In Praise of P.J. O'Rourke, Slayer of Stem-Cell Myths

(When P.J. O'Rourke says, "laugh," I say, "how high?")

For two decades now, I have read with gusto many of P.J. O'Rourke's articles and almost all his books (Parliament of Whores, Give War a Chance, Age and Guile, Driving Like Crazy, All the Trouble In the World, etc., etc., etc.) and I, like his myriad of other avid readers, not only chortle, laugh, and wine-shooting-out-of-my-nose guffaw my way through his unrelentingly funny social commentaries (read any of the aforementioned titles to get the gist of this), I almost always learn something in the bargain.

Often, what I learn from him is deadly serious, though the man has an inimitable way of making "serious as a heart attack" themes so gol-darn funny that how he imparts serious information can be pure, unadulterated bliss.

It is, of course, always repellent to read the fine details of odious things like income taxes, crime, drug abuse, poverty, destitution, disease, horrible maimings, death, and American politics — though not when these issues are discussed by O'Rourke, the guru of gainsaying.

So, do yourself a nice favor and check out his new article “Stem Cell Sham: The President as Sophist,” a response to El Lider Maximo's recent speech in which he hailed himself for having the far-sighted courage to reverse the previous administration's (sagacious) ban on fetal stem-cell research.

You'd never imagine in a million years that this subject could be funny, and it's not. No, not even ole P.J. could make it so. Though he does do the next best thing. He shows how laughably ludicrous the rationale is that El Lider Maximo foisted on the American public for his decision. If you don't know whether to laugh or cry in reaction to the preposterously wrong positions and decisions that our newly elected Lider is making and taking, read P.J.'s new article and you'll know which way to tilt, at least for a little while.

Free Stations of the Cross Booklet to Enrich Your Lenten Prayers

and receive your free copy ($4.95 for shipping and handling) of our inspiring new booklet, Meditations on the Stations of the Cross. It will enrich your Lent by helping you deepen your relationship with Love Himself, Jesus Christ. Here is just a sample of the lovingly-crafted words and images that await you in these pages:

Meditations on the Stations of the Cross was written by Dr. Ron Thomas, Assistant Professor of Theology at Belmont Abbey College. The Stations photographed in the booklet grace the nave of the Abbey Basilica of Mary Help of Christians at Belmont Abbey in Belmont, North Carolina. Dr. Thomas is a convert to the Catholic faith after having served for 13 years as an Episcopalian priest and 5 years as a Methodist minister. He received his doctorate in theology from the University of Cambridge in England.

Our booklet is published with the permission of the Most Reverend Peter J. Jugis, Bishop of Charlotte.

and receive your free copy ($4.95 for shipping and handling), or to order multiple copies in bulk for your parish, Bible study group, or family.

Caught on Tape: More Abortion-Clinic Chicanery

These abortion-clinic zealots are as deceitful as they are relentless. Those wretched lying liars. They are doing the work of the devil by killing all those unborn children, day after blood-money making day, and they have no compunction about being mendacious to accomplish their evil goal.

Jesus declared: “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

Check out this new undercover video documentation of the staffs of two Arizona abortion clinics deliberately ignoring state law regarding reporting sexual abuse of minors. That these people would engage in or advise subterfuge in the service of performing an abortion on a minor should come as no surprise. (Video courtesy of CatholicEdition.com)

Bishop Martino of Scranton Bars Pro-Abortion Officials From St. Patrick’s Day Masses

Explaining that he is determined to “prevent scandal,” Bishop of Scranton, Joseph Martino, has said that he will cancel Masses for St. Patrick’s Day or for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade if any pro-abortion officials are honored at the holiday events.

The bishop said that scandal could arise if the Catholic Church is seen to be involved in honoring such officials.

John M. Dougherty, the Auxiliary Bishop of Scranton, explained Bishop Martino’s views in a Feb. 6 letter to John Keeler, President of the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick of Lackawanna County.

Saying that St. Peter’s Cathedral plays “no small role” in the local observance of St. Patrick’s Day, Bishop Dougherty noted that local celebrations often honor elected public officials. This honoring takes place when they are given parade positions or dais opportunities.

“While some of the officials have merited the pride our local people take in them, others have positions and voting records that have contributed to the daily killing of the unborn by abortion,” Bishop Dougherty wrote. . . . (source)

Israeli Ambassador Confirms Pope Benedict May Wear Cross at Western Wall

Contrary to comments attributed to an Israeli rabbi, Pope Benedict XVI will not be barred from entering the holy area of Jerusalem’s Western Wall while wearing a cross.

On Tuesday the Jerusalem Post quoted Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, who oversees worship matters at the Western Wall, as saying that the Pope should not wear a cross during his visit to the area.

“It is not fitting to enter the Western Wall area with religious symbols, including a cross,” the rabbi reportedly said, according to SIR.

Mordechay Lewy, Israel’s Ambassador to the Holy See, issued a clarifying statement saying that the Jerusalem Post’s quotation was “misleading.”

Ambassador Lewy said that Israel will “respect, as a matter of course, the religious symbols of the Holy Father and of his entourage, as expected in accordance with rules of hospitality and dignity,” following the same procedure applied in Pope John Paul II’s papal visit to Israel in 2000.

(source)

"What About Me? Protect My Life!"

Catholic Church in Spain joins academics in protest against proposed abortion reforms.

More than 300 scientists, professors, and scholars signed a manifesto in Madrid yesterday, opposing proposed reforms to Spain's abortion laws. The Church has also launched a campaign against the proposed laws, using billboards depicting a toddler beside an Iberian Lynx - one of the most highly protected species in Spain. The caption reads: "What about me? Protect my life."

The current law allows abortion up to 12 weeks in cases of rape and 22 weeks in cases of foetal malformation. The proposed law would allow abortion up to 22 weeks if a doctor certified a serious threat to the health of the mother or foetal malformation.

Defending the right to life, beginning at conception, the manifesto says: "neither the embryo nor the foetus form a part of a organ of the mother," "an abortion is a simple and cruel act of terminating a human life," that mothers should be made aware of the psychological damages of post-abortion syndrome and that "the zygote is the initial corporeal reality of the human being."

Among the 12 points mentioned in the manifesto, they defend "human life in its initial stage, as an embryo and as a foetus" and they reject "the use of abortion for economic or ideological lucrative interests."

They call for a written and "correct interpretation of the scientific facts on human life in all its stages." They also mention the social consequences of abortion, which they call "tragic" and regret the fact that "a society that remains indifferent to the slaughter of nearly 120,000 babies each year, is a society that is unwell and a failure."

They reject the possibility that at 16 years of age, a girl can abort without parental consent and claim that "an abortion law without restrictions would make the woman the only one responsible for a violent act against the life of her own son."

Among the signatories are Professors Nicolás Jouve, Dean of Genetics; César Nombela, Dean of Microbiology; Francisco Abadía Fenoll, retired Dean of Cellular Biology; and Julio Navascués Martínez, Dean of Cellular Biology.

(source)

A Quick Catholic Case Against Condoms

Joanna Bogle, a prominent English Catholic commentator, knocks one out of the park with this excellent interview on British television in which she explains why the whole "condoms prevent AIDS" argument is vacuous and based on junk science. The woman Joanna is debating, while articulate, is simply out of touch with the biomedical realities involved in condom use. And the show's host, when he's not interrupting Joanna as she drives home some new point, throws some red meat to the pro-contraception people in his audience when he avers (stupidly) that Pope Benedict, by his reiteration of Catholic moral teaching, has "condemned many Africans to death." Although the host and the other woman are good examples of fuzzy thinking, I think Joanna did a yeoman's work in presenting the facts, clearly and compellingly. What do you think?

The Forgotten Man

Conservative social commentator Glenn Beck asks some interesting and timely questions about "the forgotten man." Who is the forgotten man? According to Beck, he is you. I tend to agree with him, and I have a few questions of my own. But watch this video first and see what you think of his take on this:

Flight of the Conchords: "Think About It"

If you know who the Flight of the Conchords are, you'll understand this. If you don't, you probably won't.

 

I love these guys. Dig it:

What's the Immigration Situation Where You Live?

Check out this interesting, interactive map of the U.S. which gives the immigration statistics for every county in the country. You can also search according to specific foreign-born groups to see the trends in where they settle across the 50 states.

Catholic Edition: A Great New Source for Breaking News

I have this page bookmarked. Check them out!

To Twitter or not to Twitter? That is the Question

In recent weeks, quite a few Catholics I have met at my parish seminars and at conferences around the country have asked me what I think about the social networking tool known as Twitter, what it is, and whether it's worth using. In fact, a good number of you who follow this blog have started "following" me on Twitter. I tell those who ask that Twitter can be a very useful communications tool, when used properly, or it can be just another worthless form of self-broadcasting with no other purpose than to tell people what you're doing at any given moment.

Since I have been using Twitter for the past 3 months or so, I can say that I definitely put myself in the former category.  

Like I did when I started using Twitter a little over 3 months ago, a lot of you have (or will) start off wondering what exactly Twitter is and what it does and why anyone would bother with it. This is normal, and it will pass.

To help you make more sense out of why Twitter is such a useful and potentially beneficial tool, especially for Catholics around the world who want to be in communication across time and space (which is actually the only kind of communication we humans can engage in, this side of eternity), here's a link to a helpful article that does a good job of explaining the basics of Twitter, including answering the perenniel question, "What is Twitter, anyway?"

Well, check this out: http://www.clicknewz.com/1385/twitter

Now, please note that I don't use Twitter to tell people on my network what I'm doing at any given moment (as some people do). That's just a nuisance that normal, busy people, like you and I, don't need. That's why I don't post the mundane details of my life.  Rather, I use Twitter to instantaneously communicate news, information, updates, happenings, prayer requests, etc., to my network.

If you follow me on Twitter, you'll get the important things — 140 characters at a time — not riff-raff stuff. I promise.

Oh, and since I am steadily building an ever-expanding network of Catholics, once you've read up on the benefits of Twitter, please join my network. Set up your free Twitter account (it's quick and easy, then add "patrickmadrid" to the "find people" search bar, and "follow" me. I'll take it from there. 

Like the old Alka-Seltzer commercial used to say, "Try it. You'll like it." I certainly do.

Conclusions of a Guilty Bystander

In my mid 20s, I went through a kind of creeping spiritual crisis that led me into a reconversion to Christ that was neither sudden nor dramatic, although it shook me powerfully and reached the deepest recesses of my heart.

Like a painful, prolonged medical treatment that’s necessary to save a patient’s life, my reconversion entailed pain and uncertainty, but the result, thank God, was a cure — not an instant one, forever banishing the symptoms of the disease we call “sin,” but a cure nonetheless. As St. Paul explained, “Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death.” This malaria of sin, contracted in the Garden of Eden through the bite of an apple, courses through our veins with all its deadly effects. Only God’s grace can combat and overcome it. His love is the sole antidote.

At the height of my conversion of heart, I discovered, or more specifically, the Lord showed me, that through years of infrequent and minimal use, I had allowed the “muscles” of my interior life — prayer, mortification, and recollection — to atrophy and wither. My spiritual “arteries” — which carry the love of Christ as the lifeblood of the soul — had hardened and constricted as a result of the lukewarm, halfhearted complacency into which I had settled. . . . (continue reading Patrick Madrid's "Conclusions of a Guilty Bystander")

You Don't Mess Around With Jim

What's in a name? Plenty. A word of caution to anybody who starts paying closer attention to the wisdom of his or her namesake saint: Get ready to feel woefully inadequate.

 

By Jim Moore

Envoy Magazine

 

Do you ever lose track of your name? I do. Hey, this is a legit, faith-based question here. The answer isn't packed with doctrinal revelation, but anybody who reads this space on a regular basis ought to be used to that by now.

For those of you who may be stopping by for the first time: This column is basically about being a cradle Catholic who came late to the effort of truly understanding and appreciating the Faith. It's about being somebody like me. I would have called the column "Rocking the Clueless Catholic," but I thought that would be unfair to the rest of you.

Today's question for the clueless: Do you ever lose track of your name, the way I do?
Everybody stop a second and say your name out loud. The whole thing. Confirmation names, too.
Any saints' names in there? Do you know anything about those saints? How often do they even come to mind?

Personally, I don't think along those lines very often at all. I've been "Jimmy" to my family and "Jim" to friends and colleagues for so long, that I rarely think of myself as "James." Yet that's a pedigree that shouldn't be neglected. Though I imagine St. James wouldn't lose any sleep over not being consciously connected with me.

Of course, if St. James ever is consciously connected with me - or with any of the other kajillion guys going around giving his name a bad name - it's probably only when the other saints are giving him a hard time.

"Hey, James! Did you see what that clown with the cradle Catholic magazine column came up with this time?"

I've been "Jimmy" to my family and "Jim" to friends and colleagues for so long, that I rarely think of myself as "James." Yet that's a pedigree that shouldn't be neglected. Though I imagine St. James wouldn't lose any sleep over not being consciously connected with me.

"Yeah, James. I mean, come on. What a moron."

Not very nice of them, I know. But I understand both John and Paul have been extremely pleased with themselves since 1978.

"All right, you two. I'll tell you again. Linguistically speaking, James is only as close as English can come to my name. All those guys and I hardly have the same name at all. And if you two would quit wrapping yourselves in the papal flag every chance you get, I could show you a John or a Paul or two who aren't all that much to write home about."

In order to spare my namesake at least some ribbing, and in an attempt to learn better the worthy lessons associated with my name due to his writing, I decided to turn my biblically bereft cradle Catholic mind to St. James' epistle.
Epistle.

Remember when we used to call them "epistles"? Made 'em sound as important as they are. I have a few dim memories of hearing the word at Mass when I was little, but it faded out of sight not long into my grade school years.

It had to happen. "Epistle" is a word doomed to failure in America. And it has nothing to do with liturgical preferences. It's just not very singable. Try it yourself.

"I'm gonna sit right down and write myself an epistle." No.

"My baby just wrote me an epistle." Uh, uh.

"Mr. Postman, look and see/If there's an epistle in your bag for me." No chance.

Anyway, I got interested in the Letter of St. James because it was featured prominently at Mass during the month of October. I wasn't named after St. James due to any special affection my parents had for him, but I do know that the tradition of saints' names for children played at least some part in the choice. So I figured it couldn't hurt to pay special attention to what the man had to say.

A word of caution to anybody who starts paying closer attention to the wisdom of his or her namesake saint: Get ready to feel woefully inadequate. I didn't get through the first chapter of James without self-esteem problems. Here are just a few from among numerous examples:
James 1:19: "Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger . . . ."

And my Irish ancestors became Catholic how?

James 1:26: "If a man who does not control his tongue imagines that he is devout, he is self-deceived . . . ."

No self-deception? And Americans became Catholic how?
Then, in 1:27, he talks about "keeping oneself unstained by the world . . . ." Personally, I can't even keep myself unstained by lunch.

A word of caution  to anybody who starts paying closer attention to the wisdom of his or her namesake saint:  Get ready to feel woefully inadequate.

You could spend a lifetime just trying to live up to a single sentence in that first chapter. But there's always chapter two. Right?

James 2:2-4: "Suppose there should come into your assembly a man fashionably dressed, with gold rings on his fingers, and at the same time a poor man in shabby clothes. Suppose further that you were to take notice of the well-dressed man and say, 'Sit right here, please' whereas you were to say to the poor man, 'You can stand!' . . . Have you not in a case like this discriminated in your hearts? Have you not set yourself up as judges?"

I think I may be okay here, simply by virtue of changing times. You see, just about nobody shows up for Mass wearing fine clothes these days. And if they're wearing gold rings, they're wearing them in places most traditional people would judge less than formal.

I just typed "judge," didn't I? Strike two. And forget about chapter three.
James 3:6: "The tongue . . . exists among our members as a whole universe of malice. The tongue defiles the entire body."

Even I won't look for a way around that one.

And just in case the message hasn't hit home by the time he gets to chapter four, St. James, being the thorough kind of guy he is, states things even more plainly there.

James 4:14: "You are a vapor that appears briefly and vanishes."

That says it even more succinctly than Ash Wednesday. As a matter of fact, I understand there was once a James-ist movement to institute Vapor Wednesday as a Lenten alternative for communities where ashes weren't available. The local bishop would eat something with pungent spices, then breathe on people as they approached the altar.

Among the truly great things about the Letter of St. James is his ending. After raising the bar hopelessly higher and higher for five chapters, he ends with a word of encouragement to those of us who hope people will learn the truth of Catholicism, and that they'll learn it somehow through us.

James 5:19-20: "My brothers, the case may arise among you of someone straying from the truth, and of others bringing him back. Remember this: The person who brings a sinner back from his way will save his soul from death and cancel a multitude of sins."

I've learned a lot from St. James in those five brief chapters of his. And maybe he's turned me around in a few respects. If only because I now feel a need to live up in at least some small way to his name. If my parents had named me after anyone other than a saint, the notion would never have occurred to me.

Maybe the tradition of saints' names for children is one we ought to hold on to.

By Jim Moore, jimmoore [at] rocketmail.com
Source: Envoy Magazine
Copyright: Envoy Magazine, 1996-2009, all rights reserved. 

Here in Miri

Well, after a long day in the air yesterday (Tokyo to Kuala Lumpur [layover], KL to Miri), I made it safely to my destination here in Miri, which is located on the west coast of the Island of Borneo. I got to my hotel room last night around midnight, and my first talk of the conference starts this morning at 8:30. So all Ihave time to do right now is say "Selamat pagi," or "good morning" in Malay. I probably should also say "Malaysia Adalah Sebuah Negara Yang Menarik" ("I like Malaysia"), at least the little I have seen of it since getting here.

More soon. I'm off to get some strong coffee and then start my seminars. Selamat jalan.