Musical saints

Nice post by Pentimento.

St. Charles Borromeo, November 5

Saint Charles Borromeo (1538-84) was once called the “Second Ambrose.” Just as St. Ambrose was the Bishop of Milan whose witness converted St. Augustine of Hippo in 385, St. Charles Borromeo was Bishop of Milan and Christian witness to many great saints including Philip Neri, Aloyius Gonzaga, and Edmund Campion. He was advisor to Popes Pius IV, Pius V, and Gregory XIII as well as King Phillip II of Spain, King Henry III of France, and Mary, Queen of Scots.

Sometimes the Church is reformed from the bottom up, e.g., Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s life and example, but other times, the Church is reformed by a powerful “insider” who is full of the Holy Spirit. Charles Borromeo was born into a prominent Italian family. His mother was a Medici. His uncle became Pope Pius IV. Charles became abbot of a monastery at a young age, something not uncommon in those days for the sons of the well-born. But Charles was not weak in the least. His entire life was given to fighting corruption, worldliness, and lack of discipline in the Church.

In 1562, as Archbishop of Milan, he pressed for the resumption of the Council of Trent, which was the most important Church council in a thousand years. France wanted a weak papacy. Spain wanted a strong papacy. The national kings wanted to control Church lands as well as the local bishops. Charles pressed for genuine reforms despite the vested interests of lazy clergy and avaricious kings. He pressed for independence for the bishops, holiness on all levels, a new catechism, renewed and strengthened liturgies, improved music, strict discipline for seminarians, priests, monks, and nuns, and the establishment of what we now call “Sunday schools” at parishes. These reforms occurred during the Renaissance and Protestant Reformation, and the Continent was full of neo-pagans, schismatics, occultists, priests with mistresses, libertines, complacent clergy, rogue liturgists, and intemperate nuns. Charles’ life was threatened on several occasions. His enemies published lies about him and intrigued to clip his powers. He was even shot by an assassin, though the 16th-century firearm failed to kill him.

Almost everyone knows that the Church today is not nearly as corrupt as it was in the 16th century, but most of us do not know why. It is because of the holiness of Saint Charles Borromeo and others like him, who loved the Church and her purity more than they loved wine, art, power, connections, the status quo, and the approval of men. Charles worked closely with perhaps the most prominent saint in Italy at the time, Philip Neri (1515-95). He served First Communion to a young man now known as St. Aloyius Gonzaga. He was visited by a young Jesuit named Edmund Campion, one destined to be martyred in Elizabeth I’s England. St. Charles Borromeo shows that even a man of noble family and worldly influence can be holy, and moreover, lead others to holiness. His life and work show that the Holy Spirit can reform the Church even in her darkest hour when many of her clergy have become unfocused and sinful.

Perhaps it is not surprising that one admirer of St. Charles Borromeo is none other than Pope Benedict XVI.

Yoani Sanchez arrested in Cuba...

She was apparently released, but Cuba does not know what to do with a fearless blogger.

Here is my old post, "Christmas in Cuba." She put up with Cuba's revolution her whole life, but when she had a child, she decided she could not teach him the same lies herself.

Out of respect for her, I am going to mirror her post and provide the link to her blog, Generacion Y:

'Near 23rd Street, just at the Avenida de los Presidentes roundabout, we saw a black car, made in China, pull up with three heavily built strangers. “Yoani, get in the car,” one told me while grabbing me forcefully by the wrist. The other two surrounded Claudia Cadelo, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, and a friend who was accompanying us to the march against violence. The ironies of life, it was an evening filled with punches, shouts and obscenities on what should have passed as a day of peace and harmony. The same “aggressors” called for a patrol car which took my other two companions, Orlando and I were condemned to the car with yellow plates, the terrifying world of lawlessness and the impunity of Armageddon.

'I refused to get into the bright Geely-made car and we demanded they show us identification or a warrant to take us. Of course they didn’t show us any papers to prove the legitimacy of our arrest. The curious crowded around and I shouted, “Help, these men want to kidnap us,” but they stopped those who wanted to intervene with a shout that revealed the whole ideological background of the operation, “Don’t mess with it, these are counterrevolutionaries.” In the face of our verbal resistance they made a phone call and said to someone who must have been the boss, “What do we do? They don’t want to get in the car.” I imagine the answer from the other side was unequivocal, because then came a flurry of punches and pushes, they got me with my head down and tried to push me into the car. I held onto the door… blows to my knuckles… I managed to take a paper one of them had in his pocket and put it in my mouth. Another flurry of punches so I would return the document to them.

'Orlando was already inside, immobilized by a karate hold that kept his head pushed to the floor. One put his knee in my chest and the other, from the front seat, hit me in my kidneys and punched me in the head so I would open my mouth and spit out the paper. At one point I felt I would never leave that car. “This is as far as you’re going, Yoani,” “I’ve had enough of your antics,” said the one sitting beside the driver who was pulling my hair. In the back seat a rare spectacle was taking place: my legs were pointing up, my face reddened by the pressure and my aching body, on the other side Orlando brought down by a professional at beating people up. I just managed to grab, through his trousers, one’s testicles, in an act of desperation. I dug my nails in, thinking he was going to crush my chest until the last breath. “Kill me now,” I screamed, with the last inhalation I had left in me, and the one in front warned the younger one, “Let her breathe.”

'I was listening to Orlando panting and the blows continued to rain down on us, I planned to open the door and throw myself out but there was no handle on the inside. We were at their mercy and hearing Orlando’s voice encouraged me. Later he told me it was the same for him hearing my choking words… they let him know, “Yoani is still alive.” We were left aching, lying in a street in Timba, a woman approached, “What has happened?”… “A kidnapping,” I managed to say. We cried in each others arms in the middle of the sidewalk, thinking about Teo, for God’s sake how am I going to explain all these bruises. How am I going to tell him that we live in a country where this can happen, how will I look at him and tell him that his mother, for writing a blog and putting her opinions in kilobytes, has been beaten up on a public street. How to describe the despotic faces of those who forced us into that car, their enjoyment that I could see as they beat us, their lifting my skirt as they dragged me half naked to the car.

'I managed to see, however, the degree of fright of our assailants, the fear of the new, of what they cannot destroy because they don’t understand, the blustering terror of he who knows that his days are numbered.'

Matthew Kaminski interviews Adam Michnik

Michnik is one of Poland's elder dissidents who has been arrested countless times since 1968.

Here is the most Kirkian part of the interview:

'Beginning early in the transition to democracy from communism, Mr. Michnik has militated on behalf of what he calls "gray democracy." By that he means that messiness is preferable to perfection, disorderly freedom in a state bounded by law to the orderly strong hand of a populist leader who ignores the law.

'Along with the former Czech President Vaclav Havel, Mr. Michnik wanted their free and united Europe to strive for constitutions and institutions and abandon the dream of utopias that invariably lead back to totalitarianism. This view has its roots in his influential 1985 "Letter from Gdansk Prison," written after he, Lech Walesa and hundreds of other Solidarity activists were imprisoned by Poland's communist strongman Wojciech Jaruzelski. "Solidarity has never had a vision of an ideal society," he wrote. "It wants to live and let live. Its ideals are closer to the American Revolution than the French."'

"Three Decades of Subsidized Risk"

A piece linked all over the blogosphere by Charles Gasparino.

"Too big to fail" is not new. The federal government has been coddling the biggest investors for decades.

Who predicted the Great Depression?

Ludwig von Mises.

Deafness not yet fully known...

Peggy Noonan diagnoses a case of political deafness among our political elites.

Watching Iran...

Caroline Glick is, and to a lesser extent I watch Iran too, but that does not make up for the fact that the President Barack Obama's administration is going to have to see a mushroom cloud before it takes seriously the threat Iran presents.

Sgt. Olaf Schmid, requiescat in pace

Michael Yon honors one of Great Britain's finest soldiers.

He left a wife and a child. He was the competent and fearless chief of a bomb squad, and he disarmed or destroyed more bombs (especially "improvised explosive devises") than just about anyone in Afghanistan and thereby saved hundreds of lives. His courage and resourcefulness were legendary.

"Healing the Family Tree"

Another interesting post by Fr. Dwight Longenecker.

A Prayer for England...

Jeffrey Steel, an English blogger I just discovered, posts a lovely prayer. He was an Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism just a few months ago. His blog contains the wonderful insights of an Anglican who persevered to cross the Tiber River and gave up everything to do so.

He says:

'I speak as a very new Catholic convert but as one who I believe has had a radical conversion to a Catholic way of thinking in a very short amount of time due to some of the hardest days in my Christian life of struggling to come to terms with what was happening in my head and in my heart. If I were to give any word of encouragement, I think it would be that my former Anglican colleagues around the world must deeply consider what it means to have a complete conversion to a Catholic way of life. I believe a real head and heart conversion is absolutely necessary in order to submit to the Magisterium with a joyful submission.For instance, it is quite easy for us to say we are submitting when we agree or we are not being asked to make serious sacrifices of our own desires. Submission, I believe, is really tested when what we might or might not have wanted is being asked of us and we respond in a joy-filled desire of obedience. I think people are really fooling themselves to believe that the Catholic Church will bend on her requirements on issues of morality, contraception, divorce and remarriage etc and disappear behind an Anglican party that might wish to grow out of personal opinions. What must be asked of all Anglicans who are considering this step is what Benedict XVI calls all to ask when being called to communion.'


There are those who think the Holy Father's initiative towards the Anglicans is some ploy to "steal sheep," annex some conservative priests, and perhaps gain some pretty buildings. Those who write these things do not understand that the Catholic Church is not a club and is not going to become a voluntary association of like-minded people. The Catholic Church is God's family built on the ultimate sacrifice of God Himself and submission to her authority. He says:

'The need for our formation is not to be underestimated; Rome was not built in a day, and neither can Catholic priesthood be put on like a coat.'

Jonah Goldberg on Left and Right

Those of us who do not like the term "conservative" thrown around without nuance should not throw "liberal" around with "Marxist." Perhaps you will notice that I try to avoid using loaded terms when I can. I identify most closely with the traditional conservatives as exemplified by Russell Kirk. However, my family's participation in America's foreign adventures and wars (from the Philippines to Panama to WWII to Korea) pushes my views of foreign policy well out of the isolationist camp and more towards an understanding of America as the world's reluctant policeman (yet recognizing that we stand on a very slippery slope of our power).

Jonah Goldberg notes in National Review conservatives have offered quite stinging critiques of capitalism that fall closer to those of the Marxist than to the liberals. Perhaps we should remember that the radicals of the 1960s hated the liberals.

"The Tenacity Question"

Enough about President Barack Obama's brilliance, likeability, empathy, and sophistication. What millions of people between here and Afghanistan want to know is whether he has Lincoln's or Churchill's tenacity to stick to a difficult war come hell or high water.

David Brooks writes in the NYT:

'They are not worried about his policy choices. Their concerns are more fundamental. They are worried about his determination.

'These people, who follow the war for a living, who spend their days in military circles both here and in Afghanistan, have no idea if President Obama is committed to this effort. They have no idea if he is willing to stick by his decisions, explain the war to the American people and persevere through good times and bad.

'Their first concerns are about Obama the man. They know he is intellectually sophisticated. They know he is capable of processing complicated arguments and weighing nuanced evidence.

'But they do not know if he possesses the trait that is more important than intellectual sophistication and, in fact, stands in tension with it. They do not know if he possesses tenacity, the ability to fixate on a simple conviction and grip it, viscerally and unflinchingly, through complexity and confusion. They do not know if he possesses the obstinacy that guided Lincoln and Churchill, and which must guide all war presidents to some degree.'

Our ruling class...

'We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they're not optimists—they're unimaginative. They don't have faith, they've just never been foreclosed on.'

I wish I had time to comment more on Peggy Noonan's column.

I feel helpless, that my own generation lacks any sense of personal responsibility and is failing to create anything for the next generation besides unfunded entitlements and a sense of victimhood.

"Why Isn't Anyone Famous For Whistling Anymore?"

Ann Althouse asks the question.

I know of only one famous whistler:

Andy Offutt Irwin.

More here.

Discovering the office was not all it was supposed to be...

Just a year ago we were told that the world would be a better place as soon as George W. Bush was retired in Texas and the anointed one was inaugurated as President of the United States.

The Bush administration cooperated fully with an incoming administration that had shown nothing but contempt for everything it had done. The Bush administration had made a thorough policy review of Afghanistan which closely reflected the views of President Barack Obama's later hand-picked commander there, General Stanley McChrystal. President Obama, however, cannot decide whether to fish or cut bait. He is making us worry that Hillary Clinton's commercials about the 2:30 a.m. telephone call were right.

Oddly enough, he is making a similar mistake the Bush administration made in Iraq in 2005-06. President Bush's advisors were so concerned about casualties and public morale that they neglected to implement a counter-insurgency strategy for what had long been an insurgency. President Bush did not awake from his slumber until Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House.

James Shinn reports on what our options are in Afghanistan and discusses the common rumors circulated by wishful thinking.

"Sanity and Sanctity"

Fr. Dwight Longenecker makes the point that saints are the only ones who are truly sane.

The Catholic-Anglican alliance?

Ross Douthat makes a good point in the New York Times.

Too busy for Berlin?

For people Barack Obama's age and mine, the Fall of the Berlin Wall was a transformative event. Tyranny crumbled, and no one in the West that I know of cried a tear of regret. It was simply the triumph of good over evil, and the even the Left west of the Elbe River understood the event in such terms.

I hope he changes his mind, but right now President Obama does not plan to attend the 20th anniversary ceremonies on November 9. (Arthur Chrenkoff, retired blogger, writes a nice piece.) That is one party I would not miss if I had access to Air Force One or any lesser craft. Nothing would symbolize America's commitment to liberty than a appearance by the President. Peter Fechter and others who gave their lives trying to escape should be so honored.

Here is a 1962 documentary film about the Berlin Wall. I remember looking at the Berlin Wall in 1984. More so than at Dachau, which was by then a memorial to evil, I knew I was looking at evil itself.

Anglican clergy discuss Pope Benedict's initiative...

Forward in Faith, an organization of Anglo-Catholics, is meeting this weekend in Westminster, London.

If you click on the link, you can hear articulate opinions of men trying to fulfill their vocations as priests. The Holy Father's initiative is a great invitation, but there are many issues.

One thing I will say about my own conversion: The Episcopal Church- USA's governance, based upon a House of Delegates and a House of Bishops, both dominated by liberal activists uninhibited by the history and practices of the Christ's Church since Jesus walked with us, is a major reason I became Catholic. Historically, the Holy Spirit seems to work more clearly and effectively through the Holy See and the Roman Curia, despite all their problems, than through the schismatic bodies of Christians independent from Rome.

[Photo of St. Michael and All Angels, Hartlip, Kent, England]

"The Chicago Way"

I have to agree with Kim Strassel that the administration's heavy-handed way of threatening opponents is already old. President Barack Obama's use of power is based upon a mandate he does not have and a one-party system that does not exist in Washington, though it is a given in Chicago.

"It's His Rubble Now"

The honeymoon is over, and the American people will hold Barack Obama accountable for our messes, here and abroad. Blaming George W. Bush is no longer an option.

So says Peggy Noonan.

Pope Benedict's Anglican initiative and America

Usually my blog posts link to insightful articles. I seldom reflect on a topic without linking to thoughts which reflect, refract, or contradict my own.

My wife just came to me, however, and expressed a vision she has, a vision of Pope Benedict's pastoral care for those of us in the English-speaking world. Our bishops, God bless them, too often reflect the determination, high achievements, and organizational skills of corporate executives rather than the counter-cultural and sacrificial commitments of martyrs and monks. Pope Benedict wants the Church to worship God in spirit and truth, and he is appalled at how the lowest common denominator of worship tends to crowd out liturgies and music that bring us closer to God. The independence of American bishops is also frustrating to the Roman curia. It is easier to herd cats.

But what if The Book of Common Prayer, that English magnum opus which has informed the thoughts, prayers, theology, political economy, moral philosophy, and worship on the North American continent since Jamestown, Virginia was settled in 1607, what if it became, with some revisions, a Catholic prayer book for the English-speaking world? Pope Benedict is too smart to try to force it upon English-speaking Catholics by ecclesiastical fiat, but what if American Catholics had some internal competition from not just one, but two traditional and beautiful liturgies?

The Tridentine Mass is now allowed and unhindered for Catholics all over the world. This news was greeted with hostility in a few circles, with enthusiasm among traditionalists, and with a yawn among most Catholics. What if bishops in the English-speaking world found a traditionalist Catholic competitor within their cities and towns which was under Rome's supervision and not under the American bishops?

It appears that Pope Benedict understands his duty to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, including American Catholics. To build the Church in America requires the cooperation, as well as the competition, of disparate elements:
(1) traditionalists who love the Latin Mass and can bring this ancient strength to a nation that scorns tradition;
(2) those "calcified" Catholics in older ethnic neighborhoods who have parochial schools, beautiful parishes, and low birthrates;
(3) the charismatics, especially those among the Spanish-speaking Catholics, who have energy and zeal;
(4) Asian and African immigrants from places such as Vietnam, Korea, and Zaire whose Catholic identity includes recent memories of martyrdom;
(5) what I call "JPII Catholics", those younger people who found their faith and live it by the example of a great and very visible witness to hope.

But what if Pope Benedict could forge another major force for Catholicism in the English-speaking world, what if he could harness the very English language in its beauty and strength to bring the world to Christ's truth and teachings?

Thus, this week's dramatic initiative to integrate Anglicans into the Catholic Church takes on greater significance. If The Book of Common Prayer, scorned and neglected by Episcopal church leadership, but beloved by Anglican traditionalists and part of the cultural bedrock of every English-speaking nation, becomes a primary book of Catholic worship, then Pope Benedict would have regained much of the ground lost since 1534. (Pope Benedict measures the Church's strength by the quality of its liturgy rather than the number of people in the pews.) The Protestant Reformation in England will end not with a bang but a whimper. The language of English worship will be fully captured by the Catholic Church. The poetry, prose, and songs of England will be fully integrated with Catholic liturgy.

As for my wife and me, we can unite our fractured family histories of worship. We both have English and Irish heritage. As Catholics, our English heritage was in some ways inaccessible because our English (and Protestant) relatives were historic foes of what we had come to believe. This is a tremendous healing for us and the opening of a new world. The hijacking of England's Christian faith and the English language is ending. The snow is melting in Narnia.

[Photos above: Little Gidding, as written about by T.S. Eliot, and Saint John Fisher.]

Theology v. Sociology

George Weigel discusses why the ecumenical talks between the Bishop of Rome and the Archbishop of Canterbury after Vatican II did not lead to any sort of larger merger:

'As both Anglicanism and Catholicism sought to find their way through the cultural whitewater of late modernity, however, the theological premise on which an era of good feelings had been based—that Anglicanism and Catholicism both affirmed the binding character of apostolic tradition, which in turn led to a common understanding of the priesthood and the sacraments—began to seem less a given than a hope. The tensions were evident more than 20 years ago, in a historic exchange of letters among Pope John Paul II, Archbishop Robert Runcie of Canterbury, and Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, the veteran Dutch ecumenist then leading the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

'The pope and the cardinal asked Runcie to explain the reasoning that had led certain parts of the Anglican communion to ordain women to the ministerial priesthood. Runcie replied in largely sociological rather than theological terms, citing women's changing roles in business, culture, and politics. By the end of the exchange, in 1986, a parting of the ways had been reached: the highest authorities of the Catholic Church believed that apostolic tradition, not misogyny, precluded ordination to the priesthood, which Catholics understood in iconographic terms as a sacramental representation of the priesthood of Jesus Christ. Archbishop Runcie and those whom he represented believed that contemporary human insights into gender roles trumped apostolic tradition and necessitated a development of both doctrine and practice.'

I remember attending a large Episcopal parish in the 1970s when the ethos of the 1960s had taken over. It was all about being "with it" and "keeping up with the times." More so than in all but a few Catholic parishes, the Episcopal church embraced meliorism fully. Theology of the ages was supplanted by sociological generalities. Each associate priest newly ordained had an even worse agenda than the last.

The backlash, not just from the old fogies, but also from younger folk who did not want to see the Episcopal church embrace all the follies of modernity, took root fairly quickly. My mother was less interested in the traditionalists as she was in the charismatics. The charismatics, unlike the liberals, were interested in rediscovering Christian worship as found in the Book of Acts. Thus, on a bad day, the charismatics were better than those who want to wear a Roman collar while amalgamating Christianity, Buddhism, Transcendentalism, Hinduism, and selected pagan beliefs.






But the center could not hold. I knew it. The centrifugal forces upon Anglicanism were too great. Anglicanism's promise of finding unity in the post-Reformation world was false. What resulted was a journey that took me dozens of places before I swam the Tiber River.

"The Pope Lets a Thousand Liturgies Bloom"

Francis X. Rocca discusses the Pope's Anglican initiative:

'Benedict is hardly permissive when it comes to liturgy. The Neocatechumenal Way, a growing international movement that the pope has long praised for its vigorous work in evangelization, was forced to modify some of its most distinctive practices—such as taking Communion in the form of a large loaf of bread shared around a table—before receiving final Vatican approval last year. The pope has also warned against liturgical dance that turns the Mass into a form of entertainment and has made clear his preference for tradition when it comes to music (Gregorian Chant) and the distribution of Communion (on the tongue while kneeling, rather than the more recent practice of receiving the host in the hand while standing).

'Yet according to the theologian Tracey Rowland, one of the pope's most informed and accessible scholarly interpreters, Benedict is a genuine "liturgical pluralist," ready to countenance any rite that "can be traced back as an organic development of apostolic provenance." The key concept, Ms. Rowland says, "is organic development. What he's really against is your parish liturgy committee getting together and saying, 'let's do something different.'"'


Pope Benedict XVI is showing himself to be the worthy successor of John Paul II.

Bishop Charles Chaput on those with Down syndrome

Many are now being aborted. He says:

'And, just as some people resent the imperfection, the inconvenience, and the expense of persons with disabilities, others see in them an invitation to be healed of their own sins and failures by learning how to love. About 200 families in this country are now waiting to adopt children with Down syndrome. Many of these families already have, or know, a child with special needs. A Maryland-based organization, Reece’s Rainbow, helps arrange international adoptions of children with Down syndrome. The late Eunice Shriver spent much of her life working to advance the dignity of children with Down syndrome and other disabilities. Last September, the Anna and John J. Sie Foundation committed $34 million to the University of Colorado to focus on improving the medical conditions faced by those with Down syndrome. And many businesses now welcome workers with Down syndrome. Having a job and earning a paycheck gives these special employees pride and purpose. These things are more precious than gold.

'Every child with Down syndrome, every adult with special needs—in fact, every unwanted unborn child, every person who is poor, weak, abandoned, or homeless—is an icon of God’s face and a vessel of his love. How we treat these persons—whether we revere them and welcome them or throw them away in distaste—shows what we really believe about human dignity, both as individuals and as a nation.'

Another great piece by Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Fr. Longenecker has an interesting story. He and his parents are graduates of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. He desired to become an Anglican priest and moved to England to train for this vocation. He served ten years as an Anglican priest before he became a Catholic. He spent ten years as a Catholic layman. He is now a married and ordained Catholic priest by special dispensation.

He knows about these ecumenical talks and how they became bogged down. This Holy Father showed decisive leadership. It is great to see it.

Is orthodoxy your "doxy?"

That is the question Pope Benedict is asking the world's 77 million Anglicans, and indirectly, millions more. If you believe in the Nicene Creed and if you believe that faith in our Incarnate God should transform your life and the lives of those you love into something sacramental, sacrificial, charitable, holy, pious, and hopeful, you have a place in the Catholic Church. That is not to say that you cannot serve God somewhere else, but we are going to go out of our way to make room for you.

I have known this since I converted to Catholicism in 1996 (and enjoyed a sacramental "hat trick" of the validation of my marriage, confirmation, and first communion in one day). My wife and I both have English heritage and not a day goes by that we don't somehow grieve the separation of English Christianity as led by King Henry VIII. We have to deal with the consequences at holidays and funerals, where not all of us go to communion together, if we go to communion at all.

For these reasons, we have been overjoyed for two days by the initiative of Pope Benedict XVI to reconcile, not simply unite, those in the Anglican tradition with the Catholic Church. We have surfed the web and read dozens of articles. Most of the responses, positive and negative, remind me of why I became Catholic. I love the Church with a Big "C." It was like serving with a guerrilla army for dozens of years before finally meeting a regular officer of the King's army, saluting as is proper, and receiving official orders and a rank, even a low one.

My Journey Home to Rome tells this story. Having reread it recently, I can tell you it needs to be edited for smoothness, so feel free to skim it. I cover a lot of ground.

Here is an article in The American Catholic: Politics and Culture from a Catholic Perspective that my wife found. It says:

'What King Henry VIII started Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have salvaged. The English and their former empire (if they wish) can return home again.'

Just in case somebody says I "hate" Obama (or anyone else I criticize)...

I agree with this author that Barack Obama's election and life story have bettered America's reputation internationally. He has a great story to tell that inspires the world. Nonetheless, America is loved and admired because of our culture, economy, and opportunities. President Obama is likely to be just as hated by the people he reaches out to, e.g., Iran and N. Korea, as Jimmy Carter was by 1980.

I give credit where credit is due and have written quite a bit about what is a great American story.

"Voting Present Is Not an Option"

Victor Davis Hanson discusses the decision in Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama is delaying this decision. It's been weeks since it was leaked that General McChrystal wants more troops. I can only think that the President is going to wait until after the November elections. He is a political animal surrounded by political animals. Generals are a different species to him and his close friends.

If he wants to be the next Abraham Lincoln, let us recall that President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862 knowing that he and the Republicans would get clobbered in the mid-term elections because of it. He did it anyway.

The door to Rome is now wide open to Anglicans!

The Anchoress has comments and links about Pope Benedict XVI's initiative to bring those to unity with the Holy See who love the Catholic Church yet practice their faith in the Anglican tradition and liturgy.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker has several posts: reaction among Anglicans,
a link to a piece in Inside Catholic, on the problems ahead for Anglicans who want to be Catholic, and how it all works under Canon Law.

UPDATE: Fr. Longenecker has published a piece in The Times (no, not New York).

"Confessions of a Cultural Drop-Out"

Victor Davis Hanson writes a nice piece about how popular culture is lost to him. My wife and I can relate.

There is very little pop culture created in the past twenty-five years we care about, know, or want to know. We have the tastes of our parents. We like old movies on Netflix. (We turned off DishNetwork and don't regret it.) We listen the 1940s music on XM Radio. We seldom see a good cartoon made after 1965. I have not read a bestseller since a retired Navy submarine skipper loaned me his copy of Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October. The only other novel I have read that was written in the last thirty years was Saul Bellow's More Die of Heartbreak.

In sports, I must confess that the National Basketball Association has been uninteresting to me after the great Laker-Celtics battles of the 1980s (even when I lived outside of Chicago during the days of Michael Jordan's glory). I watched the NBA finals a couple of years ago just because the Lakers and Celtics were back in it and have not watched a game since.


I think of the 1970s as the heyday of the National Football League. I compare all quarterbacks to Roger Staubach and Terry Bradshaw, or better yet, that crew-cutted genius, Johnny Unitas. As for baseball, I still like it because it recognizes that a time warp is a good thing. Nonetheless, I seldom root for an expansion team. In my mind, the Angels are still upstarts, even if they have been in the league since 1960, and the Dodgers should move back to Brooklyn.

I am a fossil, and I don't know how to be anything else. I am a history teacher by education and practice, and I was born old.

[Photo from The Dallas Morning News of Roger Staubach, Tom Landry, and Craig Morton, three of my childhood heroes when I first watched the NFL on television]

"Music and Memory, Part 3: Emotion and Meaning"

Pentimento's driving ambition to be a great singer almost destroyed her. Part of her redemption is that her life becomes her witness to art. At one time she wanted her art to consume her life and nullify her faults, but art cannot do this permanently, only for moments of transcendent beauty. Now she tells her personal story, and through her redemptive stories those of us who love art but cannot explain why Bach surpasses Bacharach come to understand art and faith. Her sufferings are not in vain.

Ann Althouse on Barry Friedman

Barry Friedman was one of my instructors at Vandy law school. I liked him personally. Intellectually, he was full of himself but in a likeable way. He was hawking his thesis then as today, that the federal courts reflect America's democratic values in their decisions and that they are the protectors of democracy rather than anti-democratic remnants of an 18th-century constitution.

My problem with Prof. Friedman is that his world of legal theory had only two options: legal formalism as rejected early in the 20th century, and legal realism, that idea that the law is what the powerful make it, and if they are good, then the law is good. I myself am a fossil in legal theory. Law with a capital L is not made but discovered. It is transcendent like great art. Natural law is that law that seems to be common to most cultures, that seems almost indigenous to our species.

Of course, my fossilized ideas could only be the vestiges of an oppressive society. Natural law is the creation of those who wish to rule others and tell them it is the will of God. But where are we without natural law? How do international agencies and courts create standards of humane behavior when law is simply the means by which the powerful rule the powerless? The current attempts to create and enforce international law while denying the old Roman concept of natural law is absurd and would be comical if not so unjust.

Prof. Friedman does the best he can do without a sense of transcendence to inform his understanding of law. Law to him is simply the power of the state, and if that state is well-designed and well-governed, its laws are just most of the time. But his moral philosophy, while acceptable to other scholars of a secular mind, cannot explain much that is interesting about human behavior, much less enlighten us about our deplorable political failings.

Ann Althouse discusses a symposium on judicial review. I am glad I missed it. Legal scholars seem wont to exalt a high priesthood of judges.

Who believes the federal government can transform America positively?

[Editor's note: Thanks to J's comment below to make me realize that this was a very lousy and shallow post. I have added quite a few things, though the post might be so bad it should be deleted.]

I think only about one quarter of the country has much faith in the federal government as an instrument of social change: a large portion of the African-American community, as well as of other communities, has benefited directly from federal intervention to end segregation and provide jobs for minorities. African-Americans have formed a natural constituency in favor of federal power since Emancipation, the 14th and 15th amendments, and the first civil rights acts. Single women, especially those with children, also form a large constituency for expanded federal spending and power. Immigrant groups, such as Italians and Irish in the past and Mexicans and Indians in the present, have formed Democratic voting blocks but do not necessarily favor statist solutions to social problems. In fact, Mexicans and Indians are often fleeing calcified statist systems. Seniors who benefit from Social Security and Medicare do not want to lose their programs, but as a voting bloc they do not necessarily believe the New Deal and Great Society programs should be expanded. Likewise, gays are just as often libertarians as liberals and cannot be depended on to support expansions of federal power and spending.

A large number of elitists who harbor the fantasy that America would be a great country if just the right people were running everything do favor an expansion of federal power. I am sure there are others, but they are not a majority, even if they are a sizeable minority which polls well on certain issues.

Big government has been tried and found wanting, and the solution to its problems is not more government (though I do understand why some voting constituencies, African-Americans in particular, would fear the reduced role of the federal government, which is historically a great benefactor of monumental importance). Peggy Noonan writes:

'People who oppose a health-care overhaul are not in love with insurance companies. They're not even in love with the status quo. Everyone knows the jerry-built system of the past half-century has weak points. They just don't think the current plan will shore them up. They think the plan would create new weak points and widen old ones. They think this because they have brains.

'But even that doesn't get to the real subtext of the opposition. Yes, the timing is wrong—we have other, more urgent crises to face, and an exploding deficit. And yes, a big change in a huge economic sector during economic crisis is looking for trouble.'


Barack Obama last year discussed "bitter" people who clung to their religion and guns. I will flip this criticism around. We have bitter elitists (and some populists) who cling to big government as a quasi-religion.

UPDATE: My views tend to be as Hamiltonian as Jeffersonian. Alexander Hamilton, and for that matter, George Washington, believed that a strong central government is essential to liberty. I agree. Hamilton went so far as to create a powerful constituency for the new federal government by funding all debts held from the Revolution. He was so successful that Thomas Jefferson, when he became President, made no attempt to undo Hamilton's financial plan, including the Bank of the United States.

Though I seriously doubt there is much more than a barely working majority for expanded federal authority and entitlements, it would be impossible and imprudent today to dismantle all the federal programs begun in the New Deal and the Great Society. The Civil Rights movement, and the federal government's support of it through all three branches of government, created a loyal constituency for our expanded government. Social Security alone creates the largest constituency for federal taxation and benefits not anticipated by the Founders. Major decisions on every level are made daily with these programs as assumptions.

Nonetheless, big government tends to choke liberty and private initiative under its weight. Big government will only retreat as the middle class grows and sees less need for it.

Pushing the Poles and Czechs under the bus...

What a way to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War! Barack Obama thinks that being President of the United States requires the same qualities as being editor of the Harvard Law Review. The Russians are capable of locking up the entire Harvard faculty and student body in the Gulag, and carving up Poland is not something the Russians consider exceptional, but normal.

A Nobel Prize Of and For Wishful Thinking

Peggy Noonan says:

'[T]he giving of the peace prize to President Obama is absurd. He doesn't have a body of work; he's a young man; he's been president less than nine months. He hopes to accomplish much, and so far--nine months!--has accomplished little. Is this a life of heroic self-denial, of the sacrifice of self for something greater, of huge and historic consequence, of sustained vision? No it's not. Is this a life marked by a vivid and calculable contribution to the peace of the world? No, it's not.'

The President should turn down the award, for the same reason Robert E. Lee turned down $20,000 just to put his name on an insurance company- because he did not want something for nothing. President Obama did not turn down the award, perhaps because he did not want to spurn such an honor, perhaps because he thinks more highly of his achievements than he should. I have argued on this blog that his election, while transformative, demonstrates a transformation which he did not himself cause. America is a more just country not because Barack Obama was elected, but because it is possible for him to be elected.

His foreign policy, popular as it is in Norway, might be transformational, if we are unlucky. American exceptionalism has done more good than ill.

"Mass Rocks and Hedge Schools"

Elena Maria Vidal posts on how the Irish evaded the Penal Laws, often at great cost. Mass Rocks, where the faithful gathered in defiance of English laws to share in the Eucharist, are still found in Ireland. She quotes this article regarding similar defiance in education:

The Hedge Schools emerged out of the harshness of the infamous Penal Laws, passed between 1702 and 1719. One of the first of the Penal Laws specified that "no person of the popish religion shall publicly or in private houses teach school, or instruct youth in learning within this realm..." One commentator on this Penal Law said that "It was not merely the persecution of a religion, it was an attempt to degrade and demoralize a whole nation." A law so unjust as this pleaded to be defied and the Irish of the 18th century were equal to the challenge....

John O'Hagan's verse gives us the image of the Hedge Schools that the Irish cherish:

I still crouching 'neath the sheltering hedge,
Or stretched on mountain fern,
The teacher and his pupils met feloniously to learn.


[Photo ofMass Rock at Slievenakilla Mountain, Leitrim County.]

There are wolves among the sheep in lots of places...

The Christian Science Monitor reports that the incidence of sexual abuse among Protestant clergy and Jewish rabbis is just as high as among Catholic priests. The Catholic Church will get the most attention because it is perceived as the great prude in modern times run by sexually repressed celibates and because it is perceived as being more vertically hierarchical than it really is.

Hat tip to Tim Troutman.

Martin Feldstein on healthcare

He says in the Washington Post:

'A good system should not try to pay all health-care bills. That would lead to excessive demand, wasteful use of expensive technology and, inevitably, rationing in which health-care decisions are taken away from patients and their physicians. Countries that provide health care to all are forced to deny some treatments and diagnostic tests that most Americans have come to expect.

'Here's a better alternative. Let's scrap the $220 billion annual health insurance tax subsidy, which is often used to buy the wrong kind of insurance, and use those budget dollars to provide insurance that protects American families from health costs that exceed 15 percent of their income.

'Specifically, the government would give each individual or family a voucher that would permit taxpayers to buy a policy from a private insurer that would pay all allowable health costs in excess of 15 percent of the family's income. A typical American family with income of $50,000 would be eligible for a voucher worth about $3,500, the actuarial cost of a policy that would pay all of that family's health bills in excess of $7,500 a year.

'The family could give this $3,500 voucher to any insurance company or health maintenance organization, including the provider of the individual's current employer-based insurance plan.'


I am not sure how much I want to comment because it makes more sense than anything discussed in Congress, but it would abolish the subsidy we all pay to people who have gold-plated healthcare plans. Therefore, it has a snowball's chance in Hell of passing.