James Bond vs. Truth, Goodness, Beauty

Just as the first Daniel Craig version of James Bond (Casino Royale) featured Bodies - the Exhibition, so the newer Quantum of Solace (what the blazes does that even mean?) features Puccini's Tosca on the outdoor stage in Bregenz, Austria, replete with a Big Brother all-seeing eye behind which is a row of vested Catholic bishops with hands steepled in prayer. Below the bishops, stands a row of Catholic priests, and in front of them an underground jail-cage. Then henchmen lead prisoners into the cage and commence executing them - at the behest of the bishops? - with machine guns.

All of the above are merely the backdrop for the boyish antics of Bond, but they are there, subliminal images and impressions, to be perceived by the viewer.

I expect the third installment to be even more blatant in its attacks on Catholic truth, faith, and morals. Bets, anyone?

Control, Control, Control

Seems the White House is short on trust in the press corps. The press? You know, the MSM blokes who gave I Won the big house in the first place?

The spinmeisters even have their own little logo.

Kozinski - Saruman @ ND

The comparison that was just waiting to be made. Thaddeus Kozinski at Mercatornet writes, Saruman at Notre Dame.

Atlas has the details

Where do you go to find the names of the four terrorist suspects arrested and charged with planning to destroy a Bronx synagogue? Not the New York Times - they only give you one name: the one that sounds 'American'. You go to my favorite Cassandra, of course, Pam Geller, here.

Portends of things to come

Let us reason together.
Or, some animals are more equal than others.

Bramwell - ND's Great Service

Bevil Bramwell, priest of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, writes at The Catholic Thing,

Notre Dame has done a great service to the Catholic Church. Yes, I said service. For the first time in a long while, a noted “Catholic” institution has given clear public witness to its “Catholicism” in a way that cannot be fudged or swept under the rug. It is not every day that you can enlist the President of the United States, and a non-Catholic at that, to help you in making such an unequivocal assertion of your deepest understanding of what it means to be Catholic.

The University of Notre Dame has squarely put before the nation and the world a conception of Catholicism that is essentially a kind of low-church Protestantism, with its view of religion as “what we do in our local community.” In that kind of arrangement, the people in a particular church gathering may accept some common notions of what the Christian faith is, what Christian principles are, but reserve to themselves how they will be lived out institutionally. They have their own “take” on things, fiercely defend that take, and are extremely proud of it.

Needless to say none of this is how the Catholic Church understands things. No offence to low-church Protestantism, but we are by definition not low-church Protestants. Our local communities and institutions belong to a larger whole, the Catholic Church, what we believe to be a global – and universal – society established by God himself. This larger whole holds to and teaches one truth. In this Catholic Church, at least according to the Second Vatican Council: “in [Jesus Christ] all the aforementioned truths find their root and attain their crown” (Gaudium et Spes, 22). This one truth describes reality. (Watch that connection to reality!) Thus all of the individual teachings of the Catholic Church are interrelated; there is no possibility of separating them for convenience, for having the President of the United States on campus, or because we have decided it’s of no great importance that we ignore certain of them ...

Read all here.

Littlest Victim - Heresy of 'Choice'

Dan Gilgof asks an interesting question: Why did Obama use "children" over "fetus" to describe the unborn?

One line in particular in President Obama's Notre Dame speech really jumped out at me: "Let's provide care and support for women who do carry their children to term."

Obama used the word children as opposed to fetus, employing the nomenclature of antiabortion activists as opposed to that of the pro-abortion-rights movement. If the fetus is a child, antiabortion advocates say, how can you justify abortion?

... Is the president subtly invoking the antiabortion lexicon in addressing conservative religious audiences? Or am I reading too much into this? (US News)

I agree with the American Papist who says, 'You see, abortion advocates are happy to use the term "child" to describe a "wanted" child. In other words, for them, a child is not a "child" until the mother has made a choice to keep it. Otherwise a "child" remains a "fetus" until he or she takes their first breath of air.'

In other words, 'fetus' is another word for disposable person. It is a sacrificial term.

'America has a new pope'

Father Z pretty much spells out the battle plan.

Neither President, Jenkins nor Obama, needed to say much of substance. And they didn’t. All they had to do to vindicate the inevitable rightness of their agendas was to sound reasonable.

Fr. Jenkins, throbbing with emotion after these weeks of persecution, cuddled the students and their adorers, inviting them into his sufferings.

President Obama, wise realist, offered astonishing insight. For example, you surely noted his stunning admission that the two sides in the abortion debate – wait for it – have irreconcilable differences!

In the final analysis we heard various expressions of "can’t we all just get along" even as we were being told to "shut up".

[ ... ]

In an era when emotion trumps reason, facts are just plain mean.

The progressivist side knows they will not win by arguments. They win by projecting the image of deep-caring, of brow-furrowed nuance, of struggling with those hard decisions.

Remember: If you will have first "struggled" you are thereafter justified in anything you chose.

So, Sunday was pretty black for Catholics who are waking up to a clearer Catholic identity in continuity with our Tradition. It was a great day for adherents of Catholic-lite, especially in the many long-subverted institutions of higher learning. They are sure to be revitalized.

[ ... ]

Among the reactions I gathered from the smart people I talk with about pivotal events – and we witnessed something pivotal on Sunday – I heard grim assessments and forecasts.

One person said, "America has a new pope".

Therefore, after pondering this for a day, my response is finally to return to a basic premise of this blog.

More than ever, we must have what the Church really says, what Holy Church really has to offer.

Read all here.

Archbishop Chaput

Most graduation speeches are a mix of piety and optimism designed to ease students smoothly into real life. The best have humor. Some genuinely inspire. But only a rare few manage to be pious, optimistic, evasive, sad and damaging all at the same time. Father John Jenkins, C.S.C., Notre Dame’s president, is a man of substantial intellect and ability. This makes his introductory comments to President Obama’s Notre Dame commencement speech on May 17 all the more embarrassing.

Let’s remember that the debate over President Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame was never about whether he is a good or bad man. The president is clearly a sincere and able man. By his own words, religion has had a major influence in his life. We owe him the respect Scripture calls us to show all public officials. We have a duty to pray for his wisdom and for the success of his service to the common good -- insofar as it is guided by right moral reasoning.

We also have the duty to oppose him when he’s wrong on foundational issues like abortion, embryonic stem cell research and similar matters. And we also have the duty to avoid prostituting our Catholic identity by appeals to phony dialogue that mask an abdication of our moral witness. Notre Dame did not merely invite the president to speak at its commencement. It also conferred an unnecessary and unearned honorary law degree on a man committed to upholding one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in our nation’s history: Roe v. Wade.

In doing so, Notre Dame ignored the U.S. bishops’ guidance in their 2004 statement, Catholics in Political Life. It ignored the concerns of Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, Notre Dame’s 2009 Laetare Medal honoree – who, unlike the president, certainly did deserve her award, but finally declined it in frustration with the university’s action. It ignored appeals from the university’s local bishop, the president of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference, more than 70 other bishops, many thousands of Notre Dame alumni and hundreds of thousands of other American Catholics. Even here in Colorado, I’ve heard from too many to count.

There was no excuse – none, except intellectual vanity – for the university to persist in its course. And Father Jenkins compounded a bad original decision with evasive and disingenuous explanations to subsequently justify it.

These are hard words, but they’re deserved precisely because of Father Jenkins’ own remarks on May 17: Until now, American Catholics have indeed had “a special expectation, a special hope for what Notre Dame can accomplish in the world.” For many faithful Catholics – and not just a “small but vocal group” described with such inexcusable disdain and ignorance in journals like Time magazine -- that changed Sunday.

The May 17 events do have some fitting irony, though. Almost exactly 25 years ago, Notre Dame provided the forum for Gov. Mario Cuomo to outline the “Catholic” case for “pro-choice” public service. At the time, Cuomo’s speech was hailed in the media as a masterpiece of American Catholic legal and moral reasoning. In retrospect, it’s clearly adroit. It’s also, just as clearly, an illogical and intellectually shabby exercise in the manufacture of excuses. Father Jenkins’ explanations, and President Obama’s honorary degree, are a fitting national bookend to a quarter century of softening Catholic witness in Catholic higher education. Together, they’ve given the next generation of Catholic leadership all the excuses they need to baptize their personal conveniences and ignore what it really demands to be “Catholic” in the public square ...

Read all here.

Piper - No, Mr. President

Banality of Evil

Karen Hall brings you Demonic Inversion.

And doing a darn good job of it

Pro-Obama ‘political operators’ trying to divide Catholics, George Weigel claims.

Of course, we were doing it well before I Won came on the scene. And Fr Ralph McInerny comments in A House Divided.

Mimetic theory in a nutshell

Interview With Father John Wauck

By Jesús Colina

ROME, MAY 17, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Despite the large number of errors regarding Catholicism that can be found in the movie "Angels and Demons," the interest in the movie demonstrates an even greater interest in the Church, says Opus Dei priest Father John Wauck.

Father Wauck, who is a professor at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, and the author of the blog "The Da Vinci Code and Opus Dei." His course "A Mirror on the Soul" was aired on EWTN as a 13-part television series.

In this interview with ZENIT, Father Wauck discusses the movie "Angels and Demons," the film adaptation of Dan Brown's novel of the same name. The film opened this weekend and is the sequel to the "The Da Vinci Code."

Q: Do you think Dan Brown has a certain fixation with the Catholic Church?

Father Wauck: Sometimes I wonder: Where would Dan Brown be without the Catholic Church? Almost all the interesting things in his novels come from their Catholic setting ... (Emphasis added)

Read more …

Isaiah 40

Who has directed the spirit of the LORD, or has instructed him as his counselor?

Whom did he consult to gain knowledge? Who taught him the path of judgment, or showed him the way of understanding?

Behold, the nations count as a drop in the bucket, as dust on the scales; the coastlands weigh no more than powder ...

Before him all the nations are as nought, as nothing and void he accounts them.

To whom can you liken God? With what equal can you confront him?

Do you not know? Have you not heard? Was it not foretold you from the beginning? Have you not understood?

He sits enthroned above the vault of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; He stretches out the heavens like a veil, spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.

To whom can you liken me as an equal? says the Holy One.

Why, O Jacob, do you say, and declare, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God"?

Do you not know or have you not heard? The LORD is the eternal God, creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint nor grow weary, and his knowledge is beyond scrutiny.

He gives strength to the fainting; for the weak he makes vigor abound.

Though young men faint and grow weary, and youths stagger and fall,

They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength, they will soar as with eagles' wings; They will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.

Prayers for Uneventful Visit - ND

Today, remember to pray for the president especially while he is at Notre Dame. The only thing worse than having him there would be for something untoward to happen during his visit.

The last thing the Catholic Church in America needs is another Gunpowder Plot, although it would please I Won sooo much, I fear.

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

There is a growing multitude of attacks on the Holy Father and Catholic truth. As such, they attempt to draw us away from faith and hope and charity. Note them; but do not let them tempt you either to despair or frenetic distraction.

Damien Thompson notes the full frontal attack by such progressivist (read: let's continue the social meltdown) news organs as Time. Why not? Today is Let's Celebrate I Won's Trip to Notre Dame Sunday.

Meanwhile, the WaPo mounts the scaffolds to shout that Gay-Marriage Issue Awaits Court Pick Same-Sex Unions Supplant Abortion As Social Priority for Conservatives ... just as a poll is released that more Americans are pro-life than pro-choice for the first time.

Ah, what a glorious day to go to Mass and celebrate Our Lord's victory over the world and it satanic prince.