A catechism riddle I had not heard

Pat Gohn, musing in an essay about human dignity:

Q: What are the only man-made things in heaven? Take you time. Puzzle it out. We can wait…

Answer: The nail prints on the hands and feet of Jesus, and the scar in his side.

Why?

Jesus still has a human body. The omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent almighty Savior of the World still has a human body, albeit a glorified one. [...] Even now, that mystical Body is united with the Trinity. The body of Jesus was not some kind of disposable earthly transport vehicle. No. Jesus completely united himself to humanity in a permanent way.

After that Gohn harks to Genesis 1: 26-27. It's good stuff.

Elsewhere in the theology corner, I should have mentioned this yesterday. And if you're in the mood for a longish but gripping biography of a good man too-little understood, go read Eric Metaxas' sympathetic, inspiring treatment of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which is easily the best biography I've read in years.

Overreach

The federal government wants New York City to change lettering on 250,000 street signs from ALL CAPS -- which the signs have been for years -- to mixed-case.

Like signs in New York are federal business. Sheesh!

The lyin', the switch, and the wardrobe

Elizabeth Scalia defends the practice of vowed religious men and women wearing distinctive habits. Were it more widespread, the Pew research finding now making waves might have turned out differently.

Apart from what it implies about the poor or spread-too-thin quality of Catholic catechesis, I'm sanguine about findings that many people are ignorant of their own faith, because I think Brian Saint-Paul is right:

Expect to see plenty of "Atheists Know More About Religion Than Christians" -style headlines, and while that may irk, it is in one sense true. In a country as heavily religious as the United States, the atheist must make a conscious choice to go a different route, and that requires some knowledge of what he's rejecting. That's not the case for the mainline Christian who finds his nominal and ill-informed faith fits easily with the nominal and ill-informed Christianity of American culture.

Think pieces

I got nothin'. But Robin of Berkeley has perceptive thoughts about stress in her town, Michelle Malkin is underrated as a Stossel-class investigative journalist, and Anthony Esolen has a dispassionate look at why politics is more likely to spawn hatred than (Christian) religion is.

Kudos to friend Gary for the trip down comic strip memory lane at left.

Rudder orders and Tiller orders

Some fascinating history about why the Titanic sank, from the novelist granddaughter of its only surviving officer, who goes way beyond "the ship hit an iceberg":

"Titanic was launched at a time when the world was moving from sailing ships to steam ships. My grandfather, like the other senior officers on Titanic, had started out on sailing ships. And on sailing ships, they steered by what is known as “Tiller Orders” which means that if you want to go one way, you push the tiller the other way. [So if you want to go left, you push right.] It sounds counter-intuitive now, but that is what Tiller Orders were. Whereas with “Rudder Orders," which is what steam ships used, it is like driving a car. You steer the way you want to go. It gets more confusing because, even though Titanic was a steam ship, at that time on the North Atlantic they were still using Tiller Orders. Therefore [First Officer] Murdoch gave the [course change] command in Tiller Orders but [Steersman Robert] Hitchins, in a panic, reverted to the Rudder Orders he had been trained in. They only had four minutes to change course and by the time Murdoch spotted Hitchins’ mistake and then tried to rectify it, it was too late.’"

She goes on to explain why a subsequent decision also helped to doom the ocean liner.

Impressive counterspin

Please go read Ace on what the Left will say about revelations in Bob Woodward's new book, and why the Left is wrong.

The flaming skull graphic Ace used to accompany his rant is probably unwarranted. As a friendly critic notes, Ace is "debasing the coin a bit," because what the president said to Woodward about our national ability to "absorb" the 9/11 attack and (hypothetically speaking) others like it is standard Democratic parlance.

On the other hand, Ace is right to seethe about how terrorism-related discourse has come to this "ain't American resilience grand?" juncture with blessings from the man in the Oval Office. Ace understands what talk show host Alan Colmes does not: that faith in the "true grit" of the American people and the blessings of American geography is not the same as the arrant nonsense that belittles even ambitious terrorist activity as a small price to pay for the righteous thrill of appearing magnanimous to the so-called "international community."

The best of the comments on the Ace rant: "Hey, on that basis we could let the Pacific Fleet get sunk again." Runner-up: "And let us not forget that we 'sucked up' not less than five different terrorist attacks under Clinton's watch, and the worst we did in response was to blow up an aspirin factory."

As for this cockamamie idea that "whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is sound policy, the "bitter clingers" are appropriately scornful, in an "I can see November from my house" kind of way:

Dirty Bomb in Downtown Chicago = Just Something We Have To Deal With.
Incandescent Lightbulb = A Clear And Present Danger To The Planet

If dying is no big deal then why do we need Obama-care?

Wow, I guess Biden wasn't kidding when he said "Gird your loins."

And from this from "Chief Brody" for all the movie buffs out there -- "We can absorb the lack of a bigger boat."

Sing it, Kermit

German Shepherd meets Saint Bernard

Photo from Life magazine online via the Lucianne.com news aggregator. It pairs well with this assessment from self-described "free church evangelical Protestant" Fred Sanders, who offers both his own thoughts and two cheers for clever protestor Toby Guise.

See also Father Z.

Quote of the day

Jonathan Witt, amended slightly:

"Intellectual rot [among U.S. Democrats] has a pedigree, of course. It reaches at least as far back as President Bill Clinton's talk of building 'a bridge to the 21st century,' as if the river of time had run dry and we could only ever reach the new Millennium through the sage and centralized planning of political mandarins on the left."

And you should see him dance the tarantella

James Taranto hammers Nick Kristof:

Kristof draws a false and offensive equivalence between Islamic extremists and American "extremists." The latter, when something in the newspaper offends them, complain in a "courteous and polite" fashion, according to the Portland editor. The former, as in the case of cartoonist Molly Norris, issue religious edicts threatening death. (President Obama, champion of the First Amendment for Muslims, remains conspicuously silent about Norris's plight.)

Wrapping up coverage on the papal trip to Britain

Damian Thompson is one of the many people who had something to say about Pope Benedict's trip, and while his insights aren't startlingly original, I do enjoy the zest with which he posted them:

History
Personality
Liturgy
Aftermath

Thompson's pugnacity ("Compare the protestors to the Catholics in Hyde Park: old Polish ladies, tweedy gents from the shires, African hospital cleaners, self-consciously cool teenagers, Filipino checkout assistants and, as one of my friends put it, 'some rather tarty-looking traveller women who’d obviously had a glass or two'. They don’t call it the Catholic Church for nothing: if not a universal cross-section of humanity, it was a damn sight closer to it than the humanist smugfest") is the flip side of the exasperation felt by Margaret Cabaniss, and (to put the whole visit in context) this CNS report does a nice job of describing the Mass at which John Henry Cardinal Newman was formally recognized as "Blessed."

Ross Douthat adds his typically thoughtful perspective on the visit over in the pixels (and presumably pages) of the New York Times, while Joanna Bogle writes from England.

Nice, Deb

(because I found this song parody of the Jason Mraz hit through her)



Bookworm has a clue bat out, also.

L'Ours (1988) - the cougar scene

John Henry Newman must be dancing

The Anchoress has a roundup of papal news from England. It's more of a carnival midway than anything else, that post of hers, but it includes a few gem-like paragraphs like this one:

John Paul was a grand, dramatic pipe organ of a pope; you could not ignore him. Benedict is a piano, deftly playing Mozart, and inviting you in, if you like. “Inviting” is the operative word.

Update: John Allen has more.

Bet she can hit a curveball, too

Ann Coulter sends a pitch from Michael Gross of Vanity Fair downtown, proving that Gross is waaay out of his league.

When political analysis is a joy to read

I know almost nothing about the Delaware Republican primary, which was just won by conservative "outsider" Christine O'Donnell. But I trust Doc Zero's instincts, and really enjoy his writing, which is invariably literate and rich with metaphor. Here's part of what Doc Zero was saying on Monday night, before the outcome of the contest between O'Donnell and "establishment" Republican candidate Mike Castle was known:

The outcome of tomorrow night’s primary is not the only reason so many swords are being drawn over Delaware. There are deeper issues reflected in both of these elaborately damaged candidates. Supporters of O’Donnell fear the prominence “reasonable, moderate” Republicans like Castle would gain through the media, after the GOP takes control of Congress. The ghost of Jim Jeffords rides through their backyards each Halloween, tossing its severed head between its hands. Cleansing the party of people like Castle isn’t just a mindless obsession with purity. It’s part of presenting a coherent message to voters, and offering a real contrast with the bankrupt lunacy of the Democrats. It will be tough for the party to deliver a rousing St. Crispin’s Day speech to voters while the media’s new favorite Republican capers in the background, waving his Strange New Respect award and calling them extremists.

Postscript about Christine O'Donnell: I've never heard or seen her speak, and so haven't had a chance to take even that cursory measure of O'Donnell, but apart from dispassionate observers like Brad O'Leary, progressive pundits seem to implode when writing about her.

What they don't seem to grasp is that every one of their attempts to paint her as extremist does so by holding some of her beliefs up for ridicule. She thinks the Republican Party has lost its way (gasp!). She thinks macro-evolution is a theory rather than a settled fact (egad!). Sixteen or so years ago, she called masturbation a sin (wow!).

Is that all the ammo that people who think O'Donnell is "nuts" have to go on? Sarah Palin has already dismissed the hysterics and the political insiders with the gracious put-down beloved by steel magnolias everywhere, so let me just add that calling O'Donnell nuts is like saying that the von Trapp family were the only Austrians opposed to Nazis in the 1930s. (alright, fellow movie buffs: let's not forget that Captain von Trapp got a theater full of people to sing "Edelweis" right along with him.)

Pundits who think O'Donnell is radioactively conservative probably never accused Maxine Waters or Barney Frank of being too liberal. But more importantly, they're woefully ignorant of mainstream Christian thought (see, for example, the Catechism of the Catholic Church). These pundits are likewise unfamiliar with -- or deeply mistrustful of -- evangelical Protestant thought. How sad.

If Christine O'Donnell is "nuts," she has a lot of company, and that's a blessing for our country, not a burden-- about which, more here.

A meeting of more import than many others

Elizabeth Scalia muses on the upcoming meeting of Queen Elizabeth II with Pope Benedict XVI:

"History has a way of looping, of revisiting past business with an ironic touch, and as we anticipate the arrival of the Roman Pontiff to England’s green and pleasant pastures we can’t but wonder what these great figures of the twentieth century–the last still astride the world’s stage–will have to say to each other, to us, and to the amateur-hour leadership plaguing too-many shores, about unity, common-purpose and co-operation as the Queen of England, descendant of Henry VIII, welcomes the Bishop of Rome, successor of Peter. Their coming together warrants watching with good will, and perhaps a few whispered-up prayers."

Damian Thompson has similar thoughts.

Laced too tight?

Basketball writer and former pro player Charley Rosen:

"I absolutely, positively hate the rash of serious knee injuries that continue to strike NBA players. Back when I was playing, everybody wore simple canvas shoes and knee injuries were extremely rare. Why is this so? To find an answer, I consulted several orthopedists of my acquaintance — and their opinion was unanimous: Blame the sneakers. By fitting so snugly and being able to be laced so tightly, the boots almost totally immobilize ankles. As a result, the docs say, many of the natural ankle and foot torques that occur in the normal unfolding of a game are passed up to the next joint in line — which happens to be the knee, one of the weakest, most vulnerable joints in the body. “If one spot in your basement is leaking,” one ortho-dude explains, “and you patch that spot, the leak will invariably show up someplace else.” Yes, back in the day, we suffered occasional sprained ankles. But these are entirely preferable to torn ACLs."

Nine years ago today

Graphic found at the web site of the indispensable Michelle Malkin, who also has a collection of relevant links.

There are many Mulsims of good will, but I'm deeply skeptical of the trope that the president invoked again yesterday and today, i.e., that our fight is not with Islam, but with Al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda was formed in the late Eighties, so that conceit does not explain Lepanto or Vienna or the defensive wars we call the crusades, still less Thomas Jefferson's dispatching of U.S. forces to bring the Barbary Pirates to heel in the nineteenth century, or the 1979 takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran by Muslim "students." Our president and his advisors seem to have fallen again for politically-correct pabulum. Perhaps a Saudi diplomat could set them straight?

Remembering

This image was in an email message forwarded to me recently by my Uncle Chris.

I'm reading the book 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers, by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn. The book has been on a shelf since my brother-in-law Jerry gave it to me for Christmas of 2005. I should have read it sooner. So far, it's excellent.

Words cannot really capture the import of tomorrow's anniversary satisfactorily, but Julie's take and Glenn's are both worth revisiting, as is the home page for Project 2,996.

Fuss...fuss...I think he likes to scream at us

Inigo and Fezzik had "President Vizzini" pegged. Pete Wehner adds detail from yesterday's speechifying in Cleveland, Ohio:

Obama also has a habit of deriding not just the policies but also the motivations of his opponents. He almost never acknowledges the good faith of his critics; they are people to be mocked, ridiculed, derided. The only reason they oppose Obama is “politics pure and simple.” Republicans “prey on people’s fears and anxieties,” he said today. There is no room for genuine philosophical differences. It is as if Obama believes his ideas are so transparently brilliant and wise and beyond challenge that only the malicious and malevolent can oppose him.

It's not just "righties" who notice things like this any more, although some people tiptoe into disillusionment and others have already been through it, or never respected the president to begin with.

What she said

Ann Coulter plays "ripped from the headlines":

But wait -- weren't we assured by Fire Island's head of national security, Andrew Sullivan, that if America elected a "brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy," the terrorists would look like a bunch of lunkheads and be unable to recruit?

It didn't work out that way. There have been more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil by these allegedly calmed Muslims in Obama's first 18 months in office than in the six years under Bush after he invaded Iraq.

Also, as I recall, there was no Guantanamo, no Afghanistan war and no Iraq war on Sept. 10, 2001. And yet, somehow, Osama bin Ladin had no trouble recruiting back then. Can we retire the "it will help them recruit" argument yet?

The reason not to burn Qurans is that it's unkind -- not to jihadists, but to Muslims who mean us no harm. The same goes for building a mosque at ground zero -- in both cases, it's not a question of anyone's "rights," it's just a nasty thing to do.

George Neumayr has related thoughts.

Fighting the good fight

Alveda King, under fire but standing tall

Alternatives to the prevailing spin

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson made a few waves recently by opining that American voters are spoiled brats, presumably because even he knows that we alleged "brats" are two months from rebelling against our self-appointed babysitters.

In the few days since that Robinson column was published, his progressive fairy tale has been gaining currency among the usual suspects. One of tonight's MSN home page headlines, for example, summarizes an NBC news report as "Video: Voters' sour mood signals blues for Dems."

Doubtless an ombudsman somewhere would defend that headline as straight news, without even a soupcon of partisan bitterness, even though the thing reeks of pro-Democrat spin.

Sour mood?!

As a description of causality, that completely misses the mark. It would instead be true to blame "blues for Dems" on any of the following:

"White House hubris"
"Dismal economic news"
"Impatience with our continually hectoring president"
"Epic failure of economic stimulus and other partisan initiatives"
"Sixth Obama vacation this year"
"Overuse of the adjective 'unexpectedly' in relation to bad news"
"Continued scapegoating of Bush administration"
"State Department's $6M funding of mosque and minaret restoration proects overseas"
"Futile attempts to 'drain the swamp' of corrupt Congresscritters"
"Continued embrace of abortion as an allegedly Constitutional right"
"Aversion to town hall meetings with constituents"
"Feckless disregard for terrorism"
"Refusal to be 'stuck on stupid' "
"Quiet patriotism"
"Widespread disillusion with European-style socialism"

Tobacco Trail philosophizing

Why settle for a Darwinian view of the world when you can have a Franciscan view instead?

Book review: Between a Heart and a Rock Place

Between a Heart and a Rock Place by Pat Benatar

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I grew up listening to Pat Benatar. She's in fine voice (ha!) here, and because she's one of the few rockers who also has a plausible claim to being a role model, I'm glad she wrote a memoir. Benatar's love for her husband, her passion for music, and her feminist convictions all shine from these honest, well-written pages.

This memoir is better than Clarence Clemmons' "Big Man," because Benatar and her co-author are more disciplined than Clemmons and his co-author were. It's also worth noting that Benatar is a class act. Her sense of humor comes through even in photo captions, and she has kind words for Blondie and Bruce and Ani DeFranco, as well as lesser-known musicians with whom she has crossed paths.

What kept me from rating the memoir even higher was its unimaginative structure: once past interesting material about her early days, every album in the Benatar catalog is viewed through the prism of her 20-year fight with money-grubbing record label executives. Although she and her husband are on the side of the angels, I wanted to learn more about the records themselves.

Benatar tells good stories -- her remembrance of the Sept. 11, 2001 concert in Napa Valley is especially poignant. The thing is that she should have told more stories. Ditto for the rare arguments with her husband and chief collaborator Neil Giraldo; there's no need to invent conflict that isn't there, but it was fun to hear her exasperation when she pointedly asks him to "write something humans can actually sing." Unfortunately, vignettes like that come few and far between.

Perhaps Benatar has internalized the "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" ethos to the point where she always has her guard up in public. One can't fault her for that (Isn't it a tough life?), but it creates an emotional distance that undercuts an otherwise-absorbing memoir. A rock icon whom you'd actually want for a neighbor could have let her fans in on more than she did.

If you're a Benatar fan (as I am), you'll want to read this memoir, but if you're not, the most resonant thesis in these snapshots of life behind the microphone -- and the video camera in the early days of MTV-- is likely to be "many music industry execs are sleazeballs."

Why Glenn Beck gets partial credit

I'm not a fan of his show, but talk show conservative Glenn Beck deserves kudos for asking questions about the president's religious faith that other people tiptoe around. Beck, to his credit, is not grinding the "he's a secret Muslim" axe (the president has a dog, after all), but he has said that Barack Obama is the first president steeped in an especially virulent form of so-called "liberation theology." Predictably, the White House spokesperson is not amused.

Spurred in part by Beck's comments, my friend Kyle-Anne has written the definitive account of what the president would have absorbed in 20 years at what was then Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ, and it's hardly "mainstream" Christianity.

Beck cannot be trusted to opine with authority on the finer points of Christian doctrine or history, but he's on to something important here-- and Kyle-Anne has sorted it all out beautifully.

Great credo for a songwriter

"Words are very important to me and finding the optimum way to say what I'm thinking is paramount. I don't sit with a thesaurus in hand; I want to find the word in the same way you might find an exquisite shell on the beach: by accident."

I also liked this, from p. 244 of the same memoir:

"There are lots of famously over-the-top ways for rock careers to end, but seeing as how I've never been one to follow in anyone's footsteps, I'm not about to start now. As the producer for VH1's show Behind the Music once told me-- mine is one of the only stories that doesn't involve at least one trip to rehab. I'm proud to say that like a lot of rock-and-roll truisms, that whole debate about burning out or fading away is bullshit-- the same crap music execs kick up to sell records and make you think that rock music only belongs to people under thirty. A true rocker is going to do whatever the hell she wants to, whether she's a school teacher, a CEO of a large corporation, or someone's mommy. Because that's what rock-and-roll is really about: following your passion with no apologies. Following that sound in your head that only you can hear."

-- Pat Benatar, Between a Rock and a Heart Place

A fistful of zingers

"To be brutally honest: a lot of people are sincerely angry about what has been happening to their country. They were provoked. The 'transformative agenda' of this Presidency came looking for them, and there is no way to hide from it. There is no option to step away from the politics of an aggressive State, and live your life in peace. You may have considered yourself a moderate who prefers not to get involved in nasty political arguments, a desire I understand and respect… but if you think you should be allowed to buy your own health insurance, you’re a right-wing conservative now. In a few more years, you’ll be an 'extremist.' Your children will be handed the back-breaking invoice for the politics you preferred to stay clear of." -- Doc Zero

"Well, here's the thing, Chris [Matthews]: As a neighbor, I'm sure I'd like Obama. Assuming he weren't president and constantly tying up local traffic.

But he's not just a neighbor, not just a guy I can say 'Hey, he loves his kids; seems like an okay guy.'

He's the president and he's pushing an agenda on the country I find destructive and, yes, anti-American. And I did oppose a much-weaker form of this agenda when it was pushed by the white Bill Clinton." -- Ace from Ace of Spades

"Unlike ABC producers, Americans are not interested in an 'outsider's perspective' on American politics. They can get that from the White House." -- Daniel Greenfield

"Are Americans arrogant? Now and then. Not to put too fine a point on it, but compared to many of the members of the United Nations whose opinions this president and his sychophants believe that we are obliged to respect, this country has, quite frankly, a great deal to be arrogant about.

If Arizona was rounding up illegal aliens and herding them into concentration camps, that would be one thing. But the fact that the Arizona law referenced treats illegal aliens better than they are treated in Mexico, say, is something else again. That Barack Obama considers this law a human rights violation should tell anyone without blinders everything they need to know about the current president and his toadies." -- Christopher Johnson

"There’s a reason why nobody even thought to suggest that a Catholic or other Christian church should not be built near the Murtha building or that any religious structures near the [Oklahoma City bombing] site should be moved. I’m not suggesting that people in the media should be in the business of suggesting that all religions have the same problem with terrorism. But if they are going to do that, they simply need to get a better handle on history." -- Mollie Hemingway