Vanderbilt and religious organizations on campus

At Vanderbilt University, I was an officer in the Saint Thomas More Society. To renew the annual charter of an organization getting campus money, you have to promise not to discriminate against anyone, even if they despise the mission and purpose of the organization. In practice, it's usually not trouble. So far, white supremacists have never tried to join the Black Law Students Association. Men can join the Women Law Students Association, though few do. Ridiculous rules eventually get ridiculous results however. It would be possible for large numbers of Christians to join the Muslim Student Association and elect a young Baptist deacon as president. It would be possible for members of the Federalist Society to "take over" the Trial Lawyers Association. In the current campus environment, it is more likely that a leftist and secular group would show up in large numbers to embarrass a conservative or orthodox religious group. Vanderbilt is least likely to be a place of campus unrest, but its absurd political correctness, when copied elsewhere, will make national news at some point.

No more "Heckler's Veto"

Ten convicted of disrupting the Israeli ambassador's speech at UC-Irvine. They are free to picket, rally, and speak themselves, but not to make so much noise that a view they deplore cannot be heard at a scheduled campus event.

"How Civilizations Die"

Reuven Brenner reviews David P. Goldman's (a.k.a. "Spengler") new book about demographics and destiny in Forbes.

State-sponsored killing for man who would not kill again, if he ever killed at all.

Troy Davis insisted he was innocent until his lethal injection was administered by someone who supposedly took the Hypocratic Oath, which unfortunately has been watered down so that a Nazi camp doctor could say it:

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant: I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow. I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism. I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug. I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery. I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God. I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick. I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure. I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm. If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help. —

Written in 1964 by Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University, and used in many medical schools today. The ancient version follows, and we moderns are too "advanced" to say it:

I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant: To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art—if they desire to learn it—without fee and covenant; to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but no one else. I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice. I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art. I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work. Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves. What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about. If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.

—Translation from the Greek by Ludwig Edelstein. From The Hippocratic Oath: Text, Translation, and Interpretation, by Ludwig Edelstein. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1943.

HHS wants to define what a religion is and does.

The fascism of the contraceptive advocates. Sr. Mary Ann Walsh responds: 'In a tacit acknowledgement that this violates the Constitution's cherished respect for religious liberty, HHS provides an exemption for religious employers -- but with a catch. The church agency can only claim exemption if it primarily serves people of its own faith. It also must meet other requirements, such as employing mostly people of its own faith. 'This means HHS is setting itself up to determine what constitutes church ministry and who Jesus meant when he referred to serving "the least of my brethren."' This nation was founded and established state-by-state by religious dissenters who disagreed with the rulers, whoever they might have been. Our constitutional law was developed case-by-case (and seldom by statute) by Congregationalists, Baptists, Anabaptists, Methodists, Mormons, Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, and many others who would not accept the intolerant decrees of arbitrary governments. Would you like to submit a comment as solicited by the Federal Register? Please do. Click here.

9/11 Thoughts

It's now been ten years since I sat in an office tower and heard about passenger jets deliberately rammed into the two towers of the WTC.  I listened to the radio and found that every broadcaster was covering it: ESPN, FM-Rock, etc.  I felt helpless and depressed.  The "tower jumpers" caught on camera illustrate the despair of those days.

In retrospect, I wish President Bush had called for volunteers.  I was already too old for military service, but I would have done anything else.  This blog is my weak attempt to discuss the pathologies of our world.  I wish I had something original to say today, but I am proud of my several writings on the attacks and their effects.

Despair did not win.  We Americans are a people of faith.  Our faith is not unified, but that means that our faith is not dependent on any particular cult or priesthood.  We have faith in the future.  We are the children of those who gambled the present to cross an ocean (or the Rio Grande) to come to a country where they might be able to make their own way.  We are not one republic but tens of thousands, if not tens of millions, of little republics, where people learn to govern and to advance themselves (sometimes well and sometimes not so well).  We are more diffused and far more creative, even in a bad decade, than the nihilists who hate us.

I'll conclude by linking to Russell Kirk and leaving the exhortation: Nil desperandum.

Rick Perry and Me

I don't know him. I never paid attention to him until this past month. I am a student of American messianism, and I am just as concerned about the conservatives' search for a messiah in 2012 as the liberals' finding one in 2008. If we are (un)lucky, Rick Perry is a conservative Bill Clinton and will show great political talents. There is something about him that indicates his ambition has no bounds, that he might be politically brilliant but lacking in what Edmund Burke called the "moral imagination." But as a matter of practice, I generally don't endorse presidential candidates until they are out of office, if not dead.

"The Ugliness of Cheering for Capital Punishment"

Rod Dreher makes a good point.

When I taught prep school, we would have more than one expulsion per year. Even when the expelled student was trouble to all, there was no rejoicing when he was gone. An expulsion is a failure. Expulsion means the school failed to do what it was established to do: to lead a teenager to maturity, reasoned judgment, and ordered liberty. That's not to say that the expelled student did not usually force the school to take such radical action to prevent the poisonous actions of one to undermine the school as a whole. An expulsion was sometimes necessary to prevent the undisciplined student from taking down one or more good students with him.

Likewise with the death penalty. If we have to execute a heinous criminal because he is a threat to public safety as long as he is alive, that is nothing to cheer about. Such criminals are few and far between and generally have death-cult followings. There is societal failure in the execution of a psychopath, even if his execution was a public necessity.

The Catholic Catechism says:

2267 Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor. If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent."

Electricity is restored.

We lost our electric power on Labor Day as Tropical Storm Lee gave Alabama a Panamanian rainy season. It was restored on Thursday afternoon. My daughter did her homework by flashlight.

My first Latin Mass

We went to Blessed Sacrament today with my father. He has not been inside the old and beautiful parish since my cousin was baptized in 1948. It is in a part of town that now has few Catholics. The bishop has designated it as the parish in the diocese where the Latin Mass is prayed every Sunday. So we went out of curiosity and a sense of history.

Knowing my conservative friends and views, some might ask: Why did you wait so long? There are several reasons. 1. I became a Catholic because of the witness of post-Vatican II Catholics. 2. I have watched vicious battles in the Episcopal church over liturgy and want to avoid them in the faith I have chosen. 3. It was never convenient. 4. I love the Church, even those in it whose liturgical practices I hope wither away.

There is more to say later. Much to take in.

Much to write... little time and lots of pain

We now live in Alabama. Our stuff, most of it at least, is now in our new home. I've been working here since April, so it is great to have us all united. We are meeting our neighbors as we walk our dogs. My daughter is enrolled in a parochial school run by the Nashville Dominicans. Click on the link and listen to them sing!

Two weeks ago we went to early Mass in Georgia and that afternoon packed a cargo van full of our most precious stuff. When I unloaded it that night in Alabama, I dislocated my shoulder. It still hurts.

I went to confession for breaking the Sabbath. Readers of this blog know that last summer I got the very strong conviction that doing routine chores and work, unless it is an emergency (not an obsessive-compulsion disguised as an emergency), is to cheat God. I cheated God and paid for it. He "arranged" the Israelites' Exodus. Why should I worry about logistics?

Pray for us. We are overwhelmed, and I cannot manhandle these boxes. We have some nibbles from would-be renters of our Georgia house. We thank God for them. Some stresses are coming to an end, but we still need to get settled, and we can't find much of anything yet.

My wife and I attended Our Lady of Sorrows Church last Sunday and sang in the choir. We were welcomed as family. They loved my mother very much. During the prayer before Mass the choir leader mentioned Mom by name and thanked God for her presence. Present she was!

If you didn't have a word for "Holy Spirit," you might have to invent it to describe people like my mother. To meet her was to remember her. She spread a lot of love, humor, and good cheer. Her fellow choir members appreciated her, and they embrace my family with all her warmth.


So here I am in my native city taking care of the living through the graces given by the dead. As Etienne Gilson said, "The dead alone give us energy." What could be more true!

[Above: Our Lady of Sorrows Church, Homewood, AL, and Saint Gianna Beretta Molla, now a close friend of my mother.]