Matthew Skelton. His magical first novel, Endymion Spring, will be released next month by Puffin Books in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, and by Penguin Canada here. Random House brings out an American edition in August. And there are forthcoming editions in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Russia, Norway, the Czech Republic, South Korea, Japan, Portugal and Brazil.

"I'm quite astounded, still, that this would happen," Skelton laughs. He's just about to turn 35, but he projects a kind of sweetly diffident naivete that makes him sound far younger. "It just seems so unreal to me. I was very afraid, because I thought kids might not like this book at all.

"Anyone expecting another Harry Potter will be disappointed," he adds. "Endymion is a fairly formidable read, I think, but I wrote it to please myself."

Indeed, Skelton's novel has more in common with Philip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy, or Cornelia Funke's The Thief Lord, than with J.K. Rowling's work. It's a Faustian tale about what happens when the quest for knowledge becomes an obsession, when books become more important than people. While most fantasy authors present a black-and-white Manichaean universe -- where the forces of darkness are embodied by evil wizards, or witches, or demons -- Skelton's bad guys are ordinary human beings who've been tempted and corrupted by ambition and covetousness. And his heroes are armed not with magic wands, nor swords, nor rings, but only with innocence, courage and the bonds of family love.

May he truly be the next J.K. Rowling. As for me? May I be the next Dan Brown, who wrote The Da Vinci Code. Only I hope that our respective novels will also serve as antitodes.

What is really happening in Iraq?

The MSM is so convinced that Iraq is going to fall into civil war that the meme is like the harsh Afghan winter that was supposed to mire coalition troops in that war.

In my Ottawa Citizen this morning, the headlines were about the fear of civil war, but the story itself showed hopeful signs.

Here is an interesting round up of news from Arabian dissent on what he was able to garner from Al Jazeera's coverage. (Thanks to Blogging Tories for the link.)

Arabian dissent writes:

-All the people ordinary people that they spoke to affirmed that they did not want a civil war and hoped the situation would calm. (Like I predicted)

-That's not to say everything is fine, far from it. There will still eventually be terror exchanges by the extremists of both Shia and Sunni factions. Factions which were never controllable in the first place since the fall of Saddam. However, an all-out Civil war for the moment seems improbable.

Texas Rainmaker keeping an eye on the Ricin story

Texas Rainmaker is following the possible discovery of Ricin in a roll of quarters at a Texas university.

It may be a false alarm, but further tests on the substance should produce results today. Drop by his site later to find out.

My take? We cannot be too vigilant. We cannot allow ourselves to be lulled back to sleep after 9/11 woke most of us up.

Prior to 9/11 it seemed that many terrorist attacks were foiled by someone having a little intuitive nudge to do something like check out the trunk of some guy trying to cross the border from Canada into the U.S. That's what happened to stop the would-be Millennium Bomber Ahmed Ressam, who planned to blow up Los Angeles airport as a way of celebrating the year 2000.

I happen to think those little intuitive nudges have a supernatural origin. But we can easily become deaf to them, or refuse to obey them for fear of looking like Chicken Little.

I'm not calling for hysteria or paranoia, but for cultivating watchfulness and spiritual abiding so that we can calmly, fearlessly assess the horrific dangers marshalled against us, both outside the West and internally.

It is too easy to fall into denial.

Italian organization seeking to revive Western Civilization

Carla from Italy dropped by yesterday to let me know about an organization there that is trying to revive Western Civilization in that country. From what I've read on the English version of the site, I'd say this is an organization that's singing off the same song sheet that I am about the need for renewal, for revival, for recapturing a sense of the spiritual rootedness of our culture.

The West is in crisis. Attacked externally by fundamentalism and Islamic terrorism, it is not able to rise to the challenge. Undermined internally by a moral and spiritual crisis, it can't seem to find the courage to react. Our affluence makes us feel guilty and we are ashamed of our traditions. Terrorism is seen as a reaction to our errors, whereas it is nothing less than an act of aggression against our civilization and against all human kind.
Europe is at a standstill. Its foreign policy lacks unity, its birth rate is declining and so is its competitive edge in the world market. Europe hides and denies its own identity, and so fails to gain popular support when called to adopt a constitution. It hops on the anti-American bandwagon and drives a wedge between itself and the United States.
Our traditions are questioned. Our heritage, dating back thousands of years, is denied in the name of secularism and progressivism, thus impoverishing the values of life, of the person, of marriage and of the family. It is affirmed that all cultures are equally valid. The integration of immigrants has been left rudderless and without rules.
As Benedict XVI said, nowadays "The West doesn't love itself any longer". To overcome this crisis, we need to increase our commitment and show more courage when dealing with issues regarding our civilization.

Drop by the site. Check out some of their network. Looks like there's a healthy remnant in Europe, just as there is in Canada.

Finders keepers 2006-style

This is a bizarre story about an expensive digital camera lost on vacation and the way the mother who reported finding it behaves when the owner contacts her.

"Well," she said, "we have a bit of a situation. You see, my nine year old son found your camera, and we wanted to show him to do the right thing, so we called, but now he's been using it for a week and he really loves it and we can't bear to take it from him."

I listened, not sure where she was going with this.

"And he was recently diagnosed with diabetes, and he's now convinced he has bad luck, and finding the camera was good luck, and so we can't tell him that he has to give it up. Also we had to spend a lot of money to get a charger and a memory card."

What kind of message about character is this mother sending her child? I remember when I was a kid, we might jump on something and say, "Finders keepers" but that was the rough and tumble world of the backyard and the playground. Our parents taught us that if we found something like a wallet we returned it intact.

I can just see this kid. He probably has been whining or throwing tantrums in the supermarket aisles, especially by the candy at the checkout. And this mother has probably given him everything he whines for until she has ruined his health with too much sugar. And created a self-centered, neurotic, whining monster to boot.

But this is what seems to pass for child-rearing these days.

In a conversation with a teacher today, she discussed how out of control and disrespectul today's students are and how younger teachers tolerate things like kids sitting in the back with those little earphones in listening to music, or napping with their heads on their desks.

She won't allow that kind of behavior in her class and what happens? The parents attack her for being hard on their child.

No wonder parents who want to raise children to exhibit sound characters and virtue are hauling their kids out of public schools.

Thanks to Strong World, one of the Blogging Tories.

The blogosphere zooms in on discovery of Ricin in roll of quarters

Gateway Pundit has great links to another possible front opening in the war of terrorism.

Let's see if the MSM gives this story as much play as it gave U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident.

No plans to expand hate laws

This is a relief. (Thanks to Kathy Shaidle over at Relapsed Catholic for the link.)

David Rider writes:

TORONTO (Reuters) - The Canadian government has refused demands from the country's Muslim leaders to expand a law banning hate propaganda so that it covers cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad such as the ones that have sparked worldwide protests.
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Patrick Charette, press secretary to Justice Minister Vic Toews, told Reuters that Canada's new Conservative government has no plans to broaden the scope of the 36-year-old law.

"The provisions covering hate propaganda ... as they stand strike a balance between the freedom of expression and also the rights of minorities to be protected from hatred," Charette said. "It's broad enough right now."

The Islamic leaders' calls come in the wake of a prosecutor's decision not to lay hate charges against two Canadian publications that reprinted a selection of the infamous cartoons.

The chief prosecutor for Calgary, Alberta, said he determined the Western Standard and Jewish Free Press were "trying to debate the issues" in articles accompanying the cartoons, not incite hate.

Bloggers rally in Washington to support Denmark

Christopher Hitchens, who wrote a blistering defence of Denmark for Slate Magazine, called for a peaceful demonstration in support of that country in front of the Danish embassy in Washington on Friday at noon.

Several other bloggers were there, including Andrew Sullivan, who at one time was an everyday stop for me. Now I visit him occasionally.

I lifted this picture off Age of Hooper, where there are other good photos.

Scroll down on Age of Hooper and you'll find video of Hitch's speech.

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the links. Instapundit also has some via Vital Perspective.

I am very much enjoying various Arla cheese products, especially the garlic cream cheese spread. It's like Boursin only half the price.

How bad ideas and lies combine in ever more pernicious forms

Dr. Sanity puts me onto a ShrinkWrapped post that are well worth reading to understand more about the strange convergence of toxic ideas from the Marxist left and the Islamism.

Dr. Sanity writes:

We see the results of this new alliance in the postmodern rhetoric and behavior that assaults us on a daily basis.

What matters is not truth or falsity--only the effectiveness of the language used. Lies, distortions, ad hominem attacks; attempts to silence opposing views--all are strategies that are perfectly satisfactory if they achieve the desired effect. Ideas and reason must make way for reification of feelings; and freedom is replaced by thought control.

The postmodern assault as it is used by the new totalitarians of the 21st century is a four-pronged attack to undermine
- Objective reality
- Reason and the rational debate of ideas
- Individual freedom and freedom of thought and speech
- Progress and capitalism

The strategies used are:
- The distortion of language and meaning to undermine the individual's perception of reality;
- The use of direct or threatened physical violence to suppress speech and individual freedom;
- Politically "correct" thought control and cultural relativism to undermine reason and rational debate;
- The promotion of environmental hysteria to undermine progress, industrialization and capitalism

These activities represent the most serious assault on reality, reason, and individual freedom since the twin beasts of communism and socialism rose up early in the 20th century. And, though seriously wounded, they are rising again in a new and more virulent form.

Nothing short of a spiritual revival will save us

I believe the fundamental problem facing the West is not Islamofascism, but a collapse of faith, a loss of a meaningful sense of rootedness in the Judeo-Christian Story, and a consequent failure of principle and virtue in both leaders and the people.

We still have lots of vestiges, like a big inheritance that is rapidly being squandered.

Pope Benedict XVI has been sounding a similar alarm long before he became Pope. Now there's an excerpt posted on the web of a new book by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger & Marcello Pera - called Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam.

If colonization could be considered a success, it is in the sense that contemporary Asia and Africa can also pursue the ideal of a world shaped by technology and prosperity. Yet there, too, the ancient religious traditions are undergoing a crisis, and secular thinking has made inroads and begun to dominate public life.

These processes have also produced the opposite effect: Islam has been reborn, in part because of the new material wealth acquired by the Islamic countries, but mainly because of people's conviction that Islam can provide a valid spiritual foundation to their lives. Such a foundation seems to have eluded old Europe, which, despite its enduring political and economic power, seems to be on the road to decline and fall.

By contrast to Europe's denial of its religious and moral foundations, Asia's great religious traditions — especially the mystical component expressed in Buddhism — have been elevated as spiritual powers. The optimism in European culture that Arnold Toynbee could still voice in the early fifties sounds strangely antiquated today: "We are faced by the fact that, of the twenty-one civilizations that have been born alive and have proceeded to grow, thirteen are dead and buried; that seven of the remaining eight are apparently in decline; and that the eighth, which is our own, may also have passed its zenith." Who would repeat these same words today? Above all, what is European culture, and what has remained of it? Is European culture perhaps nothing more than the technology and trade civilization that has marched triumphantly across the planet? Or is it instead a post-European culture born on the ruins of the ancient European cultures?

At the hour of its greatest success, Europe seems hollow, as if it were internally paralyzed by a failure of its circulatory system that is endangering its life, subjecting it to transplants that erase its identity. At the same time as its sustaining spiritual forces have collapsed, a growing decline in its ethnicity is also taking place.
There is a paradoxical synchrony in these developments. The victory of the post-European technosecular world and the universalization of its lifestyle and thinking have spread the impression — especially in the non-European countries of Asia and Africa — that Europe's value system, culture, and faith — in other words, the very foundations of its identity — have reached the end of the road, and have indeed already departed from the scene. From this perspective, the time has apparently arrived to affirm the value systems of other worlds, such as pre-Colombian America, Islam, or Asian mysticism.

At the hour of its greatest success, Europe seems hollow, as if it were internally paralyzed by a failure of its circulatory system that is endangering its life, subjecting it to transplants that erase its identity. At the same time as its sustaining spiritual forces have collapsed, a growing decline in its ethnicity is also taking place.

I came across this excerpt through the Catholic Educator's Resource Center, which sends out a bi-weekly email list of excellent articles of interest to Christians. Visit their site, sign up for your own email update, and make a donation to support this excellent service.

Work Research Foundation is doing great work

Check out their Comment Magazine and read this essay by Gideon Strauss, which touches on the beauty of the story as per the Wounded by Beauty post below.

Gideon writes:

When I put down that tired old paperback that Angela bought me, I entered a night of vigil. For my teenage imagination, informed by years of reading Tolkien, entering The Story was like laying down arms before a conqueror, changing sides in a furious war, finding peace in the service of the true king. It was less a choice than a surrender, less an achievement than a gift received.

Read it all.

Some sane perspective on Iraq

From Dr. Sanity...with great links.

Wounded by beauty

Over at the Master's Artist, my fellow blogger J. Mark Bertrand has launched a discussion about beauty and apologetics, which led me to remember an essay "Wounded by the Arrow of Beauty" in a new book released by Ignatius Press by Pope Benedick XVI called "On the Way to Jesus Christ."

Mark writes:

In other words, we don't come to the debate as neutrals. We already have positions and those positions influence the way we see the argument. Instead of forming our beliefs based on careful weighing of the evidence, we look at the whole picture -- the story -- and believe what is most compelling. Logic is a component of the process, but not its totality. We form our beliefs and commitments, Hart says, because we find them aesthetically pleasing, or beautiful.

The essay, written when the Pope was still Cardinal Ratzinger is online here:

He begins by contrasting two Scriptural passages read side by side during Holy Week, one that describes the sublime beauty of the wedding of the King from Psalm 45 [44] and the famous passage from Isaiah 53:2 "He had neither beauty nor majesty, nothing to attract our eyes."

The Pope writes:

How can we reconcile this? The appearance of the "fairest of the children of men" is so wretched that no one desires to look at him. Pilate presented him to the crowd saying: "Behold the man!", to rouse sympathy for the crushed and battered Man, in whom no external beauty remained.

Then, after summing up some of the thinking of Augustine and Plato he writes:

In the first place, the text of Isaiah supplies the question that interested the Fathers of the Church, whether or not Christ was beautiful. Implicit here is the more radical question of whether beauty is true or whether it is not ugliness that leads us to the deepest truth of reality. Whoever believes in God, in the God who manifested himself, precisely in the altered appearance of Christ crucified as love "to the end" (Jn 13,1), knows that beauty is truth and truth beauty; but in the suffering Christ he also learns that the beauty of truth also embraces offence, pain, and even the dark mystery of death, and that this can only be found in accepting suffering, not in ignoring it.

After some more wonderful, clear writing that is the hallmark of this great man, who deserves to be called the Vicar of Christ on earth, we find this:

Being struck and overcome by the beauty of Christ is a more real, more profound knowledge than mere rational deduction. Of course we must not underrate the importance of theological reflection, of exact and precise theological thought; it remains absolutely necessary. But to move from here to disdain or to reject the impact produced by the response of the heart in the encounter with beauty as a true form of knowledge would impoverish us and dry up our faith and our theology. We must rediscover this form of knowledge; it is a pressing need of our time.

Then he moves into a meditation on evil, on Auschwitz, on how it often seems these days that evil is more real than the good.

The One who is the Beauty itself let himself be slapped in the face, spat upon, crowned with thorns; the Shroud of Turin can help us imagine this in a realistic way. However, in his Face that is so disfigured, there appears the genuine, extreme beauty: the beauty of love that goes "to the very end"; for this reason it is revealed as greater than falsehood and violence. Whoever has perceived this beauty knows that truth, and not falsehood, is the real aspiration of the world. It is not the false that is "true", but indeed, the Truth. It is, as it were, a new trick of what is false to present itself as "truth" and to say to us: over and above me there is basically nothing, stop seeking or even loving the truth; in doing so you are on the wrong track. The icon of the crucified Christ sets us free from this deception that is so widespread today. However it imposes a condition: that we let ourselves be wounded by him, and that we believe in the Love who can risk setting aside his external beauty to proclaim, in this way, the truth of the beautiful.

I don't know about you, but this writing makes me want to weep for the beauty it conveys.

No hate crime charges laid against Western Standard

But Muslim group is calling for hate laws to be strengthened.

I sure wish that Muslims were out in the streets protesting against Al Quaeda's bombing of a Shi'ite Shrine in Iraq, or the beheadings of journalists, or the kidnapping of Christian peacemakers than against some cartoons that are no where near as virulent and hateful as those routinely appearing in the media of Muslim-dominated countries. Where is the proportion? They do themselves no credit in persisting in this. I think people know now that there is a sensitivity to depictions of their prophet. That will encourage some to responsibily exercise respect. But not if threats are attached and not if freedom of speech is at stake.

Is a Catholic diocese a public or private institution?

Whether the Catholic Church is deemed to be a private or a public institution is now the subject of debate at the Cornwall Inquiry and, according to MSM reports, could have an impact on the inquiry's scope.

Here's a story from today's Ottawa Citizen.

The Citizen's headline reads: Cornwall diocese expected to try to derail abuse inquiry.

The lawyer representing the Diocese of Alexandria-Cornwall was on CBC Radio this morning talking saying the diocese was cooperating fully with the inquiry.

Here is the CBC story.

In a controversial move, the diocese under investigation at a public inquiry in Cornwall for its handling of sex abuse allegations is arguing that it not be considered a public institution.

If the Alexandria-Cornwall Roman Catholic Diocese succeeds, it will limit how closely the inquiry can examine the diocese's response to abuse complaints.

The inquiry, which wraps up its second week on Friday, is looking into how allegations of sexual abuse by prominent citizens and clergy were handled by authorities.

-snip-

But the diocese argues it is a private corporation and a charity, not a public institution with a duty to deal with complaints of abuse.

David Sherriff-Scott, the lawyer for the diocese, says his client does not intend to curb the inquiry's reach, and has in fact been co-operating with the commission by handing over key documents.

"To suggest that the diocese is somehow trying to limit the inquiry is absolutely irresponsible and wrong," said Sherriff-Scott.

He says the commission agrees with his client's position, but other groups may ask for a ruling on the matter.

My take? We must be cautious about jumping to conclusions on this one. If the Church is to be characterized as a public institution, then where are cries about separation of Church and State from the MSM? And we must be cautious about judging the past by the knowledge and standards of the present. Witnesses so far have revealed that only by the 1980s did social scientists begin to realize the scope of the problem involving acquaintance pedophiles who focused on boys. That's not to say that anyone who abused children should be excused or protected from justice, either.

UPDATE

More controversy coming out of the Inquiry. Here's today's Ottawa Citizen story.

CORNWALL - A motion to exclude victim testimony from an inquiry into the handling of child sex abuse allegations in Cornwall could mean the end of the commission, the inquiry heard yesterday.

"How can we possibly hold an inquiry into alleged sexual abuse without hearing from the victims?" said Dallas Lee, lawyer for the 48-member Victims Group.

The commission, lead by Justice Normand Glaude, has given standing to groups representing alleged abuse survivors, including The Men's Project and Victims Group. The commission is supposed to look at the response of several public and community institutions to allegations of historical abuse of children in the Cornwall area over the past several decades.

But yesterday a lawyer for two men who faced allegations insisted the claims had no place at the hearing. "It is our opinion alleged victims should not testify," said Guiseppe Cipriano, lawyer for Rev. Charles MacDonald and the estate of Kenneth Seguin. "And if they do, they should not name who these people accused of wrongdoings are."

What happened to the watchdogs of free expression?

Alan Dershowitz and William Bennett write in the Washington Post:

There was a time when the press was the strongest guardian of free expression in this democracy. Stories and celebrations of intrepid and courageous reporters are many within the press corps. Cases such as New York Times v. Sullivan in the 1960s were litigated so that the press could report on and examine public officials with the unfettered reporting a free people deserved. In the 1970s the Pentagon Papers case reaffirmed the proposition that issues of public importance were fully protected by the First Amendment.

The mass media that backed the plaintiffs in these cases understood that not only did a free press have a right to report on critical issues and people of the day but that citizens had a right to know about those issues and people. The mass media understood another thing: They had more than a right; they had a duty to report.

-snip-

What has happened? To put it simply, radical Islamists have won a war of intimidation. They have cowed the major news media from showing these cartoons. The mainstream press has capitulated to the Islamists -- their threats more than their sensibilities. One did not see Catholics claiming the right to mayhem in the wake of the republished depiction of the Virgin Mary covered in cow dung, any more than one saw a rejuvenated Jewish Defense League take to the street or blow up an office when Ariel Sharon was depicted as Hitler or when the Israeli army was depicted as murdering the baby Jesus.

Thanks to Dr. Sanity for the link.

Does this story ever bring back memories

Here is Dawn’s account of her own journey into the white light of unemployment, which is a cautionary tale about all kinds of things — from not-so-tolerant libertarian editors (I speculate freely here) to the dangers of expressing one’s faith in the blogosphere.

I never got fired but I did get accused a couple of times--falsely--of having an agenda because I was a Christian and a conservative, a rare, rare combination in the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. at the time. (And I imagine, to this day.) I thought I was merely pointing out in story meetings that there was another point of view beyond the group think I encountered. While most of the time, to their credit, my dissonant voice was welcomed by my superiors, I did occasionally land on programs ruled by secular fundamentalists.

While working on another program with a different cast of characters that were mostly great to work with, the subject of abortion became dicey. An otherwise nice, rational, sound journalist, who happened to be my boss, became angry and bullying. The sudden transformation shocked me. I can discuss abortion calmly. I had no problem in booking a panel that pitted great debators representing the pro-abortion and pro-life sides of the issue. I could calmly present both sides of the argument.

And as a CBC producer, I would even have been polite and referred to the pro-abortion side as pro-choice because that is how they describe themselves. My job was to present the debate as fairly and openly as possible and let the viewers decide. But, because of my Christian faith, my boss assumed that I had a bias and therefore could not be trusted on this issue. Of course the "pro-choice" secular fundy group think viewpoint could be trusted because for these birds of a feather it was the "objective" view. And.....I have found more totalitarian, knee-jerk, angry, irrational responses from pro-abortion people on this issue than from any of the pro-life people I would have chosen to participate in any debate.

In fact, the people I chose were so good at their rational arguments on related issues such as euthanasia, my colleagues would describe them as "the odious [insert name]."

What the CBC and other MSM had done repeatedly was create a straw man debate on abortion. They pick some Bible-waving redneck jerk to foment a few lame "It's in the Bible" and "God says it is wrong" arguments and pit that person against some cool, collected and reasonable-sounding person who frames everything according to the rights of women, blah blah. And, given they had restricted the soundbytes to this narrow parameter, they were bored silly with the debate. Eyes would roll.

And it was tiring to see the same things over and over, like hearing a record stuck in the same groove.

I confess, I didn't even know how many great, rational, medical, ethical non-religious arguments there were out there against abortion until I tried to get past the straw man set ups. As I explored this I started wondering...how come we never hear from the doctors or nurses who had gruesome epiphanies that what they were doing was horrible and wrong when they saw a tiny arm in the suction equipment? Or about the after effects of abortion on women, including a higher risk of breast cancer?

Just as the marriage debate was framed in the MSM as a self-evident equality issue vs. homophobes using a religious justification, so is the abortion debate framed only as a self-evident right of a woman to control her body vs. the oppressive troglodytes that would stop them. I'm sick of the MSM because of that.

Thanks to Kathy Shaidle over at Relapsed Catholic for the link to Dawn's story.

Stanley Kurtz at NRO on the abolition of marriage

Sweden’s bold feminists have exposed the long-term agenda of the social left. Still, given FI’s tactical errors, we can expect Sweden’s social radicals to adopt a more subtle strategy. The Law Commission of Canada has advocated the establishment of a flexible, gender-neutral, multi-partner relationship system in addition to marriage. The strategy is to get that new system going, then subtly phase out marriage, boil-the-frog-style. Expect proposals like this from Sweden.

Even if the Left Party loses its place in Sweden’s governing coalition at some point, it will surely be back. Say a decade from now, under some future left-dominated coalition, the time may be ripe for adopting an experimental multi-partner-friendly relationship system that, in the long run, can push marriage itself aside. As Sweden’s conservatives point out, now that youth divisions of the country’s left-leaning parties are starting to tout polyamory, we can expect future parliaments to consider the idea.

What does it mean when a movement wants simultaneously to formalize gay marriage, equate marriage with mere registered partnerships, equate registered partnerships with mere cohabitation, and then abolish marriage itself? It seems contradictory, but it all makes perfect sense once you realize that Sweden’s social liberals don’t support either gay marriage or registered partnerships out of any affection for marriage itself. On the contrary, Sweden’s social left is simply using gay marriage as a lever to achieve the abolition of marriage itself.

Why we must keep an eye on the fanatics

I used to know a man whose family were German aristocracy prior to World War Two. They owned a number of large industries and estates. I asked him how many German people were true Nazis, and the answer he gave has stuck with me and guided my attitude toward fanaticism ever since.

“Very few people were true Nazis” he said, “but, many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.”

Thanks to Kate McMillan at Small Dead Animals.

Mark Bertrand on Iraq and rules for blogging

My fellow Masters Artist Mark Bertrand has some really good posts up. One of them is on a Frontline piece on Iraq called The Insurgency.

He writes:

For Americans on the right of the political spectrum, the most frustrating parts of the report will be the early mistakes that allowed the insurgency to gain ground. For those on the left, the words of one Iraqi army officer will sting: if the Coalition forces leave now, he says, that's the end of Iraq. I'm no expert, but I don't think approaching this problem through a partisan political lens is the answer. The insurgents see themselves as part of an international movement. They interpret every political compromise we make as a glorious victory (and a sign of greater victory to come if they continue their campaign).

Another is on his self-imposed rules of blogging and participating.

Let's not jump to conclusions on the U.S. ports deal

While I have concerns, I hestitate to jump on the bandwagon against the deal to sell operational control of some major U.S. ports to a United Arab Emirates company until I clearly understand why U.S. President George W. Bush is digging in on this one. Dr. Sanity has some good links as she too is working through her own concerns. Gateway Pundit also has some excellent links.

Yes, we have to understand fully the threat of Islamofascism, and know we are fighting a pernicious extremist ideology rather than terrorism, which is merely a technique. But all Arabs are not Islamofascists, nor are all Muslims extremists. And our Islamofascist enemies can be white and homegrown like John Walker Lindt.

We have to rise above the temptation to fear, to hate and to stereotype. We must show restraint, while keeping our eyes wide open to the very real danger arrayed against us all over the globe.

Imagine if the Ku Klux Klan grew in power. With their cross burnings and terror tactics they succeeded in gaining recognition as Christian leaders because they waved Bibles around and used Christian symbols. Imagine that they ran neighborhoods, governments and countries and lynched their opposition. Any Christians who disagreed with them were executed along with the blacks, Jews, and anyone who challenged their fanaticism.

How would you feel if you, as a Christian, or a nonbeliever simply living in their neighbhorhood, were constantly lumped in with them? If the stated enemies of the Ku Klux Klan would kill you, imprison you and remove your rights because the fearful rise of the Klan tempted those enemies to demonize you too? What if the shooters of abortion doctors suddenly became a more significant minority? And they shot not only abortion doctors but any Christians who dared criticize them, calling them apostates.

Maybe that's a little of what it feels like to be a moderate Muslim in countries where speaking up against the Islamofascists could send you to prison to be tortured, or draw a mob to burn down your house or hack you with a machete. If you look at the fear in the West among newspapers when it comes to printing the Muhammed cartoons, you see it doesn't take much of a threat to shut people up. Some angry people with signs or threat of a hate crimes charge is enough it seems.

I have often believed that those on the left who have opposed the war in Iraq have often had a racist attitude towards those living in the Middle East. Though they would never say it aloud, they think of them as barbarians who could never appreciate democracy, who are incapable of creating democratic institutions. They look at the cartoon riots as something those poor barbarians can't help but do. They would see the cartoons as a stupid provocation of a primitive force, something like deciding to take a swim among sharks while you have a nosebleed. You couldn't blame the sharks for their feeding frenzy, that's just their nature. You would get all the blame for being stupid, just as the Danish editor who commissioned those cartoons is getting blamed for the riots. And they probably blame Bush for creating the barbarian mentality in the first place.

Bush has a vision of democracy in the Middle East. It requires that we win the hearts and minds of the people there. It is a beautiful vision. It requires that we show restraint. That we not allow the extremists to tempt us to become like them. Note I say restraint. Restraint is not the same thing as appeasement, though our enemies might wrongly interpret it that way.

For all the bad news out there, let's not lose perspective.

Here is an encouraging sign that Muslims in India are not falling for the fatwas of extremist clerics.

And we have to recognize that American Muslims played a role in this bust of a terror cell in Toledo.


I believe Islamofascism is a huge threat to the West, similar to past threats posed by Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union. But a far bigger threat is our own loss of faith. We have lost our place in the Story that grounds our civilization. Our best defence is to recover that faith. Then we will have a godly wisdom to discern the real dangers around us without demonizing people in a way that dehumanizes us. We will have the restraint to behave in a civilized manner towards our enemies no matter what they do, and we will have the courage to respond to them with strength when justice requires it.

Perfect love casts out fear. It is not the weak-kneed Jimmy Carter type Christianity of smiling appeasement, nor is hateful revenge of the crossburning Klan.

For those of us who are Christians, it is all the more important that we choose not to fear anyone but God. Only He is worthy of our fear and awe. To allow ourselves to fear our enemies is a form of idolatry and perverse worship. It's a choice we must make constantly, and the fear is easy to succumb to. It takes discipline and prayer and dwelling in the secret place of the most High.

We need revival and spiritual renewal here, folks. Without it, it doesn't matter who is running our ports, we are in dire danger. And without it, the pluralistic society we love is going to devolve into a totalitarianism where there will be no religious freedom or freedom of speech.

Patients murdered to speed hospital staff evacuation during Katrina

Thanks to Kathy Shaidle over at Relapsed Catholic, I was directed to Lost Budgie, who links to Not Dead Yet, a group opposing euthanasia.

Feb. 21, 2006 -- On February 16th, 2006, NPR revealed that it had access to "secret court documents" of the investigations of alleged killing of patients at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The NPR account tells a chilling story. But unfortunately, NPR and others in the media are still calling the alleged homicides "mercy killings."

The following is a statement by Not Dead Yet, a national disability rights group, in response to the framing of these homicides as "merciful" acts:

The term mercy killing is a loaded one, a term that tends to generate sympathy for the killer. It's also generally used in those cases when the victim of a murder is old, ill or disabled.

Within days of Katrina striking New Orleans, rumors surfaced of "mercy killings" and euthanasia at one or more hospitals in the area. Apparently, these were more than just rumors -- the attorney general in Louisiana has been investigating the allegations, although little about the investigation has become public.

Until now.

Read it all.

Pro-life group supports teacher fired for out-of-wedlock pregnancy

Good on them!

LifeNews.com editor Steven Ertelt reports:

McCusker has filed an employment discrimination lawsuit against the school, which is run by the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn. But the school defends its decision.

"The school requires its teachers to convey the faith, to convey the gospel values and Christian traditions of the Catholic faith," Frank DeRosa, a spokesman for the Diocese of Brooklyn, told ABC News.

However, a pro-life group is coming to McCusker's aid.

Serrin Foster, president of Feminists for Life, says the firing sends the message to women and employees that they should have abortions if they become pregnant.

"When an employer fires a woman for carrying a child to term, they send an unintended message: An abortion will cover up the sex," she says.

"How would the employer feel if they later learned that their actions contributed to pressuring Ms. McCusker into having an abortion," she asked.

"The compassionate response to a woman who is carrying a child should be to ask if she needs help," Foster explained. She added that firing a pregnant woman is to "cause a crisis for her by taking her career, her income, and the obstetric/prenatal care that is critical to the health and well being of both mother and unborn child."

If the Catholic teacher is repentant about her out-of-wedlock sexual behavior, then why shouldn't the school keep her on? Of course if she brazenly goes about promoting premarital sex, then her presence is a scandal at the school whether she is pregnant or not.

Christopher Hitchens says stand up for Denmark

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for this link to Hitchen's latest post in Slate Magazine.

The incredible thing about the ongoing Kristallnacht against Denmark (and in some places, against the embassies and citizens of any Scandinavian or even European Union nation) is that it has resulted in, not opprobrium for the religion that perpetrates and excuses it, but increased respectability! A small democratic country with an open society, a system of confessional pluralism, and a free press has been subjected to a fantastic, incredible, organized campaign of lies and hatred and violence, extending to one of the gravest imaginable breaches of international law and civility: the violation of diplomatic immunity. And nobody in authority can be found to state the obvious and the necessary—that we stand with the Danes against this defamation and blackmail and sabotage. Instead, all compassion and concern is apparently to be expended upon those who lit the powder trail, and who yell and scream for joy as the embassies of democracies are put to the torch in the capital cities of miserable, fly-blown dictatorships. Let's be sure we haven't hurt the vandals' feelings.

and he ends with this:

I wonder if anyone might feel like joining me in gathering outside the Danish Embassy in Washington, in a quiet and composed manner, to affirm some elementary friendship. Those who like the idea might contact me at christopher.hitchens@yahoo.com, and those who live in other cities with Danish consulates might wish to initiate a stand for decency on their own account.

Now the Christians are fighting back in Nigeria

Of course, the Christian retaliation will probably be front page news and dominate TV news broadcasts, but the violence that preceded it has barely been reported.

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the link.

And Little Green Footballs led me to this statement from Anglicans in Nigeria.

Having watched with sadness and dismay the recent development in some States in the Northern part of this Country where many Christian Churches and other property have been wantonly destroyed by some Islamic fundamentalists, the Christian Association of Nigeria is compelled to issue the following statements:

1. From all indications, it is very clear now that the sacrifices of the Christians in this country for peaceful co-existence with people of other faiths has been sadly misunderstood to be weakness
2. We have for a long time now watched helplessly the killing, maiming and destruction of Christians and their property by Muslim fanatics and fundamentalists at the slightest or no provocation at all. We are not unaware of the fact that these religious extremists have the full backup and support of some influential Muslims who are yet to appreciate the value of peaceful co-existence.

I came to the Anglican statement via Judith Klinghoffer's article.

She writes:

I know, I have written about this before. At that time a Nigerian left this comment on my site:

This REFUSAL of the press to mount a HUGE OUTCRY is GETTING US KILLED. . . . If they'd all come out in unison and HOWLED THEIR DISGUST, it might have quelled the riots and shamed the Muslims into ceasing this obscene behaviour. As it is, Muslims see nothing is going to happen to them for howling and they are going to up the ante. The REAL STORY IS THE PRESS REFUSAL TO COVER THIS. WHY?

Now, oh, my God, the machetes have come out. Remember Rwanda? Christians again are murdered in their churches.

You really want to cry? The poor Christians apparently knew what was coming and tried appeasement.

-snip-

Now they realize that it was the wrong move, as their appeasement has been interpreted as weakness. Indeed, the cartoons are used to further the goal of turning Nigeria into an Islamic state.

The sorry "martyrs" for free speech

Like Dr. Sanity, it makes me cringe to see people like David Irving become "martyrs" for free speech. I'm not all that crazy about some of the Christians who've been hauled up before human rights tribunals for their intemperate language about homosexuals, either. (Bishop Fred Henry of Calgry, however, was neither intemperate or in any way out of line. He is magnificent. And the charges against him have since been dropped.) But we must be very careful about circumscribing freedom of speech.

Dr. Sanity links to a profound post over at the Belmont Club.

These Holocaust Denial laws are the poorest defense of truth possible. They allow individuals like Irving, who have written bad history, to clothe themselves with the appearance of martyrdom. Galileo is supported by empirical evidence. Irving cannot even explain the photographs above. But laws establishing "official truth" create categories of the Unmentionable into which subjects like the Jihad, feminism, abortion and Global Warming -- all the assertions, half-truths and humbug of the world -- will presently seek refuge. The best defense of the truth of the holocaust is an uncompromising commitment to free speech. Unless free speech is protected then some of the very evils Hitler sought to foist upon the world will be reintroduced in the name of fighting his memory.

Dr. Sanity's take?

I really don't want to feel sorry for pathetic people like Irving; I want to denouce his ideas and irrevocably refute them. I want to intellectually mock him and his ideas. I want to expose the truth about what he is saying and marginalize him in the realm of ideas. I might even want to mount a hostile campaign about his books or sue him for the damage that is caused by what he says. But I don't want to send him to prison for 10 years or even 10 minutes-- just for saying it.

Take a look at the mess the political correctness crowd has made for the world with its preoccupation about "hate" speech, which is just another PC euphemism for "official truth". Now we have supposedly "free" media, not publishing stupid cartoons out of so-called "sensitivity" to Islam. Well, people, where does it all stop? Let's take it to the logical conclusion as stated the other day by the outlet for "official truth" in Gaza:

"We will not accept less than severing the heads of those responsible."

No person who truly is committed to free speech can support this kind of insanity.

George Washington not a Deist but an Anglican

I grew up an American, taught that George Washington refused to lie after cutting down his father's cherry tree. But I also grew up being told that America's founders were Deists and not Christians.

Now a new book debunks that view, especially concerning America's first president.

National Review online interviews the authors:

Michael and Jana Novak, father and daughter, are authors of Washington's God, to be released early next month. Take a President's Day preview of the book here.

Q: Who is Washington's God?

AThe Great God Jehovah who led the people of Israel long ago, the same benevolent Providence that led the way through many dark times to the independence of the United States. That is the God Washington described in his letter to the Synagogue in Savannah, after the war.

Washington was an active vestryman in his local Anglican parish; he came from a long line of Anglican worshipers and even ministers; and his children by marriage continued the tradition. He cherished the Book of Psalms and read from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

Yet like many in the Anglican tradition, Washington leaned towards philosophical names for God, rather than confessional names. He almost always used names such as the "Supreme Author of all Good"; the "all wise disposer of Events"; a "Bountiful Providence" that watches over us, and "interposes" his actions in our favor. Almost never: "Savior" or "Redeemer," or "Holy Trinity."

Why I say pro-abortion rather than pro-choice

Because I see little effort on the part of the left to make sure women really do have a choice to keep their babies.

This is a powerful essay at Right Reason (which I know will become a regular stop for me) on the double standard regarding choice: Choice devours itself.

Lydia McGrew writes:

There is a phenomenon that seems to me curious, because as far as I can tell it reflects no logical entailment but rather a truth about human nature. Let me list a few of its manifestations:

--Feminists in the U.S. and Europe ignore the overwhelming evidence of forced sterilization, birth control, and abortion in China and continue to demand U.S. monetary support for China's population control programs.

--An American liberal writing in the New York Times Magazine tells, apparently without regret, how he pressured his teenage daughter to have an abortion until she gave in with the words, "I don't have a choice." (Here is the Weekly Standard article on the subject. The NYTM story itself is subscription only.)

--Women in Germany who register at state-run unemployment agencies are given (now legal) prostitution as one of their employment options and face the real possibility that their unemployment benefits will be cut if they do not take jobs in brothels.

-snip-

--Professor John Hardwig argues that there can be be a "duty to die," and that a person may have such a duty even if he "wants very much to live."

What do all of these have in common? They all involve activities--abortion, sterilization, sexual intercourse, prostitution, and death--which liberals have strongly defended as expressions of personal freedom. But there are cases where people clearly are not engaging in these activities freely, where they are being coerced to a greater or lesser extent, but where liberal outrage is for the most part not forthcoming.

Powerful essay. Read it all.

The flames of hate in Alabama

Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe writes:

SUPPOSE THAT in 2005 unknown hoodlums had firebombed 10 gay bookstores and bars in San Francisco, reducing several of them to smoking rubble. It takes no effort to imagine the alarm that would have spread through the Bay Area's gay community or the manhunt that would have been launched to find the attackers. The blasts would have been described everywhere as ''hate crimes," editorial pages would have thundered with condemnation, and public officials would have vowed to crack down on crimes against gays with unprecedented severity.

Suppose that vandals last month had attacked 10 Detroit-area mosques and halal restaurants, leaving behind shattered windows, wrecked furniture, and walls defaced with graffiti. The violence would be national front-page news. On blogs and talk radio, the horrifying outbreak of anti-Muslim bigotry would be Topic No. 1. Bills would be introduced in Congress to increase the penalties for violent ''hate crimes" -- no one would hesitate to call them by that term -- and millions of Americans would rally in solidarity with Detroit's Islamic community.

Fortunately, those sickening scenarios are only hypothetical. Here is one that is not:

In the past two weeks, 10 Baptist churches have been burned in rural Alabama.

Gibbon on Mahomet from Decline and Fall

Here's the view of a 18th Century historian Edward Gibbon from Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on Mahomet or Mohammed, via Right Reason, a blog for philosophical conservatives.

I found this summary of Gibbon on a site of sermon notes.

Edward Gibbon, author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, has attributed the fall of the Empire to:

1. The rapid increase of divorce; the undermining of the dignity and sanctity of the home, which is the basis of human society.

2. Higher and higher taxes and the spending of public monies for free bread and circuses for the populace.

3. The mad craze for pleasure; sports becoming every year more exciting and more brutal.

4. The building of gigantic armaments when the real enemy was within, the decadence of the people.

5. The decay of religion?faith fading into mere form, losing touch with life and becoming impotent to warn and guide the people.

Fr. Tom Rosica urges inter-religious dialog

I can always count on Fr. Tom to point out the high road.

In his Toronto Sun column Sunday he wrote:

This past August, after meeting with Jews at a synagogue in Cologne, Germany, Pope Benedict XVI met with representatives of some Muslim communities. His words then are important for the world to hear today:

"We must seek paths of reconciliation and learn to live with respect for each other's identity. The defence of religious freedom, in this sense, is a permanent imperative, and respect for minorities is a clear sign of true civilization. In this regard, it is always right to recall what the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council said about relations with Muslims...

"The church looks upon Muslims with respect. They worship the one God living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to humanity and to whose decrees, even the hidden ones, they seek to submit themselves wholeheartedly, just as Abraham, to whom the Islamic faith readily relates itself, submitted to God... Although considerable dissensions and enmities between Christians and Muslims may have arisen in the course of the centuries, the council urges all parties that, forgetting past things, they train themselves towards sincere mutual understanding and together maintain and promote social justice and moral values as well as peace and freedom for all people."

On Feb. 2, Jordan's King Abdullah II promoted moderation in Islam to the evangelical-dominated National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. The young Jordanian monarch said:

"In every generation, people of faith are tested. In our generation, the greatest challenge comes from violent extremists who seek to divide and conquer. Extremism is a political movement under religious cover ... Its adherents want nothing more than to pit us against each other, denying all that we have in common."

Moderate Muslims rising up in Denmark against cartoon madness

Dozens of Danish Muslims are joining the network of moderate Muslims, the Demokratiske Muslimer (Democratic Muslims). About 700 Muslims have already become DM members and 2,500 Danes have expressed their will to support the network. The initiative has caused anger among the Danish imams and their leader, Ahmad Abu Laban, who have referred to the moderates as “rats.” The imams feel that they are beginning to lose their control over part of the Muslim population.

Moderates such as Kamran Tahmasebi say they have had enough of fanatic Islamism and its intimidation of the Muslim immigrants in Denmark. “It is an irony that I am today living in a European democratic state and have to fight the same religious fanatics that I fled from in Iran many years ago,” Mr Tahmasebi says. He came to Denmark as a refugee in 1989. Today he works as a social consultant and is very grateful for the life Denmark has made it possible for him to have. He says he no longer wants to keep a low profile to avoid attracting the attention of the imams. The cartoon affair was an incentive for him to stand up and warn against the Islamist imams in Denmark, whom he says are damaging the integration process with their misleading criticism of Danish values and norms.

Thanks to the Egyptian Sandmonkey for the post.

If you are at all curious about what it is like to take a ride on a Cairo taxi, Egyptian Sandmonkey gives you the lowdown here.

Building the Christian Family You Never Had

I am an unabashed social conservative. And being a social conservative does not mean that I'm focused just on abortion, euthanasia or traditional marriage. It means that if I were to come up with an alternative to the campaign slogan Bill Clinton's people used "It's the economy, stupid!" I would change it to be "It's character, stupid!" Except I'd probably leave out the "stupid!" to be polite if not gracious, though I confess I might think it of people who don't agree with what to me seems self-evident.

If citizens within a society lack virtue and character, then it doesn't matter what economic system they choose for themselves, its capitalist or socialist system will be full of liars, cheats and exploiters. Social life will be made up of bullies lording it over weak terrified people who can't stand up to them. Governments will have to grow larger and larger to keep people under control and clean up the messes they make with their lives.

And what is the time-honored institution for inculcating virtue into children so that they can grow up to have strong, honest, good characters? The family. The poor, beleaguered family now under such attack. It takes good character to stay committed to a marriage, to keep promises, to love unselfishly.

I was trying to think of what the four cardinal virtues were the other day and I could only come up with three after wracking my brain: prudence (wisdom); temperance (moderation) and fortitude (courage). The fourth I looked up. It is justice.

As Christians there are three more supernaturally granted virtues of love, hope and faith.

And blessed is the child that grows up in a Christian family where the parents are able to inculcate and impart all seven of these virtues.

But most of us didn't grow up in that kind of family. Mary Demuth, one of the Master's Artists, has written a wonderful book for parents who hope to create the kind of family that does just that, but it is written from the perspective of someone who has had to struggle every step of the way to figure out how to do it.

It's called Building the Christian Family You Never Had: A Practical Guide for Pioneer Parents.

Mary calls herself and others like her "pioneer parents" because she has had to discover for herself what it means to be a good Christian wife and mother because she never had anyone model it for her when she was growing up.

Her story is riveting, and her advice wise and encouraging. Mary is on her blog tour promoting her book, and I'm delighted to be on one of her vitual stops.

As a pioneer parent and child of disinterested baby boomer parents, how do you model character and instill a desire to make virtuous choices in your children?

Boy, that’s hard. Not having positive parenting modeled has made it hard for me to model character for my children. How I was raised is my fallback. So, one thing I’ve done is found mentors—parents who parent well and do a great job of instilling character in their children. One of them is my friend Leslie. She is a very deliberate parent. Watching her helps me to be deliberate and intentional as I parent.

And, there’s the very important Jesus component. Thankfully, Jesus rescued me when I was fifteen and a half. He has changed my character. I am not the same insecure, needy girl I was. Thankfully, I had ten years of following Him under my belt before I started parenting.

How hard has it been to wend your way through the baggage of your childhood and childhood sexual abuse, to find the secret to building your own character?

Very. Excruciatingly so. It meant I had to do the hard work of looking back. It felt like my brokenness was rebroken and that I’d never be put together again—kind of like Mrs. Humpty Dumpty, only the King had the ability to put the pieces back together, thankfully.

Building my own character? I suppose it came through sheer grit and tenacity—clinging to Jesus when I felt like giving into my past, letting it overwhelm me. Character, in the form of fruit, comes from a life dedicated and abandoned to God. I can’t generate it. But He can.

I was haunted by the image of the friend you met at the highschool reunion. You and she had made a vow not to be like your respective parents because both of you were hurt so much by their fighting and neglect. Yet when you saw her, her life had gone down the tubes. She was a mess. Why do you think she succumbed to patterns set in her childhood by her parents and you somehow managed to break the cycle?

It’s easier to fall back into the pattern of your upbringing than to buck against it. It’s as natural as a fish swimming. The hard part comes when the fish decides to jump OUT of the water and try the impossible, to live on land. Only God can make such an impossible change. At that time in my friend’s life, she had not turned to Him to help her.

What is the most important character-building secret you reveal in your book?

That a life well-lived is an inside out endeavor. Character flows from a healed and redeemed heart. It’s not about imposing character upon ourselves (like the Pharisees tried to do with their rules and regulations), but welcoming the one Whose character you want to emulate: Jesus.

One character trait you exhibit in writing this book is courage. Courage to expose yourself so that others might find healing through brokenness. How much of a struggle has it been to conquer the fears of offending your relatives or of being exposed on the page for all to see?

Oh my goodness. I was so afraid. I wrestled through the pages of this book, hoping God would tell me to stop. But He kept at me, encouraging me, and granting me courage when mine waned (which was nearly every day I wrote it). I still feel a bit naked now that the book is out. I’m there in all my broken glory on the page for all to see and dissect. I pray that, through that, others are blessed and seek to find healing.

In terms of my family, though, it hasn’t been easy.

How important is it for Christians to learn the secret of how to build character in themselves and their children?

Very important. My husband often speaks of how the North American church suffers from what he calls a “passive Christianity.” We wait for character to happen. We attend seminars, asking to be fed. We evaluate churches on how well they cater to us. But Christianity is actually offensive in nature. We must be active Christians, doggedly pursuing the character of God. Life will happen no matter what we do, but it takes a strong person to really pursue Christ.

How does the character of Jesus Christ make all the difference?

He’s everything that I am not. Gentle. Kind. Patient. Hopeful. Sweet. Angry at the right things. Accepting. Holy. I couldn’t do marriage or parenting or life without His nature in me.

I highly recommend this book. Mary also has a book of devotionals Ordinary Mom, Extraordinary God: Encouragement to Refresh Your Soul that makes me think of what Oswald Chambers might have written like if he had to contend with small children and sticky floors.

And look out for her soon-to-be released first novel Watching the Tree Limbs.

Dr. Sanity: They have them and they intend to use them

A terrifying diagnosis from Dr. Sanity on Iran. She links to an article in the Telegraph that makes her speculate the Iranians already have nuclear weapons. I think she's right.

She writes:

I wonder if they have calculated that the cartoon jihad riots--which are clearly spreading in true pandemic fashion all over the world just as any virulent and contagious illness would--have laid the foundation for a grand gesture. You know, something that would kill a million or so infidels?

Notice that the cartoon riots are escalating even as the West bends over backwards to appease and mollify these sociopathic bullies of Islam? I'm sorry to tell you that the increasingly violent Islamic response to appeasement, solicitation, and understanding has always been completely predictable from a psychological perspective. Bullies will always push the envelope of bad behavior when they think they can get away with it.

And they are getting away with it, aren't they?

I can imagine Ahmadinejad rubbing his hands together like Mr. Burns, cackling, "Exxxxcellent!" as the rioters set the stage for a demonstration of Islamic superiority and Allah's (i.e. Ahmadinejad's) will.

It's no use saying that such behavior doesn't make sense and would be irrational and suicidal. Just think of Ahmadinejad as the ultimate, high-tech suicide bomber who has wrapped that nuclear bomb belt securely around his entire country.

If you thought the Danish cartoons were bad

How about this?

The Strand [a University of Toronto student newspaper] editorial staff debated long and hard for a week before they published the cartoon, Ragaz said. "The question was whether it was a contribution worth making," he said.

"We will certainly be addressing this in our next issue and will make every attempt to address the many views that have been put forward, publishing all of the correspondence we've received," said Ragaz.

The cartoon, depicting Jesus and Muhammad kissing on a tunnel of love carnival ride under the words "Tunnel of Tolerance," explores religious tolerance and same-sex issues, Ragaz said.

But--as tasteless and puerile and blasphemous and outrageous as the cartoon is--as long as no government money is supporting this newspaper--I would not want to see government laws shut it down or the editors imprisoned or slapped with a huge fine. And I certainly would not want to see death threats imposed on them or the University's buildings torched.

Just say "No" to The Da Vinci Code movie

Here are some reasons why you should.

And shame on the so-called Christians who are aiding and abetting Sony Corporation in its publicity drive.

The novel was hate literature against the Christian faith and the Holy Catholic Church.
Unfortunately, many Protestants forget that the Church was not born in the 16th Century.

Barbara Nicolosi at Church of the Masses writes:

I just read a ludicrous statement by some Christian pastor, calling for all Christians to go to see The Da Vinci Code when it opens. His statement was something to the effect of "Every Christian needs to see this film!" I beg to differ.

No. We don't need to see this film. We all know what is in it. (Especially me, as I have read the screenplay.) It is a movie which begins from the point that Jesus was a fraud. He was not only not Divine, he was less than a man. And His Church is a sham association of meglomaniacal conspirators whose unifying principles are in the oppression of women.

Barbara urges every Christian to go to the movies on opening day, May 19, but to see something other than the DVC. Let the film's opening weekend be swamped by a sudden surge in other movies. Sounds like a plan.

And Opus Dei has its own suggestion on how to deal with the movie. That's a Christian response, no?

UPDATE: Here's a story from the UK about Opus Dei's request to Sony to change the ending of the DVC movie so as not to offend Catholics. Thanks to CERC for the link.

Sweden has a higher crime rate than New York City

Sweden? That bastion of social democracy? Eyeopening article here.

A writer for the American Family Association spotted these facts in a Swedish newspaper:

• There is more crime in Sweden than in New York City, though they are comparable in population.

• Drug abuse is rampant, with the number of deaths from overdoses having doubled in the past 10 years.

• Sweden has one of the highest incidences of rape in the world.

• Burglaries are so numerous that many citizens have stopped reporting them, because the police are overloaded and cannot undertake to investigate them all anyway.

• Attacks on money transports (like highway robbery) are so frequent that the transporters are threatening to quit, thereby effectively closing ATM’s all over the country.

• Violent outdoor muggings are becoming routine, having increased 15% last year alone.

• In Stockholm, the police recently admitted having lied when they claimed to have neutralized some 130 of the city’s most prominent gangsters; in reality, their sting operation was a bust.

• Swedish courts are plagued with perjurious police officers who routinely lie to support fellow cops in trouble.

"For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking . . .

I often think of those words of Jesus about the days before the flood, how people were eating and drinking, marrying, carrying on as if catastrophe were the last thing that was going to happen to them right up until Noah entered the ark.

Jesus said it would be like that before He comes again, too. Though I'm not one of those people preoccupied with prophecy and end times predictions, nevertheless those words of his pop into mind when I look at the preoccupation with the Olympics, with Wayne Gretsky and his wife, and with the hysteria over U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident.

Doug Giles has it right:

He writes: "Is the Cheney story the story we should be obsessing on right now? Well, in a word: No. Granted, he is the Veep, and he did shoot someone; but come on, this is not the most important news item in the US this week. Britney Spears’ mysterious trip to a Malibu clinic is what should have our focus. Jeez, people . . . get with it! Britney could be ill.

"Hey hysterical media chum suckers, if you want to obsess about a gun (or guns) in South Texas, why don’t you travel a little further southwest from Corpus Christi to Laredo where U.S. authorities just snatched ready-to-detonate IEDs, materials for making 33 more, military style grenades, 26 grenade triggers, large quantities of AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles, 1280 rounds of ammo, silencers, machine gun assembly kits, 300 primers, bullet proof vests, police scanners, sniper scopes, narcotics and cash from Mexican dope dealers? Now, Dave, there’s an all-beef patty for you and all the other reporters suffering from mad cow disease to sink your teeth into."

It astounds me how the really important stuff gets ignored.

Retired Vatican official returns to Canada to face charges

The story in the Ottawa Citizen is here:

Andrew Seymour writes:

A former Pembroke-area priest, wanted for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old boy, was arrested at Montreal's Trudeau Airport after returning to Canada from Italy to surrender to authorities.

Canada Customs and Border Services agents arrested Msgr. Bernard Prince, 71, after he arrived on a flight from Rome just before 9 p.m. Tuesday.

"He made a decision to leave his home and come here to face these charges," Msgr. Prince's lawyer, Chris Kelly, said yesterday.

A Christian martyr in Iran

Bahman Agai Diba writes in the Persian Journal:

He was a Christian priest and his crime was changing his religion from Islam to Christianity. Dibaji had not only changed his religion, but as a clergy, he had tried to invite others to his religion. He had worked in places like north and west of Iran and even he had made travels to Afghanistan for preaching.

He was not one of my cellmates, and I noticed him because he was walking as person who was very satisfied and content. He was telling things slowly to himself that I could not understand at first. Later I came to know that he was reciting Christian hymns in Farsi and English. I asked him "why are you so joyful?" He said I am praying to God that has made this beautiful day possible for me. Look around you isn't it beautiful? The flowers, the sight of mountains and the huge trees are around us, and I am in the company of nice people. I am thankful to God.

Demographic winter ahead

The National Post has begun a four part series on Canada's childless culture.

Anne Marie Owens writes in today's Post:

In a future Canada, where senior citizens drastically outnumber babies, schools will be replaced by old-age homes, neighbourhoods of single-family dwellings will make way for smaller condos and townhouses, and playgrounds will become disused relics of the past.

The sound of children's chattering voices, once common, will be rarely heard.

Baby-making may come to be regarded no longer as the private prerogative of consenting adults, and more an act of national duty.

This is what a childless Canada would look like. But it is not the science-fiction vision of a far-off future. In less than a decade, seniors will outnumber children in Canada; in just 15 years, deaths may outnumber births.

The country's population is in decline, and unless massive immigration or an overhaul of reproductive attitudes and policies compels a radical turnaround, Canada will soon reflect a lopsided and never-seen-before demographic reality where the young are drastically outnumbered by the old.

and

Margaret Somerville, founding director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law, says the most profound impact of this decline in fertility may be in changing attitude. She sees the trend toward delaying or avoiding child-bearing as just another aspect of society's drift toward a culture of "intense individualism," where children are seen more as "a desirable thing to have, rather than as new individuals to repopulate the world."

On the lighter side. . . a great parody of George W. Bush

Thanks to Kathy Shaidle over at Relapsed Catholic, I found this comedian impersonating George W. Bush. I agree with Kathy, this guy nails him.

Internal problems in the West

No one does a better job of exposing the decay of Western Civilization than Theodore Dalrymple. The internal rot is more worrisome than any threat from the outside.

Check out this brilliant essay on Anthony Burgess and his novel "A Clockwork Orange."

Burgess intuited with almost prophetic acuity both the nature and characteristics of youth culture when left to its own devices, and the kind of society that might result when that culture became predominant. For example, adults grow afraid of the young and defer to them, something that has certainly come to pass in Britain, where adults now routinely look away as youngsters commit antisocial acts in public, for fear of being knifed if they do otherwise, and mothers anxiously and deferentially ask their petulant five-year-old children what they would like to eat, in the hope of averting tantrums. The result is that adolescents and young men take any refusal of a request as lèse-majesté, a challenge to the integrity of their ego. When I refused to prescribe medicine that young men wanted but that I thought they did not need, they would sometimes answer in aggrieved disbelief, “No? What do you mean, no?” It was not a familiar concept. And in a sense, my refusal was pointless, insofar as any such young man would soon enough find a doctor whom he could intimidate into prescribing what he wanted. Burgess would not have been surprised by this state of affairs: he saw it coming.

A big fat paper and almost nothing I want to read

That has been my experience with my Saturday Ottawa Citizen for a long time. Aside from a David Warren column and an op ed by Leonard Stern, I skimmed the rest and here I am at 7:39 looking around the blogosphere for something engaging.

Maybe you are too, so here's what I found this morning.

Dr. Sanity has an in depth look at the role unhealthy and healthy psychological defense mechanisms play in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia here.

Dr. Sanity writes:

In order to be adaptive, a defense:

• should regulate, rather than remove affect – that is, instead of totally anesthetizing a person, the defense would just reduce the pain (and therefore make it easier to cope; rather than to avoid coping altogether)

• should channel feelings instead of blocking them (i.e., allow a healthy expression of those feelings in a way that can discharge them in socially acceptable ways rather than keep them hidden and motivating behavior)

• should be oriented to the long-term; and not simply the short-term

• should be oriented toward present and future pain relief; and not focused past distress

• should be as specific as possible (i.e., be as a key is to a lock; not as a sledgehammer applied to a door)

• the use of the defense should attract people and not repel them (Vaillant points out that the use of the mature defenses --i.e., humor, altruism, sublimation etc.-- is perceived by others as attractive and even virtuous; while the immature defenses are perceived as irritating, repellant, and even evil).

ShrinkWrapped has a good essay about Tribes and Societies a here.

He writes:

It seems to me that in our world there are two different approaches to the problem of taming the aggression of young men. In some societies, especially those that are more specifically tribal in orientation, the aggression is directed outward, toward those who are not in the tribe, and idealized. The quintessential arrangement of rage-idealizing social order occurs in what are now referred to as failed states. The Somalia of "Black Hawk Down", run by war lords who starve those who are not in the right tribe and think nothing of torturing their opponents and using murder and rape as weapons of terror, would be an example of such a social arrangement. Palestine, with the outer-directed rage of Hamas, religious injunctions to murder and torment those of other tribes (Jews, especially, but Christians as well) is high on the list of such societies. In these societies not only is sociopathy rewarded, the highest honors and power tends to go to those who are most viciously sociopathic.

The United States, on the other hand, is a country where traditional religious and family structures are designed to help young men achieve optimal control over their aggressive impulses. We even have avenues for all but the worst sociopaths to succeed and add what value they can to society. An example would be the young man with sociopathic tendencies who is able to sublimate his aggression into sports or aggressive business practices; they may be ruthless and cut throat, but they are only symbolically and economically ruthless. They may put people out of work (which is not something to be proud of) but they don't put them through a shredder.

Here's a fascinating column by Mark Steyn on an Arab Muslim Hollywood producer who was killed by suicide bombers while attending a wedding in Jordan.

The film-maker in Akkad might have found something similar in the husband-and-wife suicide-bomber team who killed him: Mrs al-Shamari entering the Radisson, the camera’s eye nervously darting around, shuffling through to the ballroom; the guests standing around, Muslims yet holding their wedding party in a semi-westernised style, the ladies with bright glossed lips, and coiffed hair bursting through their perfunctory head coverings. What does the jihadist think? Is she disgusted? Or just concentrating on her mission? She struggles with the cord on her explosives belt, but it jams, and she tugs more frantically, and her husband sees her fumbling and pushes her out of the room, either in what passes for gallantry in the death cult or because he’s concerned she’ll jeopardize the operation. And then he pulls his cord, and he and the wedding party explode.

John Robson on why the cartoons should be published

Read his Ottawa Citizen column here.

This knocking of knees renders political philosophy irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what else I want to say. It only matters whether I can say it without being stabbed, beheaded or blown up.

For Scott Anderson is right that we are not dealing primarily with press freedom. We are dealing with explicit threats of violence. Even newspaper stories saying protests in Canada have been peaceful have generally added that no major Canadian media outlet has published the cartoons. So if they are published will violence result that, while regrettable, is predictable and thus our fault? Nice freedom of speech you have there. Pity if something were to … happen to it.

Could abortion rates have something to do with it?

Vintage Mark Steyn on the West's demographic crisis.

MY interest in demography dates back to September 11, 2001, when a demographic group I hadn't hitherto given much thought managed to get my attention. I don't mean the, ah, unfortunate business with the planes and buildings and so forth, but the open cheering of the attacks by their co-religionists in Montreal, Yorkshire, Copenhagen and elsewhere. How many people knew there were fast-growing and culturally confident Muslim populations in Scandinavia?

Demography doesn't explain everything but it accounts for a good 90 per cent. The "who" is the best indicator of the what-where-when-and-why. Go on, pick a subject. Will Japan's economy return to the heady days of the 1980s when US businesses cowered in terror? Answer: No. Japan is exactly the same as it was in its heyday except for one fact: it stopped breeding and its population aged. Will China be the hyperpower of the 21st century? Answer: No. Its population will get old before it gets rich.

Threats of violence kill gay pride parade

Okay, so the vast majority of North American Mainstream news media outlets bows to Muslim sensitivies over reprinting the Mohammed cartoons. And many of the people on the left support their doing so. But what happens if local Muslims say they want to stop a gay pride march? Then what?

I'm not crazy about mayors of communities being hauled up before human rights tribunals and forced to pay fines if, on the basis of their moral convictions and conscience, they refuse to proclaim a gay pride week or day or lead a parade or whatever. I don't think that marriage commissioners should be forced to marry gay couples if it's against their conscience. I think marriage is a social institution designed for the rearing of children, best ensuring that they are raised by their biological parents.

But I defend the rights of gays and lesbians to march, to hold parades, to say or write what they want to say even if I disagree vehemently with it.

Though a tiny proportion of gay activists have been known to use intimidating tactics and desecrate churches while demonstrating, they don't issue fatwas. At least not to my knowledge. (Though this post of Andrew Sullivan's makes for some scary reading.)

Will the West stand up for gays? Will it stand up for women? I sure hope so. And if Muslims want to hold a peaceful counter demonstration, fine! But I oppose using threats of violence to shut people up. And I also oppose using the power of the state to shut people up, too. Or make them say things that are against their consciences.

Additional charges laid against Msgr. Prince

Andrew Seymour writes in today's Ottawa Citizen:

An alleged victim of a retired Pembroke-area priest who is now accused of sexually assaulting seven young males said the Catholic Church knew about allegations of sexually impropriety decades before criminal charges were laid.

"There are people in the church who knew," the man told Citizen yesterday after 14 new charges were laid against Monsignor Bernard Prince for alleged sexual assaults on six young males, including two from Ottawa, in the late 1960s to mid-1970s and the 1980s. Msgr. Prince already faced a single charge of buggery and indecent assault one one young male.

The alleged victim, who cannot be identified due to a court-ordered publication ban, said the church moved Msgr. Prince, who was released on bail yesterday, to a new post after he made the allegations. "We're not sure who moved him but he did get moved," the man said.

Rev. Peter Proulx, who handles sexual abuse complaints for the Pembroke diocese, said he was not aware of any allegations made against Msgr. Prince prior to the OPP investigation that was launched last May.

However, Father Proulx admitted he had no way of knowing whether any complaints were made before he accepted his current position three years ago.

"We want to see truth unfold in this whole thing," he said.

"We have a responsibility to alleged victims as well to be caring and compassionate and understanding."

Evidence coming out in the Cornwall Inquiry into decades of sexual abuse in that community is showing that it is only since the 1980s that all institutions became aware of the prevalence of "acquaintance pedophilia" and the vulnerability of young boys.

How to counter insurgency in Iraq

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the link to this story.

Thomas E. Ricks writes for the Washington Post:

Understanding that the key to counterinsurgency is focusing on the people, not the enemy, he said he changed the standing orders of the regiment to state that in the future all soldiers would "treat detainees professionally." During the unit's previous tour, a detainee was beaten to death during questioning and a unit commander carried a baseball bat that he called his "Iraqi beater."

"Every time you treat an Iraqi disrespectfully, you are working for the enemy," McMaster said he told every soldier in his command.

A look at anti-Semitism

Check out this post by ShrinkWapped.

I can only imagine....

Someone I love sent me a forward this morning. It's a link to a song and I'm listening to it now. If you want to praise God this morning, click the link, let it load, hit play and rejoice.

In my readings this morning from Psalm 84 (NIV):

10 Better is one day in your courts
than a thousand elsewhere;
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of the wicked.

11 For the LORD God is a sun and shield;
the LORD bestows favor and honor;
no good thing does he withhold
from those whose walk is blameless.

12 O LORD Almighty,
blessed is the man who trusts in you.

A time is coming when men will go mad. . . .

A friend has this quote in her email signature line:

A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, "You are mad, you are not like us." St. Anthony of Egypt

A Human Rights Tribunal will hear a hate crimes charge against Ezra Levant and the Western Standard Magazine.

Carly Weeks writes in the Ottawa Citizen:

The Islamic Supreme Council of Canada has complained to the Alberta Human Rights Commission that the decision of two publishers to run cartoons considered offensive by Muslims has resulted in hate e-mail.

Syed Soharwardy, president of the council, said his organization has received nine "hateful" e-mails, including one that refers to Islam as an "evil, murderous cult" and degrades the Prophet Muhammad.

The complaints were filed yesterday against the Western Standard, mailed to subscribers this week, and the Jewish Free Press, sent to about 2,000 Calgary homes last week.

The complaint is just the latest volley fired against Western Standard and its publisher, Ezra Levant, since it printed eight of the 12 controversial cartoons about Muslims that have sparked riots worldwide.

Since the latest issue of the magazine came out Monday, Mr. Levant has come under fire from Canadian military personnel, politicians and Muslim groups who say his choice to print the cartoons, which many Muslims find blasphemous, is irresponsible, considering the images have triggered continuing unrest in many countries.

Though outrage is not one of the fruits of the Spirit, I have a hard time not feeling that this morning. It's the same outrage I felt when Bishop Fred Henry got hauled before one of these tribunals for a pastoral letter explaining Catholic teaching on marriage. What is happening to this country?

Yes---if you don't like what Ezra and his magazine have done---cancel your subscription, write letters to the editor, protest if you must. But to use the power of the state to censor--that is chilling.

And another thing that is awfully wierd about how this story is playing. The magazine is also in hot water for printing a negative comment made by an Alberta Conservative about the premier's Aboriginal wife. Instead of outrage at the person who made the racist remark, the magazine is under fire.

The Ottawa Citizen reports this morning:

A half dozen aboriginal leaders held a news conference yesterday at city hall to attack the article in Western Standard magazine and its author, Ric Dolphin. They also demanded an apology.

The publisher of the Western Standard has been unrepentant, however, saying the magazine is simply reporting remarks that reveal the frustration of some Tories over Mr. Klein's decision to remain as premier for at least another year before stepping aside.

"As I said to the premier's staff who called me, 'You guys keep saying this about the boss, we'll keep writing it,' " Ezra Levant said in Calgary.

This is a case of shoot the messenger.

No one likes it when their ox is being gored. Me included. But if things continue to go the way they are, the truth will be the first casualty. No one will be able to speak the truth in this country without fear of state reprisals. Canada is already pretty far down this road. Sad. And the fanatical beliefs behind it? Secular fundamentalism and its doctrine of political correctness.

More on Brokeback Mountain

I haven't seen the movie, but I'm most interested in the debate swirling around it.

My friend the Sheepcat in a post entitled More than one way off Brokeback Mountain brought my attention to this post by Dr. Walter Throckmorton:

In December 1995, after 2 children and 15 years of marriage, Rob set off on a business trip he hoped would turn into a weekend of sex with a male co-worker. What he found instead was an encounter with a man who described what he called “sexual healing.” Not the Marvin Gaye kind, but rather the co-worker described how he had experienced healing from compulsive sexuality and a renewed commitment to his marriage. Rob was intrigued. “When I learned that there was another way, I wanted to know more. I always felt a need for men in my life and had settled for a sexual closeness. My friend offered me a different option.”

His pursuit of that option came through various counselors, religious commitment and eventually involved an Exodus International ministry. He told me recently in an interview that he has not had a homosexual experience in 10 years and says, “I am no longer attracted to men at all.”

Concerning men experiencing the Brokeback Syndrome, Rob says he can empathize with their situation. “I think I can relate to them. These (same-sex) feelings seemed like they had always been a part of my life.” Now however, Rob sees this issue from a different perspective. “Although I think I understand what men who relate to Jack and Ennis are feeling, I think it is an unnecessary choice to give up on their marriage commitment. What I have now is so much better.”

Let's change the channel and talk about fiction

There's a great discussion thread here on what it means to write from a Christian worldview and what has changed since the time of Chesterton to today, especially as regards so-called Christian fiction.

What does it mean to write from a Christian worldview? Why isn't there more worldclass literature being written by Christians? What trends are going on in fiction in general that show a shift in how authors deal with character development? Some of the questions that occupy us over at Faith in Fiction, or FiF for short.

J. Mark Bertrand, who is always worth reading, put me onto this story in the Telegraph about the romance genre.

Amanda Craig writes:

There is also the question of character: and here, critics of modern romance do have a point. The romantic hero has scarcely changed from the brooding presence imposed by Messrs Darcy and Rochester, but the heroines have grown steadily weaker. Danuta Kean, who chaired the Romantic Novelists' Award last year, observes: "What disturbs me about most modern romantic fiction is that the women are such victims. The suffering of romantic heroines in the great 19th-century novels is used to reveal their fortitude, their strength of character. You can understand completely why the heroes are drawn to these women.

I zeroed in on the same thing Mark did at his blog. Mark writes:

Perhaps the reason this passage jumped out at me is that, on the Faith in Fiction Forum, I've been lamely pursuing the suspicion that there's been a rhetorical shift in the way readers think and talk about their habit. The old idea of reading for moral formation is long gone, but these days it seems to have been replaced by talk of reading's therapeutic benefits. For example, in a recent Pioneer Press article on Christian chick lit, I came across the following:

"So much stuff Oprah picks just depresses you," says Christian fiction writer Kristin Billerbeck. "The world is so heavy right now, readers want hope. Christian books leave me feeling hopeful."

It struck me as odd that a reader might avoid certain types of books to avoid "depression," or that others might be chosen to promote a hopeful feeling. Were we talking about books here, or antidepressants?

What people have lost sight of is this: virtuous acts and the consequent character formation are the best defence against depression. We have somehow separated self-esteem and feeling good from esteemable acts and the sense of wellbeing that comes from being good.

If our literature reflected the need for character formation and virtue, obtained at a cost through conflict, instead of providing escapist entertainment, then maybe we wouldn't have a need for anti-depressants.

Some cartoons on the cartoons

Thanks to the Shotgun blog over at the Western Standard, I was directed to this site full of great cartoons about the cartoons.

Jackie Mason and Raoul Felder on the cartoons

Nobody has ever died from a cartoon. If the worst thing the Nazis ever did had been to draw cartoons of death camps instead of putting Jews in them, six million Jews would be alive today. When was the last time any country decided to kill a Muslim anywhere in the world because they felt insulted? But the Muslims have created a new international law called the "insult law." This means they have the right to kill you whenever they please, and you have no right to do anything about it. If a Muslim were walking down a street in Israel with a picture of an insulting cartoon in hand, no Israeli would threaten his life. They would be too busy celebrating the fact that it was a cartoon and not a bomb.

Read the whole thing.

Thanks to David Warren for the link.

Opus Dei says donate to African relief instead of protest

Opus Dei gets a terrible rap in Dan Brown's awful novel The Da Vinci Code. The prayerful movement which stresses finding saintliness through serving God in the workaday world has some suggestions on how those hurt by the book and the soon-to-be released Sony movie might respond.

Many people feel pained by The Da Vinci Code’s lack of respect for the beliefs of Christians. We invite them to express these feelings peacefully and constructively, by spreading awareness about educational or charitable projects carried out by Catholics in Africa, or by making a small donation to support them. We realize that such a donation is a symbolic gesture, but it would also have a concrete and positive effect.

Harambee 2006 is currently supporting four projects promoted by African Catholics, two of them by members of Opus Dei. There are also many other initiatives worthy of support by all, and it is not difficult to select one.

Raising awareness of African Catholics’ solidarity efforts is a way to keep public controversy about The Da Vinci Code from becoming sterile. It is a way of ensuring that the debate have positive results: concrete assistance to those in need, and a greater awareness of this essential aspect of the Catholic Church.

At the same time, we continue to believe in Sony Pictures’ capacity to be sensitive and constructive.

It is easy to see that it is not enough to offer the injured an opportunity to defend themselves, while the offense continues. Acting well means avoiding offense while it is still possible.

Three months remain until the film’s release. Therefore, we continue to hope that the final version of the film will not contain references that might hurt Catholics. A conciliatory gesture like this would be much appreciated, especially in these times when we are all lamenting the painful consequences of intolerance.

The photograph shows Mgsr. Fred Dolan, the Vicar of Opus Dei in Canada blessing an infant during a Mass celebrated at St. Patrick's Basilica in Ottawa last year.

This is getting ridiculous

Thanks to Kate McMillan at Small Dead Animals for this story:

CAIRO -- Thousands of people flocked to southern Egypt on Monday to seek blessing from a calf that they believe was born as God's reply to the publication in Europe of cartoons depicting the Prophet, police said.

Some 20,000 thousand people had gathered in front of Mohammed Abu Dif's house in the village of Tunis to see the holy mammal, whose skin folds when he was born reportedly formed the words "There is no God but Allah", a police official said on condition of anonymity.

57 Muslim governments trying to get UN to ban mocking of religion

This story came across on the Zenit News Agency from Rome.

Muslim Countries Seek U.N. Ban to Shield Religions
Defamation Seen as Inconsistent With Freedom of Expression

BEIRUT, Lebanon, FEB. 15, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Fifty-seven Muslim governments are pressing to include a ban on the mocking of religions in a planned new U.N. human rights body, AsiaNews reported.

The 57 governments previously had announced their intention to have the United Nations ban such mocking of religion, the news agency said.

According to the text of the Muslim countries' proposal, the new U.N. body should strive to "prevent instances of intolerance, discrimination, incitement of hatred and violence arising from any actions against religions, prophets and beliefs, which threaten the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms."

In a clear reference to the Mohammed cartoons controversy, the proposal states that "defamation of religions and prophets is inconsistent with the right to freedom of expression."

To achieve this goal, Egypt, for example, is trying to persuade the European Union to support the ban. After talks with EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana in Cairo, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Aboul Gheit said the proposal on banning defamation of religions was discussed.

Al-Azhar Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, Sunni Islam's highest religious authority, told Solana that the resolution should include sanctions.

Solana refused to say whether a resolution would be presented to the General Assembly. He did note, however, that a mechanism is under study that would reconcile the principles of a common declaration made by the European Union, the United Nations and the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
ZE06021522

Studies show downside of Quebec's daycare system

My story in the Western Catholic Reporter is here.

Publication of new Abu Ghraib photos displays hypocrisy

Well, folks, turns out I'm not the only one thinking this. Thanks to Dr. Sanity for the link.

Dr. Sanity writes:

The breathtaking hypocrisy of the MSM is on display for all to see. This hypocrisy is so unbelievable and completely over the top that I can scarcely understand how the editors and publishers of our major news outlets can possibly not feel deep shame at their betrayal -- on so many levels-- of the American public.

These bimbos of rationalization and enablers of evil are so despicable it is not even worth my time to comment further. I only hope that after the American public observes and assesses the media's behavior on this and other issues; that the result of that assessment will eventually bring the level of the media's financial state into equilibrium with the empty state of their souls.

Idiots! It's not a living organism, it is a legal document

United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has let his critics have it between the eyes.

Thanks to an article in LifeSiteNews.com, I found this Associated Press story by Jonathan Ewing who writes:

Scalia dismisses 'living Constitution'


PONCE, Puerto Rico -- People who believe the Constitution would break if it didn't change with society are "idiots," U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says.

In a speech Monday sponsored by the conservative Federalist Society, Scalia defended his long-held belief in sticking to the plain text of the Constitution "as it was originally written and intended."

"Scalia does have a philosophy, it's called originalism," he said. "That's what prevents him from doing the things he would like to do," he told more than 100 politicians and lawyers from this U.S. island territory.

According to his judicial philosophy, he said, there can be no room for personal, political or religious beliefs.

Scalia criticized those who believe in what he called the "living Constitution."

"That's the argument of flexibility and it goes something like this: The Constitution is over 200 years old and societies change. It has to change with society, like a living organism, or it will become brittle and break."

"But you would have to be an idiot to believe that," Scalia said. "The Constitution is not a living organism, it is a legal document. It says something and doesn't say other things."

You gotta love him.

Most of the legal establishment in Canada, probably including most of the Supreme Court of Canada justices, would support the living organism view of the Canadian constitution, only here it is referred to as a "living tree." Canada's former Justice Minister Irwin Cotler held that view.

And institutions that have survived the test of time, based on biological realities that it takes one man and one woman to produce a child, are also subject to that kind of flexibility so that nothing ever means what common sense would tell you it means. During the same-sex marriage debate, for example, marriage was described as an empty container into which a changing society could insert any meaning it chose. The justice department official told the court that while he didn't think Canada was ready for polygamy yet, society could evolve to the point where the container of marriage could include plural marriage.

Someone needs to invite Mr. Justice Scalia up to Ottawa.

The pros and cons of pluralism

I have several friends who work as teachers in the public school system. They are Christians who a decade or so ago had to keep their faith under wraps. Secularism was so rampant that even having a choir sing a Christmas carol during the "winter concert" was dangerous. And teachers did not dare run a Christian club for students on school property. That could have been a career-ending move.

Recently I was surprised to discover how much things have changed. One friend is running a Christian club at her school that attracts about 50 students. How come? Because Muslim students fought for the right to have prayer rooms on school property and won. The school officials then had to offer equal rights for other religious groups as well.

That is a good thing. So far. I think we have a lot to learn from devout Muslims who do not separate their faith from their daily lives, who live modestly and morally, and who have strong family values. Muslims like these are often allies with Christians and other believers who take their faiths seriously when it comes to fighting against laws that are hastening the moral decline of Canada. They stand with us in the trenches against child pornography for example or in defense of the institution of marriage.

The school system is not the only place where there seems to be a new openness to overt expressions of faith.

At the Faith and the Media conference last year in Ottawa, I was struck with surprise when a woman wearing a hijab went to the microphone and introduced herself as a producer for CBC Radio.

Having spent more than 15 years of my journalism career at Mother Corpse I wondered what would have happened to me if I had worn a big honking crucifix to work everyday. It would definitely have been a career-limiting move back then. It was only after having spent years establishing my track record that I dared become open about my faith. I still believe that the CBC is more committed to diversity of color and background more than it is committed to real diversity of opinion, especially if it comes from the Christian part of the spectrum. Though many of the people I worked with there are professional journalists who genuinely welcomed debate, I did go through periods working with people who exemplified the secular fundamentalist mindset and that was painful.

If the CBC has changed like the school system has changed, then that's great. But I'd like to see that Christians and observant Jews wearing yarmulkes are also welcomed into the newsroom.

So--to recap, I believe support for pluralism and a recognition of the rights for people with diverse opinions to occupy the public square is far superior to the fundamentalist secularism that forces all religious expression except for atheism and secular humanism into the closet.

But what happens when a satanist group starts to insist on their rights? Should a public school offer a room for people to read the satanic bible during their classroom breaks? Set aside a lab for the creation of Voodoo dolls? When does pluralism devolve into ridiculous relativism where no one can take a stand on anything because there is no concept of objective reality or transcendent truth?

Don't laugh. The Satanist thing came up in the British Navy a while back.

I fear Canada's heading in the same direction.

Which brings me to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's statement yesterday on the Mohammed cartoons:

"While we understand this issue is divisive, our government wishes that people be respectful of the beliefs of others."

I'm scratching my head here. Respectful of the beliefs of others. Are all beliefs worthy of respect? Or should be talk about respecting human beings who hold beliefs we disagree with. All human beings are worthy of respect, yes, because each one of us is made in the image of God. But some beliefs are patently false. Some are evil and must be fought with truth. And people taking a stand against them, even if it costs. While I believe that we can respectfully disagree and behave civilly and respectfuly towards persons with beliefs we consider false, that does not mean voicing our objections to lies or evil beliefs is hateful.

What is hateful is the demonization of those who hold opinions we revile. The ideas should forever remain fair game. Otherwise we will lose the ability to speak the truth and lies will prevail.

Separation of mosque and state?

As I was going through the press releases I receive as a member of the National Press Gallery, I came across the new foreign minister's statement on the Mohammed cartoons.

I know some bloggers have already picked up on this, but actually seeing in print the last paragraph Peter MacKay signed off on I am wondering where the sustained outcry is.

Though it is doubtful he actually said this himself and someone probably prepared this statement for him, the release has him saying:

"The government of Canada will continue to promote a better understanding of Islam internationally, in partnership with Muslim communities."

When did it become Canada's job to promote a better understanding of Islam or any one religion? Where is the journalist pack's outcry of "separation of mosque and state"?

Don't you think, Mr. MacKay, that the Canadian government might better serve its citizens by a staunch defence of Western Civilization, including freedom of speech and freedom of religion and why these rights are important? Just tossing off a line that "freedom of expresssion is a legally enshrined principle in Canada" is not enough of a defence.

What if he had said, "The government of Canada will continue to promote a better understanding of Christianity internationally, in partnership with the Pope and prominent Evangelical leaders such as Billy Graham." ????? The howls would have deafened us.

In other words, we're talking about a huge double standard folks.

Unfortunately, if Canada is to be able to defend western principles that allow for pluralism and freedom of religion, it had better brush up on its apologetics, because without the Judeo-Christian basis for an understanding of human rights, these freedoms we enjoy are rapidly on the way out.

Be sure to check these out

This letter from an Iraqi mayor. (Thanks to Kate McMillan at Small Dead Animals)

This post from Victor Davis Hansen and this essay by Theodore Dalyrymple. (Thanks to Dr. Sanity, who is always worth a visit.)

And this article from the LA Times.

And this great post on tolerance by J. Mark Bertrand.

St. Valentine--a martyr for the faith

Today we commemorate the martyrdom of St. Valentine.

Just as Christmas has been co-opted by Santa Claus, a corpulent elf created by advertisers, and Easter by the Easter Bunny, so has St. Valentine been co-opted by Cupid. Which is not to say I wouldn't like to receive some flowers tonight!

But I finally did sit down to do my prayers and here the collects from today from the Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty God, by whose grace and power thy Martyr St. Valentine was enabled to witness to the truth and to be faithful unto death: Grant that we, who now remember him before thee, may likewise to bear witness unto thee in this world, that we may receive with him the crown of glory that fadeth not away; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever.

and

O God, who didst bestow upon thy Saints such marvelous virtue, that they were able to stand fast, and have the victory against the world, the flesh, and the devil: Grant that we, who now commemorate thy Martyr St. Valentine, may ever rejoice in their fellowship, and also be enabled by thy grace to fight the good fight of faith and lay hold upon eternal life; through our Lord Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.


May you find St. Valentine's example edifying and may you find the love that casts out fear in Jesus Christ.

Meanwhile, this is what's happening elsewhere in the world as protests have broken out against St. Valentine's Day.

Ambivalent Christians in the art world

We have similar discussions about Christian literature over at The Master's Artist and Faith in Fiction.

Daniel Seidell writes in this review in Books and Culture magazine of two new books on art:

And yet, I have some concerns. There is a general tendency in these books to locate a Christian essence in style (e.g., figuration, as manifest in ABB) or subject matter (e.g., biblical themes, as in NG) that puts considerable limits on how and in what ways one understands contemporary art and the Christian faith. Valorizing a distinctive style or subject matter makes critical interpretation much easier in the short run, but risks giving short shrift to art that is not so easily defined. Closely related to this is the propensity for the artist's faith to overtake aesthetic and critical criteria by which her art is evaluated. Consequently, art is often understood as a visual illustration of a personal faith shaped and formed outside the studio.

There is also a to demonize unnecessarily the history of modern art and the contemporary art world against which the writer then posits an idealized Christian artistic past and present. In troubling ways, this Christian perspective requires a certain kind of art world against which to react. In addition to giving it more power than it actually possesses, this approach tends to flatten out the contemporary art world, turning it into a single, monolithic "thing" that is "out there" while at the same time discouraging artists and critics from self-critically assessing how and in what ways "Christian art" is itself a part of this art world.

This upsets me

How many times must I learn the lesson not to read the newspaper first thing in the morning, but instead to do the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer with its selected Bible readings?

What upset me while having my morning tea was this story and the that fact that Canada's largest bookstore chain, Indigo-Chapters, is refusing to carry the Western Standard for republishing the Mohammed cartoons.

Carly Weeks and Mike Blanchfield write:

The decision by an Alberta magazine to publish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad has stoked fears of attacks on Canadian troops and embassies abroad, caused a major Muslim group to consider asking police to lay hate-crime charges and led the country's largest bookstore chain and airline to withdraw the publication.

Amazon.ca just won my considerable online business away afrom Chapters.ca.

Of course Indigo has the right to make this business decision. So does Air Canada. It is not the same thing as a federal or provincial government clamping down on the magazine under hate crimes legislation as at least one Muslim organization is planning to do. (Thanks to Kathy Shaidle over at Relapsed Catholic for the link.)

As I've said earlier, I can understand why Muslims would consider the cartoons offensive. If the Western Standard were running the cartoons as editorial comment I would be joining them in the protests. But the magazine is running the cartoons to show people what is at the heart of a controversial news story that has dominated the world for almost two weeks. I know Ezra Levant. If anti-Semitic cartoons were sparking a similar controvery, he would be the first to print them and he is an observant Jew. An Egyptian newspaper reprinted the cartoons last October during Ramadan for the same reason. The riots are not against the Danish cartoons, but fomented by radical Islamists using faked cartoons as a deliberate attempt at information warfare and psychological intimidation.

Ezra Levant writes on the Shotgun blog:

Anything that could cause subscriptions to be cancelled or advertisers to be scared off is dangerous to the bottom line. And then there is the risk of violence. What publisher needs that? That's fair. Freedom of the press can mean the right to ignore a story, too.

But I believe Canadian publishers and TV producers have not been fully candid about the choice they've all made. Not a single publisher, editor or reporter has admitted they have blocked the cartoons for fear of an economic backlash. Perhaps none of them thought about lost business when they made their decision. But if any did, they probably wouldn't admit it -- that would make them seem like callow, profit-driven commercial journalists, and that's contrary to the careful image the media has cultivated as being somehow more noble or idealistic than other industries.

And none of them have admitted what we all know is true, at least a little bit: That these riots are scary.

They're scarier than any letter-writing campaign or boycott or protest rally that has occurred in recent memory.

Journalists and other artists have been killed by Muslim radicals. Several of the Danish cartoonists are in hiding, for fear of assassination. This is really happening.

In fact, the official excuse has been that TV producers, publishers and editors don't want to offend religious sensibilities. But this isn't credible. Not a day goes by when the mainstream media doesn't offend the religious sensibilities of religious Christians, Jews or others. The media doesn't care about religious sensibilities -- it is militantly secular. But it has made an exception for the sensibilities of one religion that is quick to riot and behead its critics.

The most laughable excuse -- especially from the liberal, secular media like the CBC or CNN -- is that they "respect" Islam too much. Really? They respect a religion opposed to feminism, gay rights and abortion?

The liberal media doesn't respect radical Islam. It is afraid of radical Islam.

I'm afraid, too. A little bit at least. But courage isn't the absence of fear. It's not letting fear trump everything else -- like character or duty or our own beliefs.

I, too, believe fear is at the base of the decisions not to broadcast and not to print.

And I agree the mainstream media is militantly secular. I used to work at the CBC. I know.

Freedom of speech means having to tolerate speech and art and other expressions that offend us. It means vigorous debate. And the CBC will be first out of the gate to defend the rights of artists to depict pedophilia. It will be the first to cry "separation of church and state" but, alas, not seemingly on the separation of mosque and state.

The CBC is extremely quick to disrespect the Christian faith.

So is Indigo-Chapters.

Any time I walk into a Chapters there is prominently displayed "literature" that offends me as a Christian. Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code is a prime example.

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article on the book in which one of Canada's foremost scholars on the Dead Sea Scrolls described the runaway bestseller as "hate literature" against the Christian faith. The book libels Opus Dei, the Catholic Church, and the Christian faith through presenting false "facts" posing as history.

That is only one of probably hundreds of books I could find in the big box store that offend me and overtly blaspheme my faith. Even its "Christian" section is full of attacks on my faith.

Any move towards anti-blasphemy laws or tightening of hate laws to prevent religious groups from being offended will only serve to prevent any criticism of the Muslim faith, while still allowing open season on Christianity. If such a law is passed, and you bet your booties it is coming, I will try to use it to ban every offensive bit against Christianity too as a political point until the law is repealed. That means if a book uses dialog that says the Lord's Name in vain, then it is toast.

Another double standard upsets me. There seems to be a tiptoeing around publishing or broadcasting pictures of the cartoons for fear of triggering more violence in the Muslim world, but no compunction about showing the video of British soldiers beating some Iraqi teenagers as shown on the National last night, or last year's showing ad nauseum the photos showing abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib. Those pictures also triggered violence in the Middle East. Yet in those instances, journalists defend their "obligation" to print those pictures.

It is probably because they do not fear a midnight knock on the door and beheading from the U.S. government as much as they like to complain the NSA might be reading their email. And I've wondered why there were never pictures showing Saddam Hussein's henchmen feeding dissidents into the shredder or anything approaching equivalence to show how much worse the torture was under his regime. No, the self-hating representatives of western civilization think there is moral equivalence and that George W. Bush is the worst terrorist on the planet.

It seems the standard operating is that news organizations will run with the stories and damn the consequences if they hurt the United States or the war effort, even if they have to run with a false story about Koran abuse, (which also sparked riots abroad) as Newsweek did.

And I'm also dismayed by our new government's lack of a robust defence of what I used to believe were Canadian values of freedom of speech. Yes, that freedom should be exercised responsibly and people have a right to censure, boycott, write petitions, demonstrate peacefully to register their objections to speech they don't like.

But please, let us leave the government out of it. Let's have the hate laws pertain only to the actual incitement to violence and hatred--such as some of those signs saying infidels should be beheaded for printing the cartoons.

On the Western Standard

The Western Standard, the only major circulation print publication to print the Mohammed cartoons in Canada, rolled 40,000 controversial issues off the presses today.

And at least one blogger has noticed their website is down. Has it been hacked? Thanks to Kathy Shaidle at Relapsed Catholic for the link.

I had posted earlier a story about how Danish websites were under cyberattack. Alas, the link no longer seems to work.

I'm getting tired of the cartoon controversy but. . .

I received an email from someone pointing me to this by John O'Sullivan at the National Review online:

Suppose both sides listen to these calls for restraint. What would happen? I suppose that one side would stop burning embassies and murdering people and the other side would no longer publish cartoons to which the murderers might object. That would mean the murderers had obtained their objective and the Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons had been defeated in its campaign against the unofficial Islamist censorship that in recent years has spread across Europe by murder and intimidation.

and on my way there I found this by Victor Davis Hanson at the same site:

There are three final considerations. First, millions of brave reformers in the Muslim world are trying each day to create a tolerant culture and a consensual society. What those in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Egypt want from us is not appeasement that emboldens the radicals in their midst, but patient, careful, and firm explanations that freedom is precious and worth the struggle — even though its use can sometimes bother us. Surely the lesson from Eastern Europe applies: the oppressed there did not appreciate the realpolitik and appeasement of many in the West, but most often preferred a stalwart Reagan to an equivocating Carter.

Second, we, not the Islamists, are secure; our dependency on oil has masked a greater reality: that the Muslim Middle East, as in the days of the Ottomans, is parasitic on the West for advancements of all sorts, from heart surgery to computers. Most of the hatred expressed over the cartoons was beamed on television, through the Internet, or communicated over cell phones that would not exist in Pakistan, Syria, or Iran without imported technology.

The Islamists are also sad bullies, who hunt out causes for offense in the most obscure places, but would recoil at the first sign of Western defiance. Turkey may say little to the Islamists now, but they would say lots if the European Union decided to pass on its inclusion into the union. Local imams sound fiery, but if the West is too debauched a place for any pure Muslim to endure, why then do they not lead, Moses-like, an exodus of the devout away from the rising flood of decadence, and back to the paradise of a purer Syria or Algeria?

Third, the bogus notion of multiculturalism has blinded us to a simple truth: we in the West can live according to our own values and should not allow those radicals who embrace or condone polygamy, gender apartheid, religious intolerance, political autocracy, homosexual persecution, honor killings, female circumcision, and a host of other unmentionables to threaten our citizens within our own countries.

Cornwall Inquiry begins tomorrow

The Cornwall Inquiry into a so-called pedophile ring in the community along the St. Lawrence River begins hearing 100 days of testimony tomorrow.

The Ottawa Citizen ran a major backgrounder on the inquiry on Saturday.

Bob Rupert writes:

On Monday, when commissioner Justice Normand Glaude brings the opening session of the judicial inquiry to order, he will initially be trying to find out if, as alleged in written documents filed with the inquiry, many people representing prestigious public institutions and organizations with a major responsibility for community safety and wellness, put their own image and the community's image ahead of the interests of dozens of youngsters who said they had suffered sexual abuse at the hands of priests, teachers, probation officers, a coroner, two lawyers and others.

The Cornwall Inquiry will be webcast live from their site when the hearings are in session.

The Citizen ran a piece today about the plight of men who have suffered sexual abuse and what's being done to help them find healing.

Here's the Sun chain's coverage of the inquiry opening.

Canadian Muslims demonstrate peacefully against cartoons

Hundreds of Canadian Muslims took to the streets to protest against the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. They did so peacefully in Toronto and Montreal. According to pictures in the Ottawa Citizen this morning, they carried none of the signs from other demontrations around the globe that have done far more to damage the image of Islam than the original cartoons could ever have done.

I can understand the hurt and consternation Muslims feel when the actions of some fanatical and extreme co-religionists give rise to cartoons and commentary that paint them all with the same brush as terrorists. That is why the cartoon showing Mohammed with the bomb-shaped turban is especially hurtful from the Muslim point of view.

I understand because I thoroughly object to the way Christians are painted as theocrats and dangerous because some nutbar decides to take justice into his own hands and kill an abortion doctor. I am constantly aware of how Christians are painted in a negative light, or smeared and vilified for the actions of a tiny minority. I don't even like being lumped in with a crass televangelist merely because we are both Christians.

I also hate it when the holocaust is blamed on Christians. Hitler's Third Reich was not Christian at all, but anti-Christian. If it had any spiritual basis it was the occult.

So in a sense I can stand in solidarity with peaceful protests by Muslims against the cartoons because I understand how smearing an entire religious faith based on the actions of some is hurtful and damaging.

That said, however, I do think there is a difference between running a cartoon as a form of editorial comment, and running pictures of the offending cartoons to show what the fuss is all about. Last year I wrote a story about an offensive cartoon of the Pope on Rabble.ca and took a photograph of it. I can't recall if any of the newspapers I write for ran the photo. The cartoon was nasty and outrageous. The motive of printing the photo of the cartoon was to reveal what this website was doing, especially since there had been some evidence that some government funding may have gone into the organization behind it.

An Egyptian newspaper reprinted the cartoons last October. And interestingly, there were no riots or threats reported back then as far as I know. That's why I agree with the analysis that the rage and violence we've seen in reaction to the cartoons is not against the original Danish cartoons at all, but against fabricated cartoons. It is a form of information warfare and intimidation and unfortunately, because of the way the mainstream media is *not* covering this, the Danish cartoons and the violence are getting conflated when they should not be.

As a side note, the Ottawa Citizen reported that a local mosque opened to the public as a way to promote understanding of why the cartoons are hurtful.

Joel Kom writes:

The 40-minute talk given by the mosque's imam Gamal Solaiman traced Muhammad's roots from his birth in Mecca, now the holiest city in Islam, to his time as a revered prophet. Mr. Solaiman told stories about Muhammad's loyalty to women, his respect for other religions and his role as an example to Muslims.

He also talked about how Muslims believe no likeness of any prophet who preceded Muhammad, including that of Jesus, should be drawn.

Naj Durrani, a Muslim student who attended the talk, said cartoonists can find other ways and symbols besides Muhammad to make a point about Islam. The fact the Danish newspaper decided to run 12 cartoons together, instead of just one, made the act seem more like an intentional attack, he said.

Much of the reasons given by MSM editors for not publishing the cartoons was in recognition of the sensitivity to Muslims have to any portrayal of the Prophet.

Yet, according to the Citizen article, even likenesses of Jesus are forbidden. Should we tear down any public depictions of Jesus on the Cross, all icons, all religious representational art so as not to offend one religious group? Christians have had their own iconoclasts over the centuries, who have gone out to destroy portrayals of Jesus. Some churches to this day have no religious art or symbols in them at all. Maybe an empty cross and that's it.

Should western newspapers in secular societies be showing restraint so as not to blaspheme under Muslim religious laws? Or should they be showing restraint so has not to villify a vulnerable minority or unfairly defame a whole religion? Should they show restraint because they fear the consequences to their overseas reporters and bureaus? All of the above? None of the above?

For me, the most important consideration is number two, though I can also understand the concern about violent repercussions. However, to blame a free press for violent repercussions is like blaming a woman's short skirt for her subsequent gang rape. As for the blasphemy laws---they may apply to Muslims, but they should not apply to me. The blasphemy laws governing my faith are the ones that apply to me, as well as the law of love that tells me to go even further than doing unto others what I would have them do unto me but to love them as I love myself.

The "torture season" on Keifer Sutherland's 24

We've been watching a season of Keifer Sutherland's "24" in which he plays counterterrorism expert Jack Bauer.

In this season, which hour by hour recounts an extremely high stakes 24-hour-period in the life of the Counterterrorism Unit (CTU) in Los Angeles, at least once an hour a character is tortured, often at the hands of the series hero, Jack.

While the series can be gripping, albeit over the top, and Jack is painted clearly as a good guy who often breaks the law, tortures, or does any number of morally wrong or dubious things to get good results, I find it troubling how it could have the effect of softening Americans' traditional opposition to torture.

The stakes are always high and one of the recurring lines in the series is "you have no choice." No matter what your politics, it is easy to sympathize with Jack and to root for him, even when he is doing awful things. And most of the time his awful or illegal deeds end up saving millions of lives, so the end justifies the means.

I just did a Google search to find out if anyone else was troubled by the series and came across this:

This bad place idea affects the entire season, in that characters who think they're doing right (or at least managing their own self-defense) tend not to be, because they're starting wrong. Audrey's younger brother Richard (Logan Marshall-Green), long hair hanging in his face and gargantuan rebellious chip on his shoulder, makes repeated mistakes and conjures retarded lies, inciting -- you guessed it -- torture at the hands of CTU agents (his pain compounded by his father's condoning of the decision after the fact). Jack's tactics give Audrey pause; as he's headed in to question Richard, she warns her brother, "I saw him torture someone today. It's what he's trained to do. He won't stop hurting you until you tell him the truth."

Or not. The truth throughout the season is compromised and undermined by torture. Richard's collapse under various "interrogation" techniques (his dad's berating is awful in its own way) makes him an emblematic torture victim -- feeling that his own truth is too terrible to tell, frightened to trust anyone and appalled that his weakness has been exploited to get to his father (or, as Heller sees himself, an extension of the U.S. government).

Christianity Today Magazine has an excellent article entitled Why Torture is Always Wrong that unfortunately is not available online at present.

In it Tony Carnes explores some of the genuine dilemmas faced by Christians in the intelligence services and the military concerning interrogation techniques. It does not gloss over the real stakes of not getting timely information..

Carnes quotes one expert, author Chris Mackey, a pseudonym for an American interrogator who co-wrote The Interrogators: Inside the Secret War Against Al Qaeda.

Carnes writes:

Mackey says he discovered that successful interrogations resulted in changes in worldview, somewhat like a religious conversion.

Mackey observes, "One of our biggest successess in Afgahnistan came when a valuable prisoner decided to cooperate....precisely because he realized he would not be tortured. He had heard so many horror stories. WHen he was treated decently, his worldview snapped. Suddenly, we had an ally."

Carnes also points out that torture does not necessarily provide reliable information, as victims will say anything to stop the pain.

I'd recommend your going out to buy this article. It's worth the read.

In the meantime, I do not want the United States to lose its commitment to human rights and to become morally equivalent to countries that routinely employ barbaric practises such as torture. And I don't like the way 24 sort of assumes the U.S. is already morally equivalent and glorifies the doctrine of the end justifying the means.

J. Mark Bertrand responds to law school discussion post

J. Mark Bertrand, who is one of my fellow Master's Artists, has responded to my post below linking to Notes of a Thirsty Scribe's rendition of a Canadian law school discussion on the Mohammed cartoons and freedom of expression.

Mark writes:

It's difficult sometimes for people who have bought into the newspeak to realize just how Orwellian they make the world for the rest of us. There's no room for debate. Either you swallow the network of underlying assumptions without inquiry, or you're shouted down or shunned. This isn't the behavior of people who have confidence that their account of reality is true.

CERC publishes excerpt of book on Pope Benedict

The Catholic Educator's Resource Centre (CERC), a great source of essays and articles for thoughtful Christians, has published an excerpt of George Weigel's book "The Making of a New Benedict."

Weigel writes:

Yet the more one reads Ratzinger’s recollections of his early life, the more it becomes clear that, for the young Bavarian, the Catholic Church quickly became “home” in a special, even unique, way. In his conversations with the German journalist Peter Seewald, Cardinal Ratzinger spoke about his childhood excitement at receiving his first children’s missal (a book containing the prayers of the Mass, in this case, in simplified form), and then “progressing to a more complete missal, [then] to the complete version. That was a kind of voyage of discovery.” At the same time, he was discovering the wonder of polyphony and other forms of Church music, the beauty of religious art, and the intellectual satisfaction to be had from understanding what all these things meant. Ratzinger never disdained the simple habits of piety he learned as a boy, although his spiritual life obviously deepened over time; yet some of those early habits would remain with him his entire life. Thus, every March 19, on the Solemnity of St. Joseph, the feast of his patron saint, Cardinal Ratzinger would invite other Josephs to celebrate Mass with him or to join him for a day trip and lunch out-side Rome. The earthiness of Bavarian piety — the intertwining of the transcendent and the human — was deep in him. From childhood on, Joseph Ratzinger experienced the Catholic Church as something wonderful, a divinely touched human community to be explored in all its richness, diversity, and complexity.

That picture warms my heart. Oh that all of our experience of the Holy Catholic Church would be so joyous and grace-filled. The whole world is blessed with Pope Benedict XVI at the helm of the Church.

CERC has a mailing list which pops into your mailbox very couple of weeks with wonderful links to great articles. Visit the site and sign up.

Gagdad Bob asks if sick cultures produce sick people

Find the post here at One Cosmos, which looks like it will now be a regular stop for me, thanks to Dr. Sanity.

I warn you, the blogosphere is addictive.

I read my thick Saturday newspaper and found very little in it that made a great read.

The blending of male and female, adult and child

Here's another post you might find interesting about some of the deleterious effects of the feminist movement in trying to blur the differences between men and women. It also discusses the dangerous implications of blurring the distinctions between adult and child.

Gagdad Bob writes in One Cosmos:

For example, the feminist movement of the 1960’s and 70’s had very little to do with honoring femininity, but generally degraded and devalued it. It largely became a vehicle for the expression of female envy, giving angry and maladjusted women license to imitate the men they envied. After all, few women are less feminine than the typical NOW activist. Nor are they masculine, however. A woman cannot actually become a man, but can only become a monstrous blending of male and female.

Importantly, this is not to suggest that a woman cannot develop her masculine side or a man his feminine side. What we are talking about is a complete nullification of sexual polarity, a kind of magical, self-imposed blindness, so that these critical differences are blended.

The other main psychological mutation that occurred beginning with the 1960’s was the eradication of the differences between adult and child. Up until then, there was a clear difference between the spheres of adult and child, and everyone knew it. When I was growing up in the 60’s, I had my interests and my parents had theirs', and there was relatively little intersection between the two--for example, baseball with my father. But we dressed differently, listened to different kinds of music, enjoyed different activities, read different literature, liked different movies, etc. I knew that I wasn't an adult or a man but that some day I would have to become one--someone like my father, who worked hard, didn't whine, had honor and a sense of duty, and had feelings but didn't necessarily give them much weight.

But that has all changed now. Here again it is critical to point out that there is nothing at all wrong with an adult maintaining contact with the child part of himself. In fact, doing so is vital for creativity, spontaneity and play. However, as in the blending of male and female, the problem arises when the differences between adult and child are obliterated, which creates a hybrid monster that is neither adult nor child but both at the same time. This affects both adults and children, for our society has become a plague of adult children and childish adults--that is, prematurely sexualized children who are burdened with all kinds of inappropriate concerns, and childish adults who psychologically do not grow beyond the age of 21 or so, and never enter the realm of the truly adult.

Thanks again to Dr. Sanity for the link.

I have been musing a lot about feminism and how there needs to be some kind of revival or renewal or co-option of the movement from the types that either want to erase all sexual distinctions---i.e. say that "gender" (gag, I hate that word as a substitute for sex)-- is only a social construct and those who think womynhood is some kind of superior species. Often there is an illogical, emotional, childish blending of the two in the confused rantings of modern so-called feminists.

However, I remember what it was like in the days that a woman could not get credit without a man's signature on the application. Or when employers assumed women were going to get pregnant so they kept them out of career tracks. I think it is a good thing that people are not allowed to sexually harrass their underlings. The original feminist movement accomplished some good things.

But now--I look around and see growing misogyny in pop culture, especially rap music. I see this strange lockstep between leftist feminists and radical Islamists and no one seems to be raising a peep about abuses against women in countries around the world.

Could we not have a movement that recognizes that yes, men and women are different, that both men and women need to develop their masculine and feminine sides, that does not denigrate motherhood, fatherhood, the family nor does it put limits on what a woman might choose to do with her life careerwise? Can we not have a feminist movement that is family-friendly so that men as well as women can find a good balance between their work and family lives? Can we not have a feminist movement that loves children? That doesn't look upon them as parasites to be vacuumed from the womb? A feminist movement that loves and supports men?

It alarms me how much women have been "ripped off" by the feminist movement of yore. The sexual freedom it promised has led to loneliness, despair, a loss of self-respect and broken or unattainable relationships for so many.

The Independent Women's Forum in the United States has some good ideas.

How the media and popular culture shapes behavior

Here's an interesting and thoughtprovoking post by ShrinkWrapped, another blog by a mental health professional, on the role of movies and popular culture has in shaping behavior--with devastating consequences.

ShrinkWrapped writes:

What gets lost in the type of pan-sexuality celebrated by Hollywood, trickling down to these children, is that sex, and the holy orgasm, are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. Without a meaningful relationship, sex ends up feeling empty and lonely, a quintessentially narcissistic experience; each partner (or partners) are involved in their own, estranged, masturbatory fantasy rather than approaching each other in intimacy and joining together in a loving relationship.

I recall a young women several years ago, early in her treatment, proud of all her sexual conquests; no one could withstand her powers of seduction. One day I asked if she ever felt loved and she dissolved into tears. She could have sex with anyone she wanted but she could never feel loved. That was the day her treatment truly started.

The unfortunate young people in the article will be well versed in the mechanics of sex, heterosexual, bi-sexual, and homosexual and many more permutations; they will yearn for the connection they so clearly want and it will remain just out of their reach. They know how to use each other as sexual objects for momentary pleasure, but relating to each other as fully fledged people is a much more problematic endeavor.

Hollywood has done its part to help "normalize" pan-sexuality and will celebrate their open-minded tolerance in March (one of the nominees for best Actress is for a film about a transsexual); whether you believe this was wise or not, it is hard to argue that such re-definition of what at one time was considered deviant behavior comes at a high price. There is also a vast difference between teaching our children tolerance and teaching that "anything and everything goes" and all sexual behavior is equivalent and represent mere "life style choices."

[I might add that the moral relativism of films like "Munich" and the PC inherent in "Syriana" are reflections of the same mind set that refuses to make distinctions between healthy sexuality that furthers intimacy and unhealthy sexuality that damages.]

Read it all.

Thanks to Dr. Sanity for the link.

Canadian Jewish Congress statement on the cartoons

The Canadian Jewish Congress says: "The decision by all those who chose to publish the cartoons is inexcusably provocative, insensitive and disrespectful of Muslim believers."

However, the CJC adds:

“We join those Muslims and non-Muslims who have been appalled by the response to the publication of the cartoons and condemn radical Islamic groups and regimes that have deliberately fanned the flames for their own nefarious political ends. We especially stand in solidarity with the Danish people whose institutions are being attacked and whose products are being boycotted. We remember with gratitude the exceptional role Denmark played in rescuing its Jewish citizens from the Holocaust.

“Freedom of expression and the protection of vulnerable minorities from group vilification are fundamental values of a secular, pluralistic democracy. These two values must be delicately balanced against one another. We hope that that calm re-establishes itself so that this issue can be discussed in an atmosphere of mutual respect without intimidation.”

This is a good statement in many ways.

One of the things we do have to consider is that what appears like dhimmitude is actually restraint in order to protect vulnerable minorities. I think that is the case with George W. Bush and the tack he took after 9-11.

Restraint may look like weakness or submission or even appeasement.

I hope what we are seeing in our news media is restraint and not fear.

Catholic priest threatened in Turkey

Read about it here.

A new vocabulary word to learn

Dhimmitude.

Overseas thugs threatening press freedom in Atlanta

This is another horrifying story about overseas thugs threatening press freedom on this continent. Only, it would seem, the perpetrators are agents of the Chinese government.

Thanks to Small Dead Animals for the link.

More on the Muhammed cartoons -- blackmail?

I'd like to move on past the cartoon fallout, but unfortunately, new developments keep on happening.

Take a look at this post over at AndrewSullivan.com and the fact that the leader of Hezbollah has said the violence won't stop until Europe passes a law that prohibits insulting the prophet.

He writes:

People keep talking about avoiding conflict. They are in denial. The conflict is already here. It is outrageous to be informed by a crowd of hundreds of thousands that the West must give up its freedoms in order to avoid violence. I'm relieved to see that this moment has forced some very hard thinking on the left.

Sad rendition of "debate" in a law school class

This is what passes for debate in a Canadian law school. Unfortunately, it has the awful ring of truth, having witnessed similar sorts of "debates" in other contexts.

Thanks to Kathy Shaidle for the link.

From Kathy's site this morning I surfed over to Babble,
where some of the law students depicted above probably hang out.

It was interesting to see how most of the comments attack Christians and equate Christian protests against offensive anti-Christian material with the threats of death and violence, embassy burnings and other acts of organized extremists in the Muslim world.

The self-hatred of most of these commentators is almost palpable---they hate their Judeo-Christian heritage. They hate the very foundations of Canada. They quiver in fear but they are too dishonest to admit it. They take their fear, displace it as anger onto Christians because they can poke their finger in our eyes without fear. All we're likely to do is write emails, or picket or sign a petition. Maybe one of us will be a loudmouth in the crowd, and of course the cameras will be on him or her and all of Christendom will be painted as modern day Torquemadas.

But it's so odd, this alliance between the left and extremist Islam. Maybe they can live with being sensitive to Islam by not portraying the prophet, because taking the Lord Jesus Christ's name in vain is their blasphemy of choice. But would they like to exchange their hip hugging short skirts and belly rings for a burka? Give up the right to purchase alcohol?


Another thing--there is quite a difference in a newspaper printing a cartoon on its editorial page as the pictorial equivalent of an editorial and reprinting cartoons that have created a huge reaction around the world to show people what the fuss is all about. Sorry, this really is a case where telling about the cartoons only leaves the imagination open to much worse depictions than these actually were. And it's not even about the actual Danish cartoons!!!!! Mobs are reacting to faked cartoons, orchestrated by information warfare experts supported by Iran and Syria.

As Dr. Sanity so aply describes, good portions of the pampered, spoiled west is suffering from Stockholm syndrome and identifying with what they fear.

Dr. Sanity writes:

don't know about you, but I am afraid of terrorism and what the Islamic jihadists want to do to the world. In fact, I think it is extremely reasonable to be afraid. We are not dealing with people with whom you can sit down and negotiate a reasonable settlement of disagreements.

Bin Laden, Zawahiri, Zarqawi et al want to either forcibly convert us, enslave us , or kill us. They have repeated these objectives clearly many times. I happen to find none of their options particularly attractive. Nor do I find the "moderate" course in dealing with such fundamental irrationality particularly helpful as an overall strategy (although supporting moderate voices within Islam may be a useful tactic in appropriate circumstances). The moderates of the left and right mean well when they argue for moderation and tolerance; but in reality, they are enabling the first two of the Islamists' objective's as a compromise and because they do not want open conflict. Eventually, however, the moderates will have to give into the third one, too--unless they are finally willing to make a stand.

What, then, is the best way to cope with the reasonable fear that a reasonable person should be experiencing about this unreasonable brand of Islam that is sweeping the world? It doesn't take a psychiatrist note that radical Islam is pushing any moderates into impotent bystanders on the sidelines--much in the same way I imagine the rise of National Socialism in Germany did to some of the more moderate Germans in the 30's.

One thing I know. DENIAL of the threat won't work, except to give our enemies time and space to do what they are intent on doing. DISPLACEMENT won't work, except to facilitate denial and tie the hands of those who are doing their best to deal with the threat. PARANOIA (and its little brother PROJECTION) only work against those who really are out to get you. It is not a helpful survival strategy if you give into your suspicions and turn your gun on the colleague standing next to you when the raging bull is bearing down on the two of you.

Retired Vatican official could face additional charges

Here's the story I wrote on the Canadian priest believed to be the first Vatican official to face a charge of sexual assault, published in the Western Catholic Reporter.

This is a sad story whether the charges turn out to be true or not. We must hold to the presumption of innocence, while at the same time respecting the possibility the victim's complaint is genuine. This charge dates back a long time, 35 years, but there is no statute of limitations in cases like this.

Dr. Balfour Mount and Jean Vanier on healing through brokenness

Dr. Balfour Mount, founder of Canada's hospice movement and Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche, met in Ottawa recently to talk about healing through brokenness, through an awareness of one's own vulnerability. Here's the story I wrote on the event, published in the Western Catholic Reporter.

Great analysis of strategy behind the cartoon rage

Amir Taheri of the National Post says there is nothing spontaneous about the cartoon rage.

After giving an excellent chronology of the events, he writes:

The Danish cow has also been milked in another way. Tehran and Damascus have launched a diplomatic campaign to put the issue of "protecting religions against blasphemy" on the agenda of the Security Council. The two nations want a UN-backed treaty that would make any criticism of their twisted version of Islam "an international crime."

People watching television news might think that the whole Muslim world is ablaze with righteous rage and "spontaneous" demonstrations. The truth is that the overwhelming majority of Muslims, even if offended by the cartoons, have stayed away from the street. Most of the demonstrations are shows put on by radicals supported by the Iranian and Syrian security services.

The destruction of Danish and Norwegian embassies and consulates happened in only two nations: Syria and Lebanon. In Damascus, even the Syrian secret police could not manage to attract more than 1,000 rent-a-mob militants. (The Syrian government refused a request by the Norwegian Embassy to provide additional police protection: It was clear the Syrians wanted the embassies sacked.) Similarly, the mob that committed the atrocities in Beirut was bussed in from Syria.

The fight between Denmark and its detractors is not between the West and Islam. It is between democracy and a global fascist movement masquerading as religion.

I don't like to see my religion mocked, and I can understand why those of other faiths would not like to see theirs mocked. However, I would rather tolerate being mocked than run the risk that no one is allowed to say anything publicly that might offend someone.

That might be easier for a Christian though, given the nature of our faith.

John Piper has a good essay that points out the differences between Christianity and Islam on insults to the faith.

He writes:

If Christ had not been insulted, there would be no salvation. This was his saving work: to be insulted and die to rescue sinners from the wrath of God. Already in the Psalms the path of mockery was promised: “All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads” (Psalm 22:7). “He was despised and rejected by men . . . as one from whom men hide their faces . . . and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3).

When it actually happened it was worse than expected. “They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head. . . . And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ And they spit on him” (Matthew 27:28-30). His response to all this was patient endurance. This was the work he came to do. “Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7).

This was not true of Muhammad. And Muslims do not believe it is true of Jesus. Most Muslims have been taught that Jesus was not crucified. One Sunni Muslim writes, “Muslims believe that Allah saved the Messiah from the ignominy of crucifixion.”1 Another adds, “We honor [Jesus] more than you [Christians] do. . . . We refuse to believe that God would permit him to suffer death on the cross.”2 An essential Muslim impulse is to avoid the “ignominy” of the cross.

That’s the most basic difference between Christ and Muhammad and between a Muslim and a follower of Christ. For Christ, enduring the mockery of the cross was the essence of his mission. And for a true follower of Christ enduring suffering patiently for the glory of Christ is the essence of obedience. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matthew 5:11). During his life on earth Jesus was called a bastard (John 8:41), a drunkard (Matthew 11:19), a blasphemer (Matthew 26:65), a devil (Matthew 10:25); and he promised his followers the same: “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household” (Matthew 10:25).

The caricature and mockery of Christ has continued to this day. Martin Scorsese portrayed Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ as wracked with doubt and beset with sexual lust. Andres Serrano was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts to portray Jesus on a cross sunk in a bottle of urine. The Da Vinci Code portrays Jesus as a mere mortal who married and fathered children.

How should his followers respond? On the one hand, we are grieved and angered. On the other hand, we identify with Christ, and embrace his suffering, and rejoice in our afflictions, and say with the apostle Paul that vengeance belongs to the Lord, let us love our enemies and win them with the gospel. If Christ did his work by being insulted, we must do ours likewise.

A tall order. But if we're serious about our faith, we don't have an option.

Ibn Warraq on the cartoons and freedom of speech

Great commentary from Ibn Warraq in Speigel Online.

He writes:

This raises another more general problem: the inability of the West to defend itself intellectually and culturally.

The whole thing is worth the read.

Interesting story about Michael Chong

The Toronto Star has an interesting story about the two tragedies that have shaped the life of Michael Chong, 34, the youngest member of the new Conservative cabinet. He has taken on intergovernmental affairs and sport.

Fr. Neuhaus weighs in on the cartoon controversy

Father Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things Magazine, has this to say about the cartoon controversy:

The current explosion of violent protest is to be understood as a demand that Denmark, and the West more generally, subject itself to Islamic rules about what can and cannot be published. The European response to date, unfortunately aided by pusillanimous comments by our State Department, is an instance of what Margaret Thatcher called “going wobbly.” Warnings by some that Europe is on the way to becoming “Eurabia” have gained further credibility.

A free press is by no means an unmixed blessing, but it is an essential part of the democratic way of life that we cherish and, as a nation, intend to advance elsewhere. It could turn out to be the case that most of the Islamic world, under the control of those who hold political and religious power, ends up by rejecting the democratic way, which would be very sad. But there should not be the slightest hesitation on our part in making clear that we will not compromise our freedoms by submitting to their rules. Unfortunately, we are witnessing a great deal of timorous hesitation at present.

Of course, it would be much easier to resist Muslim demands if Europe in particular had a positive identity to which it could appeal. In response to those offended by the exercise of freedom, Europe could then say, “Ah yes, we understand your point of view, and you may very well be right about the requirements of Islam. But, you see, we are Christian, not Muslim, countries, and, meaning no offense, your rules don’t apply here.”

It has been a very long time since Europe could speak with such confidence. And, if we are not alert to the nature of the challenge posed, America could be similarly unnerved.

Scroll down to his blog entry for Feb. 8 and read the whole thing.

New cabinet pleases social conservatives

Here is the story I wrote about reaction to the new Conservative cabinet, published online by the Western Catholic Reporter.

Here's the same story carried in the Catholic Register online.

I don't post all the stories I've written, so if you want to see more, get a subscription to one of the papers. Both are great reads.

Danish websites under cyber attack

Read more about it here. Thanks to World Net Daily for the link.

A Christian martyr slain because of the cartoons

Read about the priest who was slain in Turkey by a teenager, who, after his arrest blamed the cartoons. Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the link.

Father Andrea Santoro is quoted as saying:

“I am convinced that in the end there are no two ways, only one way that leads to light through darkness, to life through the bitterness of death. Only by offering one’s flesh is salvation possible. The evil that stalks the world must be borne and pain must be shared till the end in one’s own flesh as Jesus did.”

May he rest in peace.

And take a look at this site and its editorial cartoons. Thanks to Kathy Shaidle for the link.

The controversy over Michael Schiavo's Catholic wedding and on whether politicians who vote against Church teachings should receive communion

I love the Holy Catholic Church. I love the Roman Catholic Church, even though I am Anglican Catholic. That's why stories like this hurt. Genuine believers suffer because they respect the sacrament of marriage or of Holy Communion and agree to abide by the Church's rules, while others who don't waltz up to receive the Blessed Sacrament or say their vows before a priest with a beautiful church backdrop.

I'm not sure what the solution is. While there's a side of me that would like to see the flaunters publicly refused, I also understand that there may be pastoral reasons why bishops and priests would continue, say, to allow a politician who votes to change the definition of marriage to receive. As Quebec Cardinal Marc Ouellet said last year, how is the priest to know if the individual hasn't just come from confession?

Cardinal Ouellet told a group of young people gathered at the studios of Salt & Light TV last year to focus on Jesus first, then the morality will come. We do sometimes run the danger of focusing on the morality first and losing sight of Jesus. So, while I am troubled by Schiavo's wedding, I choose to take Cardinal Ouellet's advice.

And I remember what St. Paul said to the Galatians---that it is in believing that we are saved, and it is in believing that we are sanctified, not by trying to attain perfection through obeying the Law.

That doesn't mean I think breaking the Law--aka sinning-- is okay. I don't. But I know that only through Christ and with the power of the Holy Spirit through believing the Truth, can I ever have a hope of coming close to obeying the law. If I try to do it on my own power, I'm sunk.

Publisher says no and editorial staff walk out

Few North American newspapers have reprinted the Danish cartoons. When the New York Press, an alternative weekly, decided to do so, its publisher said no. The editorial staff has resigned. Read all about it here. (Thanks to Kathy Shaidle at Relapsed Catholic for the link.)

Brilliant post on humor and the cartoon wars

Dr.Sanity links this morning to this brilliant post from Instapunk on the role a sense of humor plays in a shame-based culture's overcoming it's worst aspects. Read the Instapunk post first, then Dr. Sanity's equally brilliant response.

More links on former Vatican official facing charges

Lee Podles has an interesting commentary over at Touchstone Magazine on the fact that a former Vatican official, Monsignor Bernard Prince, is wanted in Canada on a charge of sexual assault dating back 35 years ago.

The details will appear in my forth-coming book, but several members of a ring of abusers in Texas met because they were all heads of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in their respective dioceses. When things got hot in their home dioceses, the were taken in by an abuser in the Texas diocese.

An international organization like the Society is an ideal method of moving and hiding abusive priests.

Podles links to this Globe and Mail article.

Here's another link to a story about the charges in Newsday.

Tories to raise the age of consent for sexual activity

In Canada it is legal for an adult to have consensual sex with a 14-year old. The new Justice Minister Vic Toews says that's going to change. It's about time.

Janice Tibbetts writes in today's Ottawa Citizen:

The new Conservative government will raise the age of sexual consent to 16 from the current age of 14 as one of its first priorities in a planned overhaul of the justice system.

Justice Minister Vic Toews revealed the plan to reporters yesterday within minutes of emerging from the first meeting of the newly elected Conservative caucus.

Mr. Toews said a bill, which he wants to introduce when Parliament resumes this spring, would also include a "close-in-age exemption" so that two young people could not be criminally charged for having sex with each other.

The bill, which Mr. Toews predicted would pass quickly, even in a minority Parliament, is meant to stop adults from sexually preying on young teens, he said.

"We don't want to criminalize consenting sexual conduct between youth, we want to protect young people from adult sexual predators," he said. "That would be one of my priorities."

The age of consent law has been in place since 1892 and the Conservatives have lobbied for years for it to be raised, particularly in light of all-too-common luring of young people via the Internet.

Under Canadian law, young people under age 14 are deemed to be too young to consent to any form of sexual contact, from kissing to intercourse. The offence against a minor carries a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment.

When an adult is in a position of authority or trust, he or she can be charged with exploitation of anyone under 18 years old.

A thoughtful commentary on the cartoon controversy

Evangelical Fellowship President Bruce Clemenger has written a thoughtful commentary on the cartoon controversy here.

New Conservative cabinet

One might think covering the swearing in of a new prime minister and cabinet might be a glamorous aspect of the job. But no. The "pack" had to wait outdoors in a snow squall to watch as prospective ministers drove up the long drive to Rideau Hall and disembarked with their loved ones. The stunner for everyone was the arrival of former Liberal cabinet minister David Emerson, who has eyebrows long enough to braid, not that that is relevant.

Emerson's changing parties within two weeks of being elected as a Liberal, after having claimed he was going to be Harper's "worst enemy" raised eyebrows in general to a new height. (Thanks to Andrew Coyne for the link.)

His appointment has prompted many pundits to opine this move makes Belinda Stronach's defection to the Liberals look principled. However, others contend at least Emerson is qualified to be a cabinet minister, and one journalist I sat with yesterday during the swearing in kept repeating that Emerson, a "blue Liberal" never seemed comfortable in that party. My take? It's too bad that the move has given the journalistic pack a reason to cry that the team supposed to clean up government is cynically providing more of the same. The temporary appointment of Michael Fortier, a Quebec political organizer for the party, to the Senate and his assuming the Public Works portfolio is also grounds for concern.

The new cabinet is clearly a pragmatic, streamlined team meant to govern. It has tapped people with experience with ministerial portfolios in provincial governments. The social conservative presence is diluted and so is the influence of those who started with Reform or the Canadian Alliance.

Reassuring to social conservatives is the fact that Vic Toews has the justice portfolio. He did a great job defending the traditional definition of marriage in his previous role as justice critic. He is bright, articulate and measured. He is also staunchly opposed to euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide and able to use non-religious arguments to defend traditional values.

Back to the lack of glamor. We were not allowed into the gilded chamber where the swearings in took place. Instead, we were ushered through low narrow corridors lined with pipes to a cramped cafeteria for the help and watched the ceremony on closed circuit TV. Then, after it was over, the photographers among us were allowed to stampede through those corridors to take the family photo in the gilded room.

Shame vs. guilt

Dr. Sanity analyses the differences between cultures based on shame and those based on guilt.

Eventually for the shame-avoidant person, reality itself must be distorted in order to further protect the self from poor self-esteem. Blaming other individuals or groups for one's own behavior becomes second nature, and this transfer of blame to someone else is an indicator of internal shame.

Read it all.

More on the cartoons

over at the Master's Artist.

This is a terribly dangerous state of affairs and I believe it is of crucial importance that the western world not cave into the demands of Muslim extremists or back down in the face of threats. As for whether we should exercise restraint to protect Christians from dying in Muslim lands, as some are arguing, I say think again. The bombings, the pogroms, the kidnappings, the beheadings, the persecution, the arson against churches and Christian businesses---they were going on before the cartoons and are likely to go on after the cartoons. The fomenters of rage will find another excuse.

More on the cartoon controversy

Mark Steyn has this to say:

One day, years from now, as archaeologists sift through the ruins of an ancient civilization for clues to its downfall, they'll marvel at how easy it all was. You don't need to fly jets into skyscrapers and kill thousands of people. As a matter of fact, that's a bad strategy, because even the wimpiest state will feel obliged to respond. But if you frame the issue in terms of multicultural "sensitivity," the wimp state will bend over backward to give you everything you want -- including, eventually, the keys to those skyscrapers. Thus, Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, hailed the "sensitivity" of Fleet Street in not reprinting the offending cartoons.

For more links on the controversy, go to Kathy Shaidle's Relapsed Catholic, Kate McMillan's Small Dead Animals, or Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch.

A strategy to rid Canada of marriage?

Stanley Kurtz at the National Review Online seems to think so. Thanks to Richard Bastien.

Canada, you don’t know the half of it. In mid-January, Canada was rocked by news that a Justice Department study had called for the decriminalization and regulation of polygamy. Actually, two government studies recommended decriminalizing polygamy. (Only one has been reported on.) And even that is only part of the story. Canadians, let me be brutally frank. You are being played for a bunch of fools by your legal-political elite. Your elites mumble a confusing jargon to your face to keep you from understanding what they really have in mind.

Read the whole thing here.

Fr. Tom Rosica on the need to restore Canadian values

In his Toronto Sun column today, Fr. Tom Rosica writes:

Over the past few years, Canadians have witnessed a deterioration of our communal and transcendent values. This worrisome decline is evident in the flagrant abuse of the common good, the erosion of marriage and family life, the high rate of marriage breakdown, the staggering number of abortions, and the declining number of births.

What about the proliferation of senseless violence, the dismissal of God and Jesus from public discourse, the indifference toward religious values and roots? Our aging population is resulting in smaller workforces and is now creating a market push towards euthanasia. As Pope John Paul II wrote: "a right to die will inevitably give way to the duty to die."

The role of government is to help us remember our roots and point us toward the future. Neither has been happening for the past years in Canada. Canadian voters have now elected Stephen Harper, as our new prime minister.

The Conservatives' success was helped by voters' exhaustion with the divided Liberals, who had not only caused major financial and political scandals, but also lost the transcendent vision of life that is part of the DNA of Canada.

The future of humanity and of Canada passes through the family. Now is the time strengthen and enshrine marriage, to bless and nurture children, and to make our homes, families, workplaces, neighbourhoods and church communities welcoming places for women and men of every race, language, sexual orientation and way of life.

Only in this way can we ever hope to preserve what is deep, good and valid in our own Canadian heritage.

Daycare debate looms

Beer and popcorn. That's what Prime Minister Paul Martin's director of communications Scott Reid said Canadian families would blow the Conservative's promised subsidy to parents of children six and under.

That remark, and Martin's charge that the Conservatives would leave people to "fend for themselves" illustrates one of the divides between the Liberals and the Conservatives.

And it will make dacyare one of the most contentious issues facing the new Conservative government after it is sworn in on Monday. The Tories plan to scrap the Liberal agreement with the provinces to fund institutional daycare spaces and that had daycare lobbyists and provincial governments crying fowl this past week. Though the Tories have promised to honor the Liberals' agreement for one year, then it will institute its plan to send a direct subsidy to parents and offer tax credits and other incentives for the development of privately funded daycare spaces. Or, I should say, try to institute the plan in a minority government where the majority of MPs from the other parties support institutionalized daycare.

Yet evidence is emerging that institutional daycare isn't the glorious panacea advocates claim it to be. It certainly cannot replace a stay-at-home parent. And some studies show the informal private arrangements parents have made for childcare are superior.

Here's a commentary from Helen Ward posted at the Institute for Canadian Values.

You can also find a recent study on the Quebec subsidized daycare system here. This study shows that the so-called model system didn't actually create any new spaces for the children of working moms and dads. Those parents had previously had private, informal daycare arrangements they found satisfying, but dropped it for the lure of the heavily-subsidized care. Here's the Globe and Mail's coverage of the study.

Fabricated cartoons?

Some of the cartoons prompting a worldwide rage among Muslims were fabricated according to this blogger. Check it out. This is not the first place I've seen this allegation.

Scott Brison -- How dare u speak to me like that

Scott Brison, a former Progressive Conservative who crossed the floor take take a cabinet post with the Liberals, is apparently seeking the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada.

For some insight into his character and the state of his French, check out this story in the Ottawa Sun. Thanks to Kate over at Small Dead Animals.

Scott Brison vs. Belinda Stronach. Now THAT would be a leadership race to remember.

The more idealistic side of me would rather we see a race that included Michael Ignatieff and Stephane Dion, two men who are both bright and, from all accounts, honorable. Then, if one of them won the leadership race, we might have a real debate about ideas in the next election. What a concept.

Brison is bright and articulate, no question about it. He would make mincemeat of Stronach even in French. But Brison is highly partisan and so is she, but their partisanship shifts from political party to party so seamlessly it is hard to know what either of them really stands for.

The end product of multiculturalism?

Here's Dr. Sanity's diagnosis of the cartoon craziness.

She writes:

Having given up any objective standard by which to mediate such vastly different perspectives and feelings; having abandoned reason altogether in favor of expressing one's feelings no matter what the cost; and, finally, having endlessly touted the critical importance and essential need to "belong" to one's race, tribe, religion or group first and foremost; the outcome is what Stephen Hicks refers to as "group balkinization" --with all its inevitable and inescapable conflict.

There's a difference between pluralism, anchored in an objective frame of Judeo-Christian western civilization, that supports religious freedom and human rights, and multiculturalism, which says in effect that there is no truth, no standard, no objective reason and whatever is your bag, go for it.

Canadian Muslim condemns violent response to cartoons

As the controversy roils over the cartoons, at least one Canadian Muslim has also condemned the violent response to them, according to the Globe and Mail.

What's interesting is that, especially in Europe, we see two kinds of fundamentalism pitted against each other. We see secular fundamentalism, which loves to denigrate all religious faith but has its own petty orthodoxies that cannot be challenged, and religious fundamentalism that will brook no criticism.

The other thing to think about is this: is freedom of speech an end in itself? If freedom of speech is merely used to defend attacks on religious faith, expand the amount of pornography deluging us in various media, and in various ways corrupt moral life and virtue then maybe freedom of speech as an ultimate value ain't such a good thing. On that basis, I can understand some of the visceral reaction in the Muslim world to not only the cartoons but also to the general moral decadence of the west. I'm not too happy about that decadence myself, but the best way to fight it is to shine with virtue and hold up another way, a life-giving, wholesome way of life.

If however, freedom of speech is seen as a means to a good end--a means to finding truth--then one sees why it is reasonable to have to tolerate bad speech in order that good speech and the freedom to discover and speak the truth remains defended in a free and democratic society.

Any kind of totalitarian impulse desires to shut down the truth. Since I make no secret about my belief that the Truth is a Person, Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, I find it interesting that usually the first freedom to go in totalitarian societies is the freedom to worship Christ, the freedom to read Bibles and the freedom to preach the Christian faith openly. This freedom isn't in danger only in Muslim lands, it is in danger in Canada, in the United States though the pressures are more subtle. And the danger in these countries comes from the secular fundamentalists, the people who love human rights tribunals, who think equality is the right that trumps all other rights and believe that the state is a grantor of human rights.

I believe God grants every human being intrinsic rights that the state merely recognizes. We're losing that sense in the west and we are paving the way to totalitarianism in the process. We are also losing our self-confidence as a culture. If the only way we can defend freedom of speech is to wave satirical cartoons like a bull fighter's cape, that's a sad commentary on us. I didn't like seeing a satirical cartoon of Pope Benedict XVI angrily giving the Nazi salute. That kind of thing hurts. Problem is, if freedom of speech goes down the tubes, the anti-Christian stuff will remain free.

If you read the Globe article you'll find another Muslim leader complaining that the anti-Muslim cartoons reflect the new anti-Semitism. If I heard that same leader condemn the far worse anti-Jewish and anti-Christian cartoons and television productions rampant in Muslim lands, then I'll find his position more credible.

For a more detailed look at the cartoon controversy, check out Michelle Malkin's blog.

How Christians get a TV show cancelled

The Institute for Canadian Values, always an interesting place for reading material, has published a commentary by Charles Moore on the cancellation of NBC Television's controversial program the Book of Daniel. Many Christians considered the program offensive and sent thousands of emails to protest.

Moore writes:

NBC’s Christianity - dissing drama The Book of Daniel has been unceremoniously cancelled after just four episodes. The show, which first aired Jan. 6, starred Aidan Quinn as a pill-popping Episcopalian priest who had private conversations with Jesus, a borderline alcoholic wife, promiscuous gay son and a daughter who got arrested in the first episode for selling pot, a 16-year-old adopted son who was having sex with the bishop’s daughter, and a lesbian secretary sleeping with his sister-in-law.

Sadly, given the sorry state of Episcopalianism these days, that scenario, while extreme, was not utterly implausible, except for the confabs with Jesus bit. However, it was profoundly offensive to orthodox Christians. Reportedly, 678,394 individuals sent emails to NBC protesting the show’s content, and thousands more called and e-mailed local affiliates.

More than a dozen NBC affiliates pulled the show.

Daniel’s creator and producer Jack Kenny is quoted by World Net Daily complaining that the cancellation amounts to "censorship - pure and simple. I think it’s a travesty that small-minded special-interest groups were able to convince people that tolerance, love, growth and acceptance are not Christian values." As WND commented, "His attitude is typical in today’s society. Non-Christians telling Christians what is Christian."

The most offensive aspect of The Book of Daniel was its mocking, blasphemous portrayal of a "hip, modern Jesus" described by Bob Waliszewski of Focus on the Family’s teen ministries in a USA Today interview as a "namby-pamby frat boy who basically winks at every sin and perversity under the sun."

Real Christians (in any orthodox sense) believe Jesus is God the Creator and Judge of the Universe. Imagine, if you will, what the reaction would be if a TV show depicted an Jewish rabbi or a Muslim imam similarly to the priest in Daniel, and included a disrespectful and blasphemous take on the deity or the Islamic prophet? The political-correctness you-know-what would hit the fan big-time. So why the double-standard? Why is Christianity uniquely excluded from similar respect and deference?

Multiculturalism, pluralism, and tolerance are the buzz words of contemporary culture, but in practice they are applied to virtually everyone except Christians.

Christianity is slandered, belittled, ridiculed and reviled with enthusiastic abandon, while the slightest negative commentary pertaining to other identifiable groups is quickly slapped down under draconian "hate" and "human rights" codes.

Read the whole thing.

Former Vatican official wanted on sex charge

A long story in the Ottawa Citizen today about an alleged case of abuse by a priest.

Andrew Seymour writes:

A prominent Pembroke area priest who finished his career in a senior post at the Vatican is now wanted by police following allegations he had sex with a 12-year-old boy more than 35 years ago.

Stories like this make me awfully sad. One can't jump to conclusions about guilt but at the same time, one can't ignore the pain of possible victims.

The anti-marriage propaganda of Brokeback Mountain

I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain, the so-called gay cowboy movie, but I'm fascinated by much of the commentary about it. Here's one that describes the movie as propaganda against marriage and children.

Dr. R. Winfield over at Rense.com writes:

Indeed nature is beautiful, and its grandeur is depicted with majesty and uplifting music, great sweeping vistas instill a sense of awe and splendor. It is of course in this setting that the "homosexual romance blossoms. But even more significant, this is where the men discuss the deeper things of life, theology, meaning, etc.

Contrast this with the scenes of marriage. Every time marriage is depicted in the film, it is shot in a tiny dark squalid hovel, with screaming children and absolute pandemonium. The house is a mess, the wife never communicates on any kind of meaningful level. Wives in fact, are portrayed as a constant annoyance, and more irritating than understanding. But children receive the worst treatment in this slanted rant against family. They are usually crying, often two at a time, or smashing things, the general feeling the film presents, is that these joyless hellions are an intrusion into life, an encumbrance and a terrible burden.

Making sure it drums in its message in no uncertain terms, the film keeps switching back and forth between the two contrasts. The great outdoors, wild and free, close to nature, close to God, close to hot gay sex without any negative consequences. Back inside the dark little messy box of marriage, with horrible in-laws, demon spawn children, berating nagging wives, endless pressures and even the loveless, passionless sex has hanging over it the dread of producing more parasitic offspring.

What do you think of that? Marriage and children are hard work, no doubt about it. It takes strength of character to discipline one's self and then one's children to rise above the "dark little messy box." But if Hollywood is sending a message that
"true love" allows you ditch the wife and kids for the man or woman of your choice, it makes it even harder for men and women to stick to their commitments when the going gets rough.

One thing Winfield says about Brokeback is that the movie is long and boring. While it's getting rave reviews and the most Oscar nominations, he's not the only one who found the movie dull. So did Barbara Nicolosi over at Church of the Masses.

Nicolosi writes:

Big deal.

It's kind of boring. Nothing much happens. Just a lot of horseback riding and cold cowboys supposedly bonding over cans of beans and shuffling around staring off-screen. I didn't ever get emotionally engaged. I don't even know what it was about really.

Set up a commission to study same-sex marriage

Canada's new prime minister-designate Stephen Harper has promised to revisit the same-sex marriage debate "sooner rather than later" in his mandate, which begins Feb. 6 when he and his cabinet are sworn in. Some politicians would like to get the vote over with and move on.

But a McGill professor who is worried about the implications not only to the family and children, but to democracy itself, is calling for the establishment of an independent commission to study the potential downside of changing the traditional definition of marriage.

Here's the story I wrote, published in the Western Catholic Reporter.

Dr. Balfour Mount and Jean Vanier

Finding healing in brokenness, learning to love and build community through experiencing one's vulnerability and spiritual poverty--those were the lessons shared by Dr.Balfour Mount, founder of Canada's hospice movement, and Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche, in conversation last night on Parliament Hill.

I've filed a story on the event, and if it gets posted electronically I will provide a link.

More on the European freedom of speech controversy

Dr. Sanity weighs in here.

More on Google, privacy and China.

More on how Google is watching you and its arrangement with China.

Scary stuff. And yet, here I am, blogging on a Google-run blog. How quickly the freedom of speech bloggers love about the 'net could be cut off with the flick of the switch or a midnight kick on the door.

Thanks to LifeSiteNews.com.

Newspapers reprint offensive cartoons

A huge battle over freedom of speech vs. religious sensibilities is raging in Europe.
Here's an update.

Freedom of speech applies for critic of Catholic Church

Here's another story that exemplifies to me that freedom of speech only applies if one is criticising the Roman Catholic Church or evangelical Christians. Then no smear is too low or beyond the pale, no blasphemy of Christian images, including Jesus himself, is anything but a joke. It is open season.

I personally do not favor restrictions on free speech unless there is a direct incitement to violence and hatred. Yet political correctness is stifling free speech, and so are threats of violence from some groups which view even balanced criticism as hate speech.

I do support boycotts, censure (fighting bad speech with rational, strongly worded condemnation) and other forms of response to anti-Christian ads, movies, books, newspapers, and so on. However, never do I support threats and intimidation or destruction of property.