Your Argument––Should You Choose to Make One––Is Invalid

You may be aware of the recent public tiff between Congresswoman Pelosi and the founder of Priests for Life, Father Frank Pavone.

If not, fill yourself in (here is the letter Father Pavone wrote).

This situation of public figures professing to be Catholic in complete and utter contradiction to the very meaning of the word is becoming, unfortunately, more and more common. There are lots of reasons for this, reasons I won't get into here, but suffice to say, they are not reasons that are taking us in a good direction.

May I simply point out that Pelosi's response basically amounts to a smirking diversion? She characterizes Father Pavone's letter as "unworthy of the dignity of a response," due to its "hysterical" tone: and with a sweep of her hand the rational capabilities of her interlocutors are demolished, reduced to babbling nonsense before the shock & awe of Nancy.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is power.  

I shudder to imagine if the young men and women learning to argue, for instance, in a debate class, try to emulate Ms. Pelosi.  Perhaps their coaches will bow their heads in deferential silence to the magnitude of character required to sustain such forms of non-argument.

The fact is, she hasn't a leg to stand on, either religiously or intellectually. She is occupying the no-man's-land of the warmongering Quaker, the hedonistic Buddhist, the electric Amish.  To claim, as Ms. Pelosi does, that her faith has nothing to do with the clear and unaltered moral teaching of the Church is a canard, a cloak for her complete disregard for any coherence in her chosen path.  The only way to sustain such a path is through bluster, through spin, through deflection and doublespeak.  She (or her handler) has proven to be more than adept at this.  She is being called out, and her response is true to form.

Pray for her, and all who live and think as she does.

Mainstream Media Looks the Other Way

Elizabeth Scalia reports over at First Things' On the Square that the mainstream media has utterly failed to address the Gosnell case (and others like it), comparing their cover-up to the very same complicity for which they have mercilessly condemned the bishops over the sex-abuse scandal:

So, allow me to ask the impolitic question I have hinted at elsewhere: in choosing to look away, in choosing to under-report, in choosing to spin, minimize, excuse, and move-along when it comes to Kermit Gosnell—and to this whole subject of under-regulated abortion clinics, the debasement of women and the slaughter of living children—how are the press and those they protect by their silence any better than the Catholic bishops who, in decades past, looked away, under-reported, spun, minimized, excused, moved-along, and protected the repulsive predator-priests who have stolen innocence and roiled the community of faith?

The whole thing is worth reading--brief and to the point.

Scandal

Though the recent clerical abuse scandal that has broken in Germany and Ireland is once again wrenching the hearts of Catholics worldwide, the ramifications do not extend to the papacy--as the recent New York Times article has heinously alleged.  I find the whole situation (and by that, I mean all of it) terribly nauseating, but Raymond De Souza's response to the NYT article reveals another dimension of the tragedy:  the scurrilous character of the reporting.  I would insist that anyone who has read the NYT article or heard it discussed read over De Souza's response immediately.

I think it's clear that the press isn't just getting things wrong here and there; they're getting it completely backwards.

At Last, The Cavalry

Senator Jim DeMint, member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has traveled down to Honduras and seen through the fog of propaganda and outright lies that have cast the "de facto" government of that country as just one more regime of rabid, power-hungry usurpers and thugs in the long tradition of Central American fascists (New York Times). Besides the 400 or so Venezuelans imported in by Chavez to agitate in favor of restoring his stooge, it appears as if the Senator encountered only one person who actually supports the treasonous ex-president:

Obama's ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens.

This is, of course, in direct opposition to the legal investigation conducted by a senior legal analyst of the Library of Congress in August--AUGUST, as in two MONTHS ago--which concluded that what has taken place there is absolutely, completely, undeniably 100% legal.

Senator DeMint's article is worth reading, and thanks be to God that somebody in the U.S. government has gotten to the bottom of this insanity. Here's hoping that something reasonable will be done to put the world's unreasonable treatment of this loyal ally of ours to an end.

Greatest Show on Earth

It's nice to see at least some finer distinctions being made in the popular culture (even as they're crafted in response to the precisionless rhetoric of that same culture). A great example of this is the review of Richard Dawkins' new book, written as a magnum opus of evolutionary argument, over at the Grey Lady:

Dawkins is aware that evolution is commonly called a theory but deems “theory” too wishy-washy a term because it connotes the idea of hypothesis. Evolution, in Dawkins’s view, is a concept as bulletproof as a mathematical theorem, even though it can’t be proved by rigorous logical proofs. He seems to have little appreciation for the cognitive structure of science. Philosophers of science, who are the arbiters of such issues, say science consists largely of facts, laws and theories. The facts are the facts, the laws summarize the regularities in the facts, and the theories explain the laws. Evolution can fall into only one of these categories, and it’s a theory.

Read the rest here.

Fake Media Picking Up The Slack

So I'm just now catching on to this ACORN scandal, but I don't watch the news much anyway-- that I'm not up on the latest horror is no surprise. Apparently the mainstream news channels aren't exactly jumping on this. Jon Stewart (along with the rest of the world) seems to be a little frustrated:

(Head's up, PG-13)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Audacity of Hos
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

I do have a little more respect for Jon Stewart, now. But what's with the people in the studio? They aren't laughing at any of the jokes. Makes you wonder who goes to these things.

After my summer in El Salvador listening to news outlets spreading all manner of ridiculous slander about the nonexistent "coup" in Honduras and serving as little more than a propaganda outlet for ChavezWorld, there's no question in my mind that we are not up against incompetence here ... it's a premeditated, direct assault on the truth.

All in the name of doing the right thing, of course.

Denver Archbishop Concerned About Public Discourse

Fans of Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death (mentioned in a previous post) will enjoy a recent article by Archbishop Chaput on the Archdiocesan website (via First Things):

America was born as a nation of readers; a nation of the printed word. The foundational defenses of our constitutional order, The Federalist Papers, first appeared as newspaper articles. The 85 essays are remarkable exercises in political philosophy. They’re done with an intellectual skill unmatched anywhere in the modern news media. Unfortunately, if they appeared today, few of us might read them. The reason is simple. Reading requires discipline and mental effort. But for the past 50 years our culture has been shifting away from the printed word to visual communications, which are much more inclined to sensation and passive consumption. This has consequences. When a print culture dies, the ideas, institutions and even habits of public behavior built on that culture begin to weaken.

Read the rest here: Catholics and the 'Fourth Estate'