Mark Steyn: Mollifying Muslims and Muslifying Mollies

WHILE I'VE BEEN TALKING about free speech in Copenhagen, several free speech issues arose in North America. I was asked about them both at the Sappho Award event and in various interviews, so here's a few thoughts for what they're worth:
Too many people in the free world have internalized Islam’s view of them. A couple of years ago, I visited Guantanamo and subsequently wrote that, if I had to summon up Gitmo in a single image, it would be the brand-new copy of the Koran in each cell: To reassure incoming prisoners that the filthy infidels haven't touched the sacred book with their unclean hands, the Korans are hung from the walls in pristine, sterilized surgical masks. It's one thing for Muslims to regard infidels as unclean, but it's hard to see why it's in the interests of us infidels to string along with it and thereby validate their bigotry. What does that degree of prostration before their prejudices tell them about us? It’s a problem that Muslims think we’re unclean. It’s a far worse problem that we go along with it.


Take this no-name pastor from an obscure church who was threatening to burn the Koran. He didn’t burn any buildings or women and children. He didn’t even burn a book. He hadn’t actually laid a finger on a Koran, and yet the mere suggestion that he might do so prompted the President of the United States to denounce him, and the Secretary of State, and the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, various G7 leaders, and golly, even Angelina Jolie. President Obama has never said a word about honor killings of Muslim women. Secretary Clinton has never said a word about female genital mutilation. General Petraeus has never said a word about the rampant buggery of pre-pubescent boys by Pushtun men in Kandahar. But let an obscure man in Florida so much as raise the possibility that he might disrespect a book – an inanimate object – and the most powerful figures in the western world feel they have to weigh in.


Aside from all that, this obscure church’s website has been shut down, its insurance policy has been canceled, its mortgage has been called in by its bankers. Why? As Diana West wrote, why was it necessary or even seemly to make this pastor a non-person? Another one of Obama's famous "teaching moments"? In this case teaching us that Islamic law now applies to all? Only a couple of weeks ago, the President, at his most condescendingly ineffectual, presumed to lecture his moronic subjects about the First Amendment rights of Imam Rauf. Where's the condescending lecture on Pastor Jones' First Amendment rights?

When someone destroys a bible, US government officials don’t line up to attack him. President Obama bowed lower than a fawning maitre d’ before the King of Saudi Arabia, a man whose regime destroys bibles as a matter of state policy, and a man whose depraved religious police forces schoolgirls fleeing from a burning building back into the flames to die because they’d committed the sin of trying to escape without wearing their head scarves. If you show a representation of Mohammed, European commissioners and foreign ministers line up to denounce you. If you show a representation of Jesus Christ immersed in your own urine, you get a government grant for producing a widely admired work of art. Likewise, if you write a play about Jesus having gay sex with Judas Iscariot.


So just to clarify the ground rules, if you insult Christ, the media report the issue as freedom of expression: A healthy society has to have bold, brave, transgressive artists willing to question and challenge our assumptions, etc. But, if it’s Mohammed, the issue is no longer freedom of expression but the need for "respect" and "sensitivity" toward Islam, and all those bold brave transgressive artists don’t have a thing to say about it. . . . (Source: www.MarkSteyn.com)

Gov. Christie Veto Shuts Down Abortion Clinics in NJ

This wonderful government de-funding gesture could not have been aimed at a more deserving group of abortionists. I particularly love the last forlorn line in this snippet from the article on LifeNews.com:

After the New Jersey state Senate defeated an attempt to override the decision of Gov. Chris Christie to cut off state taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood abortion businesses, the first facility run by the national abortion giant is closing.

The Cherry Hill Courier Post newspaper says a Planned Parenthood facility located on Haddonfield Road and operated by Planned Parenthood of Southern New Jersey will close down.

PP-SNJ stands to lose as much as $160,000 in taxpayer funds because of Christie's decision and the upholding of his veto. With the closing of the Cherry Hill center, Planned Parenthood customers seeking abortions or other "services" must go to PP centers in Camden, Bellmawr, and Edgewater Park.

Parenthood of Southern New Jersey president Lynn Brown told the newspaper, "We are in think mode and creative mode and we are doing all that we can to try and salvage to see as many people as we need to see."

"We all know it's strictly ideological," Brown said of the funding cuts to the abortion business. "This is a very frustrating and perplexing time for us."

Ah, that is truly wonderful news, Ms. Brown! I'm one of many millions of Americans who are hoping and praying that this lack-of-funding situation gets much more frustrating and perplexing for the "abortion business."

Classic Catholic Truth Society Pamphlets, Free Online

About 12 years ago, I had the occasion to visit the office of the Catholic Truth Society in London during a speaking tour there. A number of their venerable apologetics tracts and booklets were on display in a bookcase, most of them having been written decades earlier (some, many decades earlier) during a time in England when vigorous Catholic apologetics outreach to Protestants, atheists, and other non-Catholics was quite common.

The CTS staffer I spoke to that day made sure to provide me with a stack of pamphlets before I left, and in the ensuing years since that visit, I have lost track of them. That is, until today, when I discovered a whole cache of them posted on a Catholic website — each of them scanned in and available for free as PDFs of the originals. I've downloaded them all and would like to encourage you to go and do likewise. As basic, Catholic explanations of doctrinal, moral, and social issues go, these CTS materials are accessible, interesting, fact-filled, and compelling. As the old Alka-Seltzer commercial used to say, "Try it, you'll like it."

See also: The UK Catholic Truth Society Website

Queen: "You're My Best Friend" bass lesson

If you play the bass guitar, or just love the bass guitar (it's both, in my case), you'll probably enjoy this. If you don't, you may not. By the way, this So-Cal bassist, who goes by Zuma, really, really knows his way around the 70s & 80s pop scene. I learned how to play a lot of AM Top-4o songs sitting in my bedroom in the mid-70s, plonking away on my first bass till I had figured out the riffs. If only YouTube had existed then! I'd have taken lessons from Zuma (who probably wasn't even born then).

Is good.

The Strange Case of Mamie Cadden, Backstreet Abortionist

She was an Irish nurse/midwife who specialized in performing abortions in a country where killing unborn children is still illegal. She died in 1959, but the specter of her murderous legacy still haunts the pallid corridors of abortuaries everywhere.

Banned in Ireland

This is the commercial that the Irish Government feels you should not see, at least not if you are a citizen of the Republic of Ireland. What are they afraid of? That's right: the truth. They can't handle the truth. So, thankfully, YouTube and other internet outlets can be the conduits.

Blessed John Henry Newman on the English Martyrs

Bee Gees in a box, and other truly primo 70s weirdness

As goofy as this ad is, it gets much better, much weirder than this. Trust me. Take the tour of the other 57 "what were they thinking?" ads. They'll make your head spin.

Me, I was a teenager when this stuff was au courant. I guess that says a lot.

A mother seeks advice on how to draw her grown sons back to the Catholic Church

Yesterday, on the EWTN "Open Line" radio broadcast, I received a question from a mother whose adult sons have left the Catholic Church and gone into "non-denominational" Protestantism. Concerned about maintaining a good relationship with them while telling them that they've made a big mistake in leaving the Faith, she asked what practical things she can do to help them come home. Take a listen.

When you care enough to send the best (but you still have your doubts)

My new favorite Pope Benedict XVI Quote

"It is important to recognize dissent for what it is, and not to mistake it for a mature contribution to a balanced and wide-ranging debate. It is the truth revealed through Scripture and Tradition and articulated by the Church’s Magisterium that sets us free. Cardinal Newman realized this, and he left us an outstanding example of faithfulness to revealed truth by following that 'kindly light' wherever it led him, even at considerable personal cost. Great writers and communicators of his stature and integrity are needed in the Church today, and it is my hope that devotion to him will inspire many to follow in his footsteps.”

— Pope Benedict XVI’s address to the Bishops of England and Wales
Visit “ad limina apostolorum,” January, 2010

Amen and amen. That first sentence says it all.

And, Stateside, it seems to me that there are a couple of National Catholic publications in America that really need to wrap their minds around this truth, though I am not holding my breath in anticipation of that.

A reader asks, "What's the deal with Medjugorje?"

Hello Patrick,

Am I correct in believing that the apparitions at Medjugorie and the messages to the visionaries have never been officially approved/endorsed by the Church? Is approval in the works — likely to be given soon? Or is there a major problem with the whole Medjugorie phenomenon? Thank you for your answer.

David

MY RESPONSE (slightly altered):

Hi, David.

That's correct. The alleged apparitions at Medjugorje have not been approved by the universal Church, though they have been repeatedly disapproved by the local bishops of the diocese within which Medjugorje is situated.

A Vatican commission was established recently to further evaluate the phenomena there, but so far no definitive decision has been rendered, at least not publicly.

It's hard to predict how soon or far off a decision might be in coming. It seems to me that the best thing we can do in the meantime is to pray, especially the rosary, do penance, frequent the sacraments, and strive by God's grace to live good and virtuous Christian lives. These are, of course, the essence of Our Lady's messages in approved apparitions, such as Fatima and Lourdes.

In due time, the Lord will guide the Church to formally pronounce its decision on whether the alleged apparitions at Medjugorje are either authentic or false. In the meantime, let's be at peace about it and let Him reveal the truth about this according to the timing of His loving providence.

God bless you,

Patrick Madrid

P.S. www.medjugorje.net has lots of positive information on Medjugorje, and this other website contains fascinating information that is critical of it: http://en.louisbelanger.com.

Jennifer Fulwiler explains why she converted to the Catholic Church from atheism

Check out her 45-minute talk: "How I went from lifelong atheism to orthodox Catholicism."

Is good. Is very good.

How John Henry Newman Brought Joseph Ratzinger to Great Britain

Take the time to read this gracious and insightful article about the great English convert from Protestantism, John Henry Newman, soon to be declared beatus by Pope Benedict XVI. It's quite good. Here's an excerpt:

[Newman's] great campaign began in 1833 after closely escaping death from typhoid. He felt “God has still work for me to do” – which turned out to be no less than changing the face of the Church of England. Oxford then being to England what Qom is to the ayatollahs, the theological warfare declared by Newman there became known as the Oxford Movement. With the brilliant scholar EB Pusey, he used pamphlets as weapons in order, in Pusey’s words, to bring “to the vivid consciousness of members of the Church of England, Catholic truths, taught of old within her”.

They achieved more than they meant, for Newman was propelled by the logic of his arguments into the Catholic Church. He set up a community very like an Oxford college, the Oratory, not in his beloved Oxford but, as circumstances dictated, Birmingham. Nothing else he attempted in his first 20 years as a Catholic came to anything. A new university in Dublin, editing a journal, even a translation of the Bible, all shrivelled when other people let him down.

By 1863 he was depressed. “This morning, when I woke, the feeling that I was cumbering the ground came on so strongly, that I could not get myself to my shower-bath,” he noted in his journal. “What is the good of living for nothing?”

Suddenly an attack came from Charles Kingsley, the author of that weird tale The Water-Babies, then at his peak as Regius Professor of History at Cambridge. In a magazine he wrote: “Truth for its own sake has never been a virtue of the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not, to be.”

This was the shock that galvanised Newman, the “call”. Truth was the whole reason he was stuck in this obscure Birmingham corner and could hardly get himself into the shower. For Kingsley to deny truth in his life was to “poison the wells”. There was no point simply stating this: he had to write the history of his own mind.

The result was the Apologia, one of the great autobiographies in the English language, and a turning point for Newman. It came out in eight instalments, written on the hoof – literally, since Newman generally stood at a desk.

The effort almost broke him. After publishing five parts, he noted that . . . (continue reading)

"Hold fast to the traditions you were taught"

I'll be on the Catholic Answers Live radio broadcast this evening, from 6-7 pm EASTERN, discussing Sacred Tradition and human traditions. Tune in, if you can: http://www.catholic.com/radio/calendar.php