Jesusland 1, Anti-H8 Brigade 0

Well, it certainly didn't take long for A&E to quack . . . er, crack. 

"Tolerance" is one thing in television. Money is another, and in this case money won. A&E execs could see the network losing a lot of it if Duck Dynasty went away.

"After discussions with the Robertson family, as well as consulting with numerous advocacy groups, A&E has decided to resume filming Duck Dynasty later this spring with the entire Robertson family," the channel said in a statement. 

In an apparent gesture to the advocacy groups, A&E said that it would "also use this moment" to broadcast public service announcements "promoting unity, tolerance and acceptance among all people."

EXPECT THE Forces of Tolerance (TM) to pitch another fit. Because that's what we do in this country.

Ol' Phil from Jesusland

 

Nuance is dead.

Hyperbole is alive.

Willfully reading the worst into every word out of every mouth, then demonizing The Other for "hate speech" is a growth industry for which there is no apparent ceiling.

OK, so Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty notoriety ain't down with the gay agenda. Considering that he's a 67-year-old evangelical Christian from north Louisiana, that should be no surprise. 

Given that the A&E cable network is raking in record earnings based on the proposition that the hirsute, duck-call-making Robertson clan is a postmodern version of the Beverly Hillbillies -- minus the Beverly Hills part -- and do wacky things because they're wacky rednecks, it beggars credulity that the TV execs are shocked and offended that ol' Phil gave an interview that sounded like something you'd expect from Ol' Phil from Bumf***, Louisiana. For example:

“We’re Bible-thumpers who just happened to end up on television,” he tells me. “You put in your article that the Robertson family really believes strongly that if the human race loved each other and they loved God, we would just be better off. We ought to just be repentant, turn to God, and let’s get on with it, and everything will turn around.”

(snip)

“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” he says. Then he paraphrases Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”

I GUESS some things are too real for "reality" TV. Probably a good quarter of the United States' population is too "real" for TV, actually.

Two things are absolutely true today. First, we are a nation divided and at each other's throats. Second, what a person says is way more important than what a person does, and the muddled things we think -- or haven't thought out, exactly -- will get us written out of polite humanity, regardless of how we actually live our lives or treat our fellow man.

Amid the never-ending tribal warfare that passes for American society today, Phil Robertson made the fatal error of sounding weird in saying something politically incorrect. The man A&E made famous for being a "good ol' boy" -- a rich good ol' boy, but a good ol' boy nevertheless --  has been made a non-person for living out his typecasting.

And 25 percent of Americans just got the message, loud and clear. Throw another stick of dynamite on the fire, wouldja?

One thing I appreciate about being Catholic is that Catholicism knows the value of nuance when it comes to things like homosexuality. In other words, we try to make it clear that the person is not the sin, and the condition is not the sin. Only the sin is the sin -- it's what we do that can become problematic, not what we are or who we are.

OR . . . as the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about homosexuality:

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,141 tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."142 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

I WISH Robertson had the moral, cultural and religious vocabulary to have been a lot more nuanced about this matter. And not flippantly gross. (You'll know it when you read it in the GQ piece.)

Saying the right thing the right way probably wouldn't have kept GLAAD's indignant harpies at bay, and it might not have even kept Ol' Phil in the good graces of Hollywood, Inc. It, however, would have been more faithful to the biblical truth Robertson seeks to proclaim -- and added just a little clear water to the muck of another culture-war fever swamp.

*  *  *

THEN, OF COURSE, there's what Ol' Phil from Bumf***, La., had to say about race. Which, again, is utterly unsurprising. Which means the man is completely clueless, and perhaps morally obtuse.

As others have said, he's lucky the gays have made such a stink because it's taking attention away from this:

“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field.... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”

OH, GOD . . .  the Happy Negroes live on in Southern lore. This ain't religious; this is the staying power of a disordered and deviant culture. This is how one is formed by that rotten culture, and formed to the point where the deviant looks completely normal.

Where vice looks like virtue. Where empathy not only fails, but moral blindness prevails.

And it's just ignorant.

Well, we at least can say Phil Robertson deserves a good shunning because of that, right? Well . . . hold on there, Hoss. There's this:

Willie has just come back from Washington, D.C., where he accepted an award at the Angels in Adoption Gala. (He and his wife, Korie, adopted a biracial child named Will and are dedicated advocates of the practice.) As we speak, there’s a film crew outside the house, prepping for a State Farm ad that the family will be shooting here on the property tomorrow. The Robertsons receive more than 500 media requests a day, and Willie had to negotiate down to four shooting days a week with A&E just so the family would have a bit of breathing room. Phil knows it won’t last. He can already see that the end is near, and he’s prepared for it.

MR. IGNORANT REDNECK managed to raise a son who adopted a biracial child. He raised a son who tirelessly advocates adopting biracial children.

I'd say it would be reasonable to assume Phil Robertson loves that half-black grandbaby with all his heart. No matter what crazy s*** he said for the benefit of a magazine writer. Meantime:

“So you and your woman: Are y’all Bible people?”

Not really, I’m sorry to say.

“If you simply put your faith in Jesus coming down in flesh, through a human being, God becoming flesh living on the earth, dying on the cross for the sins of the world, being buried, and being raised from the dead—yours and mine and everybody else’s problems will be solved. And the next time we see you, we will say: ‘You are now a brother. Our brother.’ So then we look at you totally different then. See what I’m saying?”

I think so?

We hop back in the ATV and plow toward the sunset, back to the Robertson home. There will be no family dinner tonight. No cameras in the house. No rowdy squirrel-hunting stories from back in the day. There will be only the realest version of Phil Robertson, hosting a private Bible study with a woman who, according to him, “has been on cocaine for years and is making her decision to repent. I’m going to point her in the right direction.”

OBVIOUSLY, we're dealing with a horrible person here. Absolutely irredeemable. Mandatorily ostracizable.

Life isn't always logical, and neither are the people who live it. A lot of times, the heart is a lot smarter than the brain, and our actions are a lot nobler than our words. God forbid that the total of our human worth should be less than the sum of our all-too-human faults.

Not that that matters anymore. Not here, not now.

Crucify him!

Deck the halls with ginned-up outrage

If somebody had to say it, chances are that Jon Stewart just did.

"Uff course Kris Kringle iss vhite!"

A Festivus pole made out of beer cans at the Florida state capitol? That I find hilarious.

Fox News cynically using the commemoration of the Savior's birth to manufacture outrage, ill will and hatred of one's fellow man? That is as truly disturbing as it is completely predictable.

The TV gathering spot for pissed-off people on the political right might have "news" as part of its name, but it seems to have a lot more in common with Joseph Goebbels than it does with Edward R. Murrow.

The cynicism on display by Fox News regarding "the war on Christmas" is astounding, coming as it is from people casually cashing in on the sacred as they appeal to the worst demons of their viewership.

The red dawn of a new day? Oy veh.

 

We Americans think "the social gospel" is just fine.

Just so long as it stays where it belongs -- between 30 and 33 A.D. The Bible talks about things from long ago in the Holy Land, allowing us plenty of time and distance to reframe both message and Messenger a bit more to our liking.

We can deal with that. Things were simpler then -- it was before Obamacare.

But if you really want to see the fit hit the shan, start preaching and teaching -- and, Dow Jones forbid, living -- "the social gospel" today . . . which is to say living "the gospel" today, because Christianity isn't an à la carte deal, it's a combination plate. That combination plate gave "orthodox" Judaism gas in 33 A.D., it gave the Romans gas for 280 years, give or take, and it gives everybody gas today.

Particularly, Pope Francis' renewed emphasis on "the social gospel" -- you know, "blessed are the poor" and "the meek shall inherit the land" -- has a whole lot of "orthodox" Catholics in a toot. The latest blow-up comes in the wake of a couple of American speeches given by one of Francis' trusted advisers, Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras.

There was, for one, writer and editor John Zmirak on Rod Dreher's American Conservative blog:

Cardinal Maradiaga’s vision of the future of the Catholic Church is really a yellowed snapshot of the past—of the recent past of the Anglican church, which has buried the clear and consistent doctrines of Christianity, in favor of social activism on behalf of foolish and counterproductive policies. The result was predictable; it became spiritually irrelevant, a decorative tassel hanging from the left wing of public opinion, while its most fervent believers split off to found new churches that actually taught the Gospel, or decamped for Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy. If the Catholic Church follows its lead, to the point where it throws infallibility into question, the same thing will happen. Expect a torrent of converts to the Orthodox Church—made up of the most active, fervent, believing, Catholics.

As a North American who is grateful for the relative religious and economic freedom that produced a successful country, I reject the Marxian bromides being offered by men whose countries have never known such freedom. Amidst all Maradiaga’s rhetoric about Gospel solidarity with the poor, I smell more than whiff of brimstone, of a national and regional envy that has no clue how to lift up the impoverished, but would happily settle for tearing down the prosperous.

WHAT WAS the pope just saying about the dangers of ideology? And what exactly prompted such a furious reaction?

Stuff like this: 

The Church is not the hierarchy, but the people of God. “The People of God” is, for the Council, the all-encompassing reality of the Church that goes back to the basic and the common stuff of our ecclesial condition; namely, our condition as believers. And that is a condition shared by us all. The hierarchy has no purpose in itself and for itself, but only in reference and subordination to the community. The function of the hierarchy is redefined in reference to Jesus as Suffering Servant, not as “Pantocrator” (lord and emperor of this world); only from the perspective of someone crucified by the powers of this world it is possible to found, and to explain, the authority of the Church. The hierarchy is a ministry (diakonia = service) that requires lowering ourselves to the condition of servants. To take that place (the place of weakness and poverty) is her own, her very own responsibility.

ME, I was thinking "About damned time!" 

I also was thinking "This model either would have made the Scandals a lot less likely, or it would have enabled lay Catholics to deal with them a lot more effectively -- through less clericalism and more ass kicking." But that's just me. I'm a Bad Catholic who can digest clericalism and humorless scolds on the religious right no better than I can soulless Marty Haugen ditties during Mass or cheap-gracers on the liturgical left.

If I were just smarter and holier, I would have been able to discern the Red Menace lurking beneath the surface of passages like this from the cardinal's Dallas address:

There is no possible reform of the Church without a return to Jesus. The Church only has a future and can only consider herself great by humbly trying to follow Jesus. To discern what constitutes abuse or infidelity within the Church we have no other measure but the Gospel. Many of the traditions established in the Church could lead her to a veritable self-imprisonment. The truth will set us free, humility will give us wings and will open new horizons for us.

If the Church seeks to follow Jesus, all she has to do is to continue telling the world what happened to Jesus, proclaiming His teachings and His life. Jesus was not a sovereign of this world, He was not rich, but instead He lived as a poor villager, He proclaimed his program – the Kingdom of God—and the great of this world (Roman Empire and Synagogue together) persecuted and eliminated Him. His sentence to die on the cross, outside the city, is the clearest evidence yet that He did not want to ingratiate himself with the powers of this world. Shattered by their power, He is the Suffering Servant, an image of innumerable other servants, defeated by the ones who rule and call themselves “lords;” but it was He, poor, silenced, and humiliated, who was designated by his Father as His Beloved Child and whom God Himself resurrected on the third day.

THE MAN even referenced that noted pinko, Blessed John Paul II:

In contemporary pontifical magisterium, we have two significant benchmarks: John Paul II’s 1990 Encyclical Redemptoris Missio, and the apostolic letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, from the same pontiff, in 2001. “In Redemptoris Missio, the Pope teaches us that the Church is a mission. It is not that she has a mission, like she has other traits; she is herself a mission. Everything in the Church should be weighted and measured in regard to the mission of converting the world.” 

And in Novo Millennio Ineunte, Blessed John Paul II challenges the Church at the end of the Great Jubilee of the year 2000, to leave behind the shallow waters of maintaining the institution and travel to the deep waters of evangelization. That is what Jesus tells his disciples in Chapter 12 of Luke, adding: “Duc in altum, put out into the deep.” [Luke 5: 4] This means that the Church will convert the world not by argument, but by example. There is no doubt that doctrinal argument is important, but people will be attracted by the humanity of Christians, those who live by the faith, who live in a human way, who irradiate the joy of living, the consistency in their behavior.

FOR WHAT it's worth, my wife and I are converts to the Catholic faith. No one argued us into the church; a number of people loved us into it.

Meantime, the Rev. Dwight Longenecker worries that the gospel will get lost in a sea of "social work." Because, obviously, all you need isn't love. Or something like that.

I am not so much worried about what Cardinal Maradiaga said, but what he left unsaid.

And there the Church, in humble company, helps making life intelligible and dignified, making it a community of equals, without castes or classes; without rich or poor; without impositions or anathemas. Her foremost goal is to care for the penultimate (hunger, housing, clothing, shoes, health, education…) to be then able to care for the ultimate, those problems that rob us of sleep after work (our finiteness, our solitude before death, the meaning of life, pain, and evil…). The answer the Church gives to the “penultimate” will entitle her to speak about the “ultimate.” For that reason, the Church must show herself as a Samaritan on earth – so she can some day partake of the eternal goods.

Really? The Church’s foremost goal is to provide housing, shoes, health and education? Surely the church’s foremost goal is the salvation of souls. To be sure we must be engaged in feeding the poor, but in his talk on the New Evangelization the Cardinal does not mention the salvation of souls or the spiritual work of the church or the sacraments at all. Is he simply a social worker dressed in red, and does the red indicate more of his political opinion than his status as a cardinal?

REALLY? What part of "the answer the Church gives to the 'penultimate' will entitle her to speak about the 'ultimate'" is unclear?

Again, I am a convert. I was "penultimated" into the Catholic Church. After all, God meets you where you are, not where He thinks you need to be. Where you need to be is a process -- one lasting a lifetime.

By the way, I only can assume that the good father's cheap shot about Maradiaga being a "social worker dressed in red" or maybe just a Red, period, was for the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls. I've seen stranger things done -- in all sincerity -- for the sake of kingdom come.

Ideology takes the invitation that is the Christian gospel and makes it into a hammer. Ideology takes suffering souls and turns them into nails -- into the proverbial Them.

Ideology say: Us, we so holy.

I'M NOT sure how much the cardinal's American trip told us about what direction the Catholic Church is headed. I fear the collective cerebral hemorrhage we're seeing so early in Francis' pontificate tells us a lot about the Catholic right.

"Cafeteria Catholicism," alas, is a bipartisan thing. And the cafeteria is getting crowded.

A blessed Christmas

 

Isaiah Chapter 9

1

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; Upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone.

2

You have brought them abundant joy and great rejoicing, As they rejoice before you as at the harvest, as men make merry when dividing spoils.

3

For the yoke that burdened them, the pole on their shoulder, And the rod of their taskmaster you have smashed, as on the day of Midian.

4

For every boot that tramped in battle, every cloak rolled in blood, will be burned as fuel for flames.

5

For a child is born to us, a son is given us; upon his shoulder dominion rests. They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.

6

His dominion is vast and forever peaceful, From David's throne, and over his kingdom, which he confirms and sustains By judgment and justice, both now and forever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this!

Tweets from the tolerant

This is America, which now means that if you express the "wrong" opinion, the "right" people are justified in doing any damned thing they want to you.

Three words to that, Roseanne: "Eat mor chikin."

With that, we begin another episode of Tweets From the Tolerant, brought to you by the Internet . . . if you have nothing constructive to say, say it here!

* * *

Suck my d*** chick filet- nazi chicken f***ing pricks

-- Roseanne Barr,
flunked sex ed, biology
(via Twitter)

anyone who eats S*** Fil-A deserves to get the cancer that is sure to come from eating antibiotic filled tortured chickens 4Christ

-- Roseanne Barr,
humanitarian

off to grab a s*** fil-A sandwich on my way to worshipping Christ, supporting Aipac and war in Iran.

-- Roseanne Barr,
??????????????????

christian liars: i never wished cancer on you at all-jesus will punish u 4 ur deceit-I said processed foods cause cancer.

-- Roseanne Barr,
angry theologian

I lost two brothers to cancer, Roseanne. What a truly heinous thing to say.

-- Jim Henson,
OBVIOUSLY a hater

Retreading my tweet I realize that I used the wrong word-I shouldn't have used the word deserves

I shouldn't have used the word deserves in my tweet and I apologize

-- Roseanne Barr,
got a call from agent

Tomatoes and shoes be with you

Some loonies on the right-hand side of America's great divide think Barack Obama is a Muslim. Or a "Muslin," as the case may be.

They miss the point.

It doesn't matter whether the president of the United States is a Muslim, a Christian, a Jew or a Druid, the bottom line is that U.S. policy -- just as under the evangelical George W. Bush -- is to be very, very upset when Arab despots murder their fellow Muslims but not so upset when Christians get slaughtered by Islamists under "democratic" regimes in the region. In this respect, President Obama is no better than Bush 43 . . . and probably even worse.

The mainstream American press generally won't point this out. Americans by and large will not call "bullshit" where bullshit needs to be called.

Egyptian Christians will, though. It is their lives on the line and -- Boy, howdy! -- did they give Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the business Sunday. Good on them. The tomato-and-shoe toss rather made the point, methinks.


CHANTING "Monica!" was a little 1998, however. From the newly rebranded NBCNews.com (formerly MSNBC):

Prominent Christian Egyptians snubbed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sunday because they feel the U.S. administration favors Islamist parties over secular and liberal forces in society at the expense of Egypt's 8 million Christians.

The critical theme was repeated by others Sunday in Cairo and Alexandria despite Clinton denying U.S. interference in Egyptian elections.

The politicians, businessmen and clerics who snubbed Clinton were supposed to take part in meetings between Clinton and influential members of civil society.

Coptic Christian businessman and politician Naguib Sawiris and three other Coptic politicians said in a statement they were objecting to Clinton's policies in solidarity with the mainstream Egyptian.

They also said that since the revolution, the U.S. administration and Clinton have paid many visits in support of Islamic political currents in society while ignoring other civil movements.

The four prominent Copts consider the meeting with the Islamist parties a form of external pressure to push the Islamists to power and ignore other civil movements. They blamed the U.S. for even showing a preference for an Islamist presidential candidate.

Egypt, a nation of nearly 84 million, is 90 percent Muslim, 9 percent Coptic and 1 percent other Christian denominations.

Two church leaders also turned their back on Clinton.

Coptic Bishop Morcos and Evangelical church leader Safwat al Bayadi refused to meet with Clinton because of what they characterized as interference in Egyptian internal affairs and U.S. support for Islamists while ignoring the majority of Egyptians.

A few hundred protesters chanted the same message in front of the Garden City Four Seasons hotel where Clinton overnighted.

I WONDER whether Obama will offer aggrieved Middle Eastern Christians the same kind of "compromise" he's offered Catholics and others over contraception coverage in the health-insurance mandate? In other words, not much of one at all.

For the sort of people who populate the Obama Administration, some lives are more important than others. At home, it's anybody's over A) the unborn or B) Christians with principles differing from those of secularist, "progressive" Democrats.

Everywhere else, it's anybody's over Christians who stand to be A) slaughtered by the winners of "democratic" elections or B) driven by the same from lands where they have lived since the dawn of Christianity itself.

Of course, thanks to the constitutional separation of church and state, the United States has no state religion. That is right and good.

But this is ridiculous.

'Pretend it's Obama!'

Louisiana strikes again.

And again.

And again.

Sunday evening, at Greenwell Springs Baptist Church in Central, near Baton Rouge, the pastor told the congregation at a Rick Santorum rally that "this nation was founded as a Christian nation." And if you don't like how we roll in that regard, "Get out!"

"There is one God, and his name is Jesus!" shouted the Rev. Dennis Terry.

In the sanctuary, a massive American flag hung behind him. On the video of his remarks, nowhere could you see a cross.

THEN on Wednesday, Saints fans all across Louisiana became irate that the National Football League hammered their team over its practice of paying bounties for injuring opposing players. The fine, Christian people of the Gret Stet may believe, technically, in "Thou shalt not kill" but point out that the good book never said "Thou shalt not cripple the other team for cash."

Besides, everybody else does it.

And today, during a Santorum event at a West Monroe shooting range, a woman in the crowd drawled "Pretend it's Obama!" as the Republican presidential candidate, .45 in hand, drew a bead on a silhouette target.

People around her laughed.

BECAUSE that's how people roll in the Christianest part of Christian America -- "Thou shalt not kill . . . unless it's that commerniss son-of-a-bitch Barack Obama." It's in the Bible -- somewhere in the black . . . uh, back.

"And if you don't love America, and you don't like the way we do things, I have just one thing to say. Get out!"

I think the "or else" is -- click -- understood.

A blessed Christmas

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom
a light has shone.
You have brought them abundant joy
and great rejoicing,
as they rejoice before you as at the harvest,
as people make merry when dividing spoils.
For the yoke that burdened them,
the pole on their shoulder,
and the rod of their taskmaster
you have smashed, as on the day of Midian.
For every boot that tramped in battle,
every cloak rolled in blood,
will be burned as fuel for flames.
For a child is born to us, a son is given us;
upon his shoulder dominion rests.
They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero,
Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.
His dominion is vast
and forever peaceful,
from David's throne, and over his kingdom,
which he confirms and sustains
by judgment and justice,
both now and forever.
The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this!

-- Isaiah 9:1-6

Death comes for the archbishop

Sooner or later, death comes for us all. We all must meet our Maker.

Probably, no one knew this better than New Orleans' retired Archbishop Phillip Hannan, who died early Thursday at 98. In World War II, he was a paratrooper chaplain on the front lines in bloody Europe, administering last rites of the Catholic Church to American GIs and German soldiers alike amid the chaos of the battlefield.

Think about that one for a moment. If you dare.

In 1963, as an auxiliary bishop in Washington, he delivered the eulogy for his slain friend John F. Kennedy. In 1968, as archbishop of New Orleans, he did the same for Bobby Kennedy.

Hannan came to New Orleans in the devastating wake of Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and, at 92, rode out the fury of Katrina in 2005. The archbishop knew death better than most.


THIS, as recounted in The Times-Picayune, is how the old archbishop, his body finally spent, began his journey home a few days ago:

On Saturday, with the end apparently near, the few people around the archbishop's bed included his brother, Jerry Hannan, 89, who had flown in from Bethesda, Md.; the archbishop’s nephew, Tom; his oldest and closest New Orleans friend, Alden “Doc” Laborde, the oil-field entrepreneur; Saints owner Tom Benson and his wife, Gayle; restaurateur Klara Cvitanovich, who for years sent Hannan a daily take-out lunch from Drago’s; and a few others.

“It was an emotional time for all of us there,” Aymond said Thursday. “It was clear he knew some of what was going on.

“I gave no homily,” Aymond said. “I simply pointed at him and said he IS the living homily.

“He taught us in many ways how to live, but I think he taught us how to grow old gracefully.

“For a man who was independent, he became totally dependent on others, and never, ever complained about it.”

'Sounds good to me.'

Aymond said Hannan had already been anointed several times with the Sacrament of the Sick. This final Mass, the last of uncounted thousands in Hannan’s life, would be his last reception of the Eucharist.

In the early part of the ritual, Aymond and the others jointly confessed their sins in prayer, and as part of the rite, Aymond said he granted Hannan absolution from his sins in the name of Jesus.

Though weak and perhaps not entirely alert, Aymond said Hannan whispered a response.

They are what so far are his last recorded words:

He said: “Sounds good to me.”

“He was reassured, and knew God was forgiving him,” Aymond said.

With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps

The above video contains not-so-adult language. NSFW.

Apparently, this video was the big thing on the Internets last week.

Today, the big thing on the Internets is a debate on whether last week's big thing on the Internets was all a big set-up for the benefit of Bristol Palin's reality-TV show. That's TMZ's and the Today show website's story, and Bristol's co-star is sticking to it.

Today's blog, The Clicker, posts the above video and warns "The following video contains adult language." Trust me, there's nothing adult about any of it.

There's nothing adult about Bristol Palin cashing in on being an unwed-mother daughter of a flaky Alaska politician with national pretensions. There's nothing adult about doing the above clad in an "Empowered" sweatshirt (Phil. 4:13) with a "lightning" cross.

There's nothing adult about a half-drunk guy yelling whether Bristol rode baby-daddy Levi Johnson like the mechanical bull she was on. Or adding that "Your mother's a f***ing whore! She's the devil!"

THERE'S NOT a thing adult about Bristol -- wrapped in the cross Jesus Christ hung and died on -- getting in the guy's face and asking "Is it because you're a homosexual?" (Oddly enough, she apparently jumped to the correct conclusion.)

And there's nothing adult about this confrontation going on and on, with a camera crew to record the whole thing and put it on the Internet . . . and later, television.


NOPE. Nothing adult to be found in TMZ tracking down the profane heckler to get the "scoop" on whether it was all a put-up deal, and nothing adult in Stephen Hanks justifying his bad behavior with his passion for politics. There, however, was plenty ironic about his saying he was originally from Louisiana and, therefore, knew white trash when he saw it.

Probably in the mirror every day. Just a wild guess on my part.

Finally, I wonder whether there's anything adult about my giving all these people an extension on their 15 minutes of fame. I wonder whether there's anything adult about adding to our nation's cultural and media dysfunction by highlighting all this bad behavior going on in the name of ratings and revenue.

I tell myself it's because it's all so metaphorical. That it somehow sums up who and what we've become as Americans today.

I fancy myself as being the "adult" here. The adult pointing and yelling "Look at the freaks! Look at the freaks!"

Lord have mercy, I think we all may be "the freaks" here. May someday we be "Empowered" (ZAP!) to just stop.

After all, "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me."

Simply '70s: Lady Gaga, meinen Arsch

How sad is American culture today?

Let's take a look at the score sheet: Marxist East Germany (1974) gives us Nina Hagen und Automobil. Capitalist America (2008) gives us a pale imitation, Lady Gaga und blecch.

Advantage, communism.


OF COURSE, the totalitarian state had its limits. Thus, the First Fraulein of Punk (der punken?) was not perfected until she fled the dictatorship of the proletariat for West Germany, and then spent time in pre-Thatcherite England amid the emergence of The Clash and the Sex Pistols.

Advantage, democratic socialism.

Above, we see Hagen during a 1979 TV appearance.


CALL ME when Lady Gaga has the guts to do this one.

Of course, back when I worked in Catholic radio, the sight of Nina Hagen singing a punk version of "Ave Maria" would have been cause for an epidemic of the vapors. Trust me, the good God-fearin' folk would be going all Rick Perry on the sacrilegious Kraut faster than Mother Angelica could say “Remember to keep us between your gas and electric bill.”

This is why I'm glad the good Lord got me out of there before I lost the rest of my faith. Trust me, it was close. (As always, your mileage may vary.)

But then you take a look at the translation of the German lyrics Hagen put to Franz Schubert's famous melody:

Ave Maria, Maria of whom I sing
We are asking you for mercy
For people who have already been waiting so long
Totally without hope
Totally without hope

See there, their unhappy lives
It hungers deep, from fear of death
Millions live here on the earth
Still yet, in greatest need

Ave Maria
Ave Maria, Saint Maria
Hear my prayers Maria
Where much suffering has already occurred
Why always does more hurt follow more hurt
Let the people have faith again
Let them understand and forgive
Then all peoples could become friends
And all the races could be brothers
Ave Maria

LIKE I SAID, let's see Gaga have the gu-guts to go onstage and belt out that one.

It takes a thief?

They don't make charismatic religious luminaries like they used to.

And even back in the day, especially in the Catholic universe, the record was spotty. For every Bishop Fulton Sheen, you also had a Father Charles Coughlin.

It's only gotten worse from there. Today, we have an entire order established by a dead, now-discredited pervert. We have bishops complicit in covering up child sexual abuse by priests.

We have a church in which the historical practice of Catholicism has become foreign to actual Catholics. And we have many "orthodox" Catholics so desperate for authenticity, authority and moral teaching that they latch on to the craziest things -- and people.

The list of such recent -- and, frankly, cultish -- figures is a long one, starting with the Rev. Marcial Maciel, serial abuser, personality-cult figure and founder of the Legion of Christ and its lay organization, Regnum Christi. Among them are "rock-star priests" like Father Ken Roberts, Father Thomas Euteneuer . . . and now Father John Corapi.

All have "fallen" amid sex scandals. All have diehard followers who, in some cases even years later, are sure "they" framed their man because he "told it like it is."

The desperation and confusion of the faithful amid the collapse of catechesis, practice and authority within Catholicism reminds me of the wayward penguin recently discovered in New Zealand. It had lost its bearings, swam far from its Antarctic home and was found eating wet sand, thinking it snow.

Catholics now are "liberal" or "conservative," warring factions rallying behind "orthodox" or "progressive" gurus and sure that God is on their side. Never do they wonder whether they are on God's.

And they follow their guru, like lemmings, to the edge of the abyss. Some jump. Others beg their guru not to leave them, because such dynamism is so hard to come by that the Kingdom of Heaven may not survive its loss. That may be an overstatement -- but not much of one.


IRONICALLY ENOUGH, it was Corapi who gave us the best explanation of our current sad state of affairs, both literal and figurative. The priest -- whose now-former religious order today adjudged him guilty of various transgressions, sexual and otherwise -- hypocritically, it now seems, "told it like it is" in an interview with Legatus magazine.

Maybe "it takes a thief," so to speak.

When enough Catholics become true to their calling, a great power will be unleashed. The reason we have this mess, in my estimation, is because the vast majority of Catholics have not lived their faith. We have a billion Catholics on the face of the earth. If they knew their faith, lived their faith, loved their faith, I assure you that the world would be a very different place.

The United States, the situation would be profoundly different if we had 60-70 million Catholics truly living their faith. But, of course, as many as 80% don’t even go to Mass on Sunday — and that’s a precept! So we have a long way to go. But it has to be kind of grassroots, one person at a time. That is why the Church has always encouraged personal holiness, because that is where the reform is going to come from.

(snip)

I’ve been a harsh critic of ourselves, meaning the Church leadership — priests, bishops and theologians. I don’t think we’ve done a particularly good job in my lifetime. We’ve had great popes; the top of the hierarchy has always been fantastic. But we’ve had a serious problem with “middle management.” There has been a significant problem with bishops and priests. Although, it’s better now than it was 20 years ago. However, the vast majority of Catholics aren’t even going to Church, so we shouldn’t wonder that the Church has been losing its influence on an increasingly secularized society.

You have to ask yourself why people have drifted away. I’m sure there are a lot of societal reasons. We don’t have control over those reasons, but we have control over the reasons inside the Church. You can start with the top. There is an old saying: “The fish stinks from the head down.” Lousy leadership is a disaster.

I once asked an old Carmelite nun why we have a crisis of leadership inside the Church as well as in the secular order. She never batted an eye. She had been a nun for over 60 years and a prioress for decades. She said, “That’s easy. Punishment for sin.” Why do we have bad leadership? Punishment for sin. It’s very biblical. You go back to the Old Testament and you see that leadership was removed from the people of God, the chosen people, because of infidelity to the covenant. They cried out to God because they had no priest, prophet or king. Why not? Because they were unfaithful.

One can recall what happened during the tenure of Pope Paul VI, when he came out with his landmark and prophetic encyclical Humane Vitae. Significant numbers of bishops, priests, theologians and others rejected it. They absolutely rejected it. The majority of Canadian bishops signed the infamous Winnipeg Statement that just categorically rejected Humane Vitae. That kind of rebellion is catastrophic. Paul VI was prophetic with that encyclical and much of what he warned about has come to pass.

WHO KNEW that Father Corapi might be conducting field research on infidelity and the lack of personal holiness as he spoke?

Meantime, it's the rest of us who note yet another scandal by yet another proclaimer of the gospel, then get back to our field research on the ongoing "catastrophic" effects of the ongoing Catholic "crisis of leadership" and the rebellion of those who presume to fill the vacuum.

Somebody had to say it

It seems that this -- embodied in the tea party movement, the reigning conception of "conservatism," and those at the helm of the Republican Party today -- is America's "Ayn Rand moment."

And it is not a conservative meme being embraced by "God-fearing" conservatives all across the land, one that's absolutely pervasive across the country's Bible Belt. Instead, it is an absolutely radical one.

It is a movement devoted to turning traditional morality on its head, taking Darwinism out of the biology books and inserting it into the heart of civil society and relegating Father, Son and Holy Ghost to the ash heap of history . . . and the Sermon on the Mount with them.

It's deeply ironic, this embrace of a societal "fifth column" by all manner of folk most concerned about a fifth columnist in the White House. I'm sure Rand would have appreciated the irony, but I can't decide whether she would be horrified by the irrational embrace of objectivism by those she surely would deride as mediocrities and "second handers" or welcome the slack-jawed assistance.

It's rather like Homo sapiens taking a PAC donation from Neanderthals for Natural Selection.

You can't be a Christian and buy into Ayn Rand, too. Christianity and objectivism are mutually exclusive. This circle cannot be squared -- if you set out on a mission to "pick and choose" useful, non-contradictory parts of objectivism and the gospel of Jesus Christ to fashion into a blueprint for society, you wouldn't have enough of either to even rise to the level of incoherence.

And at long last, some folks (above) are calling Republicans and tea partiers on their sins against both God and reason. You not only can't be a Christian and a Randian, but you can't even be a conservative while making like Atlas and shrugging.


DON'T TRUST ME, listen to what Ayn Rand herself had to say about faith and society. She never wanted to "conserve" anything about society as Americans understood it; she wanted to blow it up and replace it with one of her own conception.

Take particular note of what Rand says starting at 4:15 in this 1959 Mike Wallace interview.

WALLACE: You put this philosophy to work in your novel Atlas Shrugged. . .

RAND: That's right.

WALLACE: . . . you demonstrate it in human terms in your novel Atlas Shrugged. And let me start by quoting from a review of this novel, Atlas Shrugged, that appeared in Newsweek. It said that you are out to destroy almost every edifice in the contemporary American way of life, our Judeo-Christian religion, our modified, government-regulated capitalism, our rule by the majority will. Other reviews have said that you scorn churches and the concept of God. Are these accurate criticisms?

RAND: Uh, yes. I agree with the facts but not the estimate of these criticisms. Namely, if I am challenging the base of all these institutions, I am challenging the moral call of altruism -- the precept that man's moral duty is to live for others. That man must sacrifice himself to others, which is the present-day morality.

WALLACE: What do you mean by sacrifice himself for others? This is now where we're getting to the point. . . .

RAND: One moment. Since I am challenging the base, I necessarily would challenge the institutions you name, which are a result of that morality. And now what is self-sacrifice?

WALLACE: Yes, what is self-sacrifice? You say you do not like the altruism by which we live. You like a kind of Ayn Randist selfishness. . . .

RAND: I would say that don't like is too weak a word. I consider (it) evil, and self-sacrifice is the precept that man needs to serve others in order to justify his existence, that his moral duty is to serve others. That is what most people believe today.

WALLACE: Well, yes. We're taught to feel concern for our fellow man, to feel responsible for his welfare, to feel that we are, as religious people might put it, children under God and responsible one for the other. Now why do you rebel? What's wrong with this philosophy?

RAND: But that is what in fact makes man a sacrificial animal. That man must work for others, concern himself with others or be responsible for them. That is the role of a sacrificial object. I say that man is entitled to his own happiness, and that he must achieve it himself, but that he cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy. Nor should he wish to sacrifice himself for the happiness of others. I hold that man should have self-esteem.

WALLACE: And cannot man have self-esteem if he loves his fellow man? What's wrong with loving your fellow man? Christ -- every important moral leader in man's history -- has taught us that we should love one another. Why then is this kind of love, in your mind, immoral?

RAND: It is immoral if it is a love placed above oneself. It is more than immoral, it is impossible. Because when you are asked to love everybody indiscriminately, that is to love people without any standard, to love them regardless of the fact of whether they have and value or virture, you are asked to love nobody.

IF THIS IS WHAT conservatives are buying into nowadays, is there nothing they wish to actually conserve? Is there nothing under heaven or on earth they don't wish to commodify?

What's next? Don't answer that.


WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, the father of modern conservatism -- when "conservatism" actually was "conservative" and not an ongoing, collective spasm of wild-eyed radicalism -- certainly knew the score.

He paints a picture of a woman who, come to think of it, may just be the personification of Tea Party America . . . Ebeneezer Scrooge with a penchant for grand pronouncements and purplish prose.

Listen, I can understand one having an Ayn Rand moment. As a young man, I had one myself.

But then you grow up. You realize that you're not half as exceptional as you once thought. You realize that you are not a self-contained, self-sustaining entity. You fall in love. You realize there may well be a God, and you are not Him.

And you realize that choices must be made. That the Randian circle cannot be squared -- not with God, not with your fellow man.

Finally, it comes to you with full clarity. You come to know this one thing:

If you're smitten with the works of Ayn Rand in your 20s, you're normal. If you're not over it by 30, you may be a monster.