The Dutchman’s Handy Guide to Confession

Face-to-Face, In-The-Box, or By Mail?

             

There are three ways to confess, two of them approved by the Church. 

  •  The traditional way is to kneel down at a grate, where the priest cannot see you, and only be heard.  This has the advantage of anonymity and is probably more hygienic than other methods. 

  •  Since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council however, the practice of face-to-face confession has been encouraged.  While this procedure may have its advantages (if you can think of any, let me know) it has the disadvantage of allowing you to see the priest’s reactions.  If you’re anything like me, soon enough he will wince and squirm, or his lip curl up in disgust, and this is so very amusing that you will be tempted to go making stuff up just to see what kind of reaction you can get out of him, making what should be a sacred encounter with the Divine into yet another occasion of mischief. 

  •  A third method is simply to write your sins on a 3x5” card and mail this to: 

          Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
          Piazza del S. Uffizio, 11, 00193
          Roma, Italy.

(As of 2014 correct postage would be $1.10.)  While not actually approved by the Church, what priest, upon receiving this missive, would fail to give Absolution?  I think the question answers itself and the $1.10 you spend in postage is penance enough already.

Choosing a Confessor

            The best confessor of course is one who is deaf and will thus just nod his head and give you absolution without a lot of prying questions or disparaging comments about how “… no girl in her right mind would agree to a thing like that!” 

A half-deaf confessor is not merely half-as-good as this but is in fact a whole lot worse, as he will often repeat what you have said, loudly, just to make sure he’s understood.  (Who hasn’t heard Fr. Tramari ask loudly, “What do you mean, ‘for-the-nation’?”) 

This leaves two kinds of confessors left, soft and hard. 

The soft type come in two varieties, the Liberal Relativist, who will assure you that what you’ve done isn’t really a sin at all, and the Big Softie, who will thank you for coming to Confession as if you are doing Jesus some kind of a favor just by being there.  Avoid these types, as you will come away feeling like you have washed your hands in mayonnaise. 

By all means pick the hard confessor, of the type to be found in more Traditional parishes.  Even though he will tell you that your sins are not only quite heinous, and that he finds them personally repugnant, but he will give you an onerous penance (weeks of fasting, painful mortifications, and lengthy pilgrimages to distant shrines are not uncommon), the advantage is that you really do feel forgiven, and that’s what this is really about.

Examination of Conscience

            Now, if you just walk up to the confessional, your whole mind will just be a jumble of transgressions, half-remembered nights of drunken excess, and questions about that slip of paper in your pocket with nothing but a phone number and the notation “Let’s do that again, big boy!”  No, you need to organize your thoughts so as to put your confession on a systematic basis.

            What constitutes a sin is actually a complex business.  Lately, a lot of “New Age” types have been pushing this notion of “Doing unto others as you would have done to you,” but this is both simplistic and misleading.  After all, I know that I wouldn’t want to be tied to a table and belt whipped, but I’ll bet I couldn’t visit two or three taverns on Halsted Street before I found someone who would pay me to do just that to him.  So the Church, in Her infinite wisdom, has come up with a few useful lists that cover most of the bases on sin, and you would do well to review these before confessing.

  §  Four Worst Things

            There are particular mortal sins that are so evil that they are said to be sins that cry to heaven for vengeance: willful murder (Gn 4:10), oppression of the poor (Ex 2:23), defrauding workers of their just wages (Jas 5:4), and the Sin of Sodom (Gn 17:20-21).  Let’s look at these case by case.

            •            Willful murder isn’t just killing; it refers to killing in an unjustified way.  Naturally, life being a messy business and circumstances being what they are, not all killings are unjustified.  While it is self-evident that one might kill in self-defense, or to protect ones family, it is also no sin for the soldier to kill in the line of duty, nor for the workingman to exterminate his class enemy.

            •            Oppression of the Poor is quite possibly the most heinous of sins.  In our corrupt age many loathsome practices have become not only accepted but widespread, including (but not limited to): letting out money at interest, speculating in commodities, land, or currency, “white slavery,” market manipulation, expropriation of surplus value by “investors,” and all the rest the Bible condemns!

            •            Defrauding workers of their just wages doesn’t refer merely to some kind of out-and-out trickery, but actually to the whole system of low minimum wages, under-employment, union busting, and “off-shoring,” that drive down wages. 

            •            What is meant by “the Sin of Sodom” is rather opaque and has been debated for centuries by theologians and scholars.  Opinions have varied from it being a rather amusing and wholesome form of contragenic coition to it being a lack of hospitality.  But really, are either of these are so abhorrent as to cry to Heaven for vengeance?  Perhaps the answer is to be found in the fate of Lot’s wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt.  As Sodom was described as prosperous, and as the poor woman was turned into salt, which has often been used as a form of money, we can apprehend that this crime is probably that of speculating in currency.

  §   Decalogue

            A favorite list of probable sins is the Ten Commandments. We are all familiar with this enumeration and need not dwell on it here, except to point out that frequent mass goers are usually given a 10% discount on this list.  Ask your confessor for details.

  §  Other Enumerations of Sin

Many people find it useful to consult other lists of good or bad conduct.  Pope Gregory’s list of Seven Deadly Sins, the Boy Scout Law, the Art of Worldly Wisdom by Baltasar Gracian, the Ten Point Program that Marx and Engels outlined in their Manifesto, Ovid’s Ars Amorata, and Satchel Paige’s six pieces of advice on How To Keep Young have all proved to be useful reviews of conduct.

Give Your Confessor A Break

            Remember, he’s stuck in the box with no way out and he feels it’s his duty to give you advice, so make it easy for him.  If you confess to just one thing, then he has to talk to you about that, and he’s just as embarrassed talking to you about it as you were telling him about it.  So by all means, include a few sins that are easy for him to talk about.  Supposing, for instance, you’ve been regularly committing a sin that involves a fellow you met on Halsted Street, every knot you learned as a Boy Scout, and a whole lot of Jergen’s Lotion.  WOW — Father Thelander is bilious just thinking about it, and he certainly doesn’t want to ask a whole lot of questions about this abomination, so if you mention something else in the same confession, he’s going to talk about that instead.  Vanity is always a good thing to confess.  Of course, you’re not as gorgeous as me, but that probably doesn’t stop you from thinking you are, and you can confess that.  I always do.  Similarly, my son usually J-walks on the way to confession so that he can confess that.  Be creative!

A Final Word

            No matter what you’ve done the Confessional is always open, to you and God’s mercy endures forever.  As our Holy Father has recently reminded us, “Don’t be afraid of confession, it’s no worse than a bad cold.” Remember the immortal words of Little Richard, “If God can save a broken-down old homosexual like me, then he can save just about anybody!  Woo — Bless My Soul!”

The Pope and the New Year

I would like to take this moment at the end of the year to make a few predictions about what our Pope Francis will and will not do in the year to come.

• He will not (he CANNOT) change Church teaching. Fornication will remain a sin, women will not be ordained, and auricular confession will still be required for the remission of sin. Right now, liberals are hoping for “change,” but they won’t get it and will soon enough become disillusioned.

• He will continue to hammer away at social justice. I sincerely hope that this will actually lead to changes, not of Church teaching (which already kick-ass on economic teaching), but in breaking the un-holy alliance of socially conservative Catholics with anti-working-class political parties.

• He will continue to demonstrate the kind of radical love that is at the heart of the Christian message. It is plainly his ministry not to lead the Church (as Leo XIII or John Paul II did), nor to rule the Church (as Pius XII or Benedict XVI did), but to set an example of how Christians should live.

• Finally, when Pope emeritus Benedict dies, I predict that Francis will issue a statement to the effect that he was the right pope at the right time, that the Church was in a condition of disorder (with badly chosen bishops, a liturgy rife with abuses, and the scandals associated with sexual abuse), and that Benedict set the house of the Church in order, so that Francis would be free to exercise his very different calling.

I LOVE these two popes (almost as much as I love Leo XIII and Alexander VI) and I see the working of the Holy Spirit in first choosing the one, and then the other.

Another of my Unpopular Opinions

Illinois is about to get same-sex marriage and I’m against it and I think I need to state my position on this so that there’s no misconstruing it. 

It’s not because I’m homophobic. In fact, I’m bisexual. (How bisexual? Before I met my future wife, the longest relationship I’d ever had was my four-year high-school relationwhip with Wally.) I’m certainly not in favor of penalizing homosexuals, favor equal opportunities for them in jobs and housing, I just don’t think their relationships constitute a marriage. 

And, though I am a Catholic, and believe the sacrament of marriage was ordained by God, I also believe that civil marriage is a contract and the state has every right to regulate contract law in such a way as to benefit society as a whole. It may be blasphemous for two men, or divorced persons, or anybody else to merely SAY they are married, but blasphemy is no business of the state.

Completely gratuitous picture of Harry Hay

No — from the state’s point of view this is property law. The state is conferring a special relationship, with special prerogatives, tax advantages, and benefits upon people entering into a contractual relationship, and we must ask why these people deserve these benefits. 

I believe it is because that the ONLY thing that this contract contributes to benefit society is the creation of families. And by that I do not mean the formation of a mere household, but the begetting and raising of children. These children are our future, they are the citizens of tomorrow, they are the people paying out our pensions when we retire, and cleaning our bed-pans when we are senile and invalided. 

When we postulate the creation of families as the purpose of marriage, then "marriage equality" becomes nonsensical, because same sex couples cannot create children, and are thus intrinsically unequal to heterosexual couples. 

We in the industrialized West are faced with a demographic crisis. We are barely replacing our numbers and those who would make the best parents (and presumably have the best children) are having the least children. The simple fact is that the more education a woman has, the fewer children she is likely to have. Our best educated women are wasting this education on vulgar commerce instead of having children and we should do something about it. 

We could start by forgiving a portion of student loans for second and third children. We could re-structure our income taxes to penalize couples where both earn high incomes as an incentive for capable women to remain home with their children, We could increase the exemption for children, improve the quality of our schools, any number of things. 

But extending the benefits of marriage to sterile couples is exactly the wrong policy in the face of this demographic crisis.

I knew guys just like this.

Frank Rich wrote a really interesting article on a gay friend he had known while growing up:

http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/gay-history-2013-6/

I knew guys just like this.

My father was in advertising and there were a lot of art directors, film directors, and set decorators who were just this sort of brittle, well-educated homosexual with exquisite sensibilities.  There was a huge break between those that had come of age before the counter-culture (who put much stock in being well dressed and erudite) and those of the hippie generation (who later became the core of Disco culture).

I remember in particular a fellow who lived down the street from us, a Mr. Sloan who, in the seventies, was probably in his sixties.  He often would walk down the alley in the late afternoons to see who was out, joining them for a cocktail and perhaps staying when they threw a few steaks on the grill.  He was often our guest and, like my father in those summers, drank wine spritzers years before they became fashionable.  He wore nice clothes, but dressed carelessly.  Old frayed khaki trousers, huaraches, a carelessly buttoned red paisley silk shirt, a gold chain around his neck, again years before those became fashionable.

He was obviously homosexual, yet nothing was ever said about it.  His stories (and he was a treasure trove of good stories) would often begin with an ambiguous statement like, “In the late 1930’s I was traveling in Europe with an older gentleman …”  And his stories really were truly amazing.  He had met Hitler at a reception at the Hotel Adlon in Berlin just weeks before the war began “… and let me tell you, Göring was a much more charismatic fellow …”  Had crossed the Atlantic on the Andrea Doria’s sister ship and then came back on a tramp steamer.  Had participated in the first protests against HUAC in San Francisco in the 1950’s “… because people were losing their jobs for being a little pink — and, who isn’t a little pink?”  Had tried peyote in the same sweat lodge that Aldous Huxley had visited.  Often commented on public figures as if he had inside information “… Jim Thompson?  Oh, he’s a fairy …”  The guy knew more ways to win a free drink in a bar than anyone I’d ever met; things like how to make sugar burn, or six triangles out of eight matches.

Mr. Sloan took an interest in me.  He would often pick up the TV guide from the Sunday paper and circle the movies that he thought I should watch (“All About Eve,” “Brief Encounter,” and “Death Takes A Holiday” were typical).  He told me to read P.G. Wodehouse and Gore Vidal.  He was very sharp, witty, and brought this out in me, patting my wrist when I made a clever quip, “Oh, Jeff, that’s a good one!”

He smoked constantly, his fingers were tobacco stained and his deep baritone voice was raspy at times.  He worked for a rather prominent interior décor firm (I want to say Colby’s?) and every morning, on the Today Show, they would run an advertisement showing a well decorated room with Mr. Sloan narrating about how in order for a room to really fit in a home it had to express the character of the people who lived there.  At the close, the announcer would intone, “… these are the words and the work of one of our experienced designers …”  (These ads continued to run for years after Mr. Sloan’s death.

Then, in 1974, a deep recession hit and Mr. Sloan was laid off.  At first he was fairly light hearted about it, claiming he could live well enough off his unemployment check “… and it gives me time to paint.”  But then the unemployment checks stopped coming and he had to dip into his savings.  And then, just as the recession was lifting, he was diagnosed with cancer and the firm wouldn’t rehire him.  He was at that point, a broken man.  Very sick, unemployed, unemployable, living on money borrowed from friends.  My father gave him $20- (a substantial sum at the time) to walk the dog once or twice each week.

 About six months after his diagnosis, Mr. Sloan died.

There was no funeral.

Much as I had liked and admired Mr. Sloan this was a stark lesson to me.  I was probably sixteen, and seeing more boys than girls by a wide margin at the time, but I decided right then that I was going to get married and start a family.

That I wasn’t going to die alone and unloved.

Spirtual but not Relegious

"People can always make claims to any kind of experience. The question is always: Who cares? Why should anyone care where someone else gets a spiritual high? Because no one really cares, the claim to be spiritual but not religious is always safe. It’s never a threat and can be dismissed quite easily. The claim to be religious is different. It is a claim that God himself has taken the initiative to reveal himself to us and tell us who he is and who we are. Religion binds us to God according to his will, not ours, in a community of faith that he has brought into existence. Being religious can therefore be threatening."

— Francis Cardinal George

Abortion in a Box

This all started on Facebook, when someone made a group called “I support showing graphic abortion images in public.” Now, I am as pro-life as anybody, but I don’t think gory pix are going to change anybody’s mind, so I posted on the page:

“Sorry, but I don't. When my oldest daughter was about six or seven we stumbled upon graphic images in front of a clinic that we didn't even know was there. She was quite traumatized and, rather than blame the abortionists, she blamed the protesters. Today she is "pro-choice" and I think this encounter contributed to that.”

Then, one Tim Locklear (a gun-nut from O-max) counter-posted:

“That is SUCH crap kind sir... To be honest, my 5 year old KNOWS what Abortion is...and that it is murder...and WHEN she has seen them, it makes her as sad as it makes me...”

 I tried to explain:

 “My point is very simple. People do not like being shown revolting pictures and are very likely to resent the people showing these pictures DESPITE the intention of those people”

He never responded, but sweet and friendly April Fitz Scheidler did:

“There is something to what you say about being turned off the pro-life side because of a negative association with the horrific pictures. Still, I wonder if the image itself stays in the mind longer than the negative feelings toward the people showing it.

I also wonder about our feelings about protecting our children are a good reason to keep the graphic images out of the public eye. What cost are we willing to pay to stop abortion? Is it right to shelter children, at the expense of the truth being shown? I think sometimes we, even prolifers, want to keep abortion in a "box", only to be taken out when we feel like thinking about it. I know I'm guilty of that.

You are obviously committed to stopping abortion. Going out to pray at clinics is probably the most difficult place to be. So I respect your thoughts about the signs, but I wonder if you have really wrestled with all aspects of this issue.”

Okay, yes, I want to keep abortion in a box. Let’s start with I am pro-life. I am a Catholic who accepts the Church’s teachings on EVERYTHING. Let’s go beyond that and say that, even when I was a godless communist, I believed that abortion was genocide against workers in the womb. Though my parents were bourgeois liberals, and I grew up in a pro-choice household, since becoming an adult I have always been pro-life.

But, having grown up liberal, I know and understand the other side. About a year ago I shared a story with Mrs. Greer, a very sweet and pious woman from my parish. It seems that my youngest daughter, Willa, had to do a report for school on a contemporary political issue, and she chose abortion. This involved actual fieldwork, and so I took her to an International Socialist Organization meeting about the “War on Women.” The irony here is that even though Willa and I are hard left (and Willa very much impressed the comrades there with her fluency in Marxist jargon) we opposed the ISO line on abortion and were there as spies. Mrs. Greer saw the humor in this, but she also said something along the lines of “It must have been awful to be in a room with such hateful people.” I contradicted her flatly, saying, “These aren’t hateful people. They earnestly want a better world. They love the poor and social justice. They are far better than most mopes you see walking down the street. They support abortion rights because they actually think that’s best for women.” Now, Mrs. Greer has known me for years, our children have played together, I have had dinner at her house, we pray for each other, and so she simply had to take my word for it. PEROPLE ON BOTH SIDES OF THIS ISSUE ARE TRYING TO BE MORAL.

 Now, when I say I am a Catholic and accept ALL of the Church’s teachings, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t hard. From what I understand, research has indicated that 70% of fertilized eggs may never go on to become a full-term pregnancy. Is God really that prodigal of souls? Was Heine right?

     The older brother, lowers his dark torch.
     Sleep is good: and Death is better,
     yet Surely never to have been born is best.

 I cannot think so. I have real difficulty with the idea that God bestows a soul upon every fertilized egg, only to destroy seven in ten before they can be saved. And this is the nut of the issue, isn’t it? Only an idiot would deny that LIFE begins at conception, but does all life have a soul? The godless are forced into not discussing the issue, because they can make no demarcation between life and ensoulment, while Catholics dare not to. For if they did, then the question becomes open.

I did some printing for Rabbi Mikva recently and had a nice talk with her about the issue. Being a serious and pious individual, she saw the central issue as being that of the disposition of the soul, and she quoted Saint Thomas Aquinas to me about ensoulment. Would God really waste 70% of souls? It is hard to think so.

And, if we are to believe the opinion polls, most Americans think not. Two-thirds of Americans think that first trimester abortion should be legal, while the numbers fall off a cliff for second and third trimester. Plainly, people have difficulty thinking that the earliest stages of development are human, yet become very protective once it begins to look like a baby.

 And we have to ask ourselves: do I believe in democratic government? It is obvious that a simple majority of opinion does not constitute truth or right, but when we subscribe to the idea of democracy we have to ask ourselves how far does that extend. At some point, our moral principles must supercede our commitment to democracy. Certainly, genocide is beyond tolerating, and deomocide as well. A government that will not allow the free practice of my Catholic faith is one that must be opposed. How far must a government go in opposition to our principles before we will call upon a man like Franco? Is abortion so intolerable that we would use violence to topple a government that allowed it? The man who shot Dr. Tiller thought so. I cannot.

As long as I am left in peace to live my life as a Catholic, I can accept the will of the people. Frankly, I am much more concerned about that poor pharmacist who was fined because he refused to dispense oral contraceptives. Frankly, I am glad that I am closing my unprofitable business rather than be faced with the prospect of paying for insurance that covers abortifacients. Frankly, I wish that Illinois would enforce the parental notification law that is on it’s books so that I can be certain that my under-age daughter does not make a catastrophic mistake.

Yes — I keep abortion in a box. I live and work in the art district, where people are overwhelmingly liberal, so I don\t talk about it. I don’t think that any politician is actually going to get rid of something so popular as abortion, so I don’t vote that issue. And I oppose showing graphic pix of abortion because I think it’s counter-productive.

 Most people have fixed beliefs. Abortion is not an issue like taxes, were we can talk about them being too high or too low and compromise in between. No, it is either right or wrong, and people usually fall on one side or the other. Usually, it bothers people. It’s bloody, and it’s messy, and on some level they have to acknowledge that something is being killed. But, they don’t want to be caught either. If they don’t want that baby, at that time, with that person, they want a way out. And seeing an horrific pic of a mutilated fœtus is just going to irritate them.

Conversions are made one at a time. It is a tricky business to nudge someone into thinking something new. You cannot push them, for then they will push back, and you have to know when not even to nudge, when to allow them to think it over. Life is a messy business.

Most Saturday mornings you will find me at the corner of LaSalle and Division, in front of the Planned Parenthood clinic, saying the Rosary with Darlene and Lynn. This is the kind of protest I like. Low key, pious, friendly. We give witness.

When my son was eleven or twelve, I laid down my three rules for him. “If you are caught doing drugs, I will throw you out of the house.”

He nodded, for he knew I was fanatically anti-drug.

“If you corrupt a good catholic girl, I will throw you out of the house.”

This was reasonable enough and he nodded.

“And you must never be party to an abortion.”

 “Or you will throw me out of the house?”

 “No—“ I shook my head, “Worse than that. You will never forgive yourself.”

“Never?”

“Do you think I will ever forgive myself?”

 He just stared at me.

“Not ever!”

Actually, it does.

Why We Don't Need Free Birth-Control

In 2008 I was at a Christmas party given my one of my ultra-Catholic friends. These are the kind of people who sing Christmas carols in Latin, say Rosaries for the unborn, and hold prayer vigils outside of Planned Parenthood clinics. These are people who do not use contraception, home-school their kids, and would never wear anything so revealing as a sleeveless dress.

This was right after Obama was elected, but before he was inaugurated and, naturally, there was a good deal of speculation about what he would do. Healthcare was obviously on the table and I would say that two-thirds of the people there favored socialized medicine. That’s right; more than half the people in that room, people as culturally conservative as it is possible to be, favored a Single-Payer System – but with one proviso: you had to keep abortion out of it.

The next day, I wrote President-elect Obama a letter with this simple message: you can sell a single-payer system to conservative Americans if you keep abortion out of it. (I also sent this same letter to David Axelrod, whom I actually know and have done business with.)

Since then, exactly the wrong things have happened.

• Instead of a Single-Payer System, we got a warmed over version of Romneycare. The whole point of healthcare reform was to save money by eliminating the bureaucracy that rationed healthcare, but this system would simply add yet another layer of bureaucracy.
• When push came to shove in Congress, Obama caved in on the Public Option, but went to the wall to defeat the Stupak Amendment which would have kept abortion out of it, thus turning every loyal Catholic (and many other people of faith) against it.
• And now Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has announced that most employers will be required to cover contraception in their health plans. This is hugely problematic for Catholic employers who believe that even paying for someone else’s contraception is immoral.

These developments are just the tail end of a long trend.

Until the McGovern nomination in 1972, the Democrats were the party of Labor. They fought hard for union rights, equitable tax polices, high minimum wages, and government programs like Social Security and Medicare that ensured a reasonable minimum standard of living for retired workers. Sure they were little bit more liberal than the Republicans on social issues, more progressive on civil rights, against prayer in the schools, but these were small issues that only rarely decided an election.

And then along came the Counter-Culture and the Democrats abandoned their working-class base. They became the party of abortion, de-criminalization of drugs, and the normalization of homosexuality. Carter, despite being a social moderate, began the process of deregulation that has wreaked havoc with American finance, causing one speculative bubble after another (S&L, Dot-Com, Housing) and has caused whole industries to collapse (since 1978 every major airline has filed for bankruptcy and the top ten interstate trucking firms are all out of business). And then along came Clinton and they began instituting trade and tax polices that shipped jobs overseas wholesale.

Wages are down 30% since 1972, our trade deficits are super-colossal, and the rich now control more of this country’s wealth than any time since the Gilded Age of the 1870’s.

And where are the Democrats?

Making birth-control coverage mandatory so that people can fornicate on their employer’s dime.

Why not fight for full employment, high wages, and real healthcare so that workers can afford to buy their own damn birth control?

Posted on Craig's List

Stands to reason ...

Well, yeah! No one likes to wear helmets. They're uncomfortable and bulky, it's awkward putting them on when you're in the mood to skate, sometimes you don't have one handy when you need it, and it lessens the feeling of the breeze in your hair. So, can you blame a fellow if he doesn't always wear one of those things?

But condoms — well, who doesn't like the feeling of those? Hardly seems worthwhile to do "that" if you're not wearing a nice snug condom to enhance that feeling intimacy.

All right, we are two nations ...

When I saw this postcard at PostSecret I was really sad for the poor girl:





















But when I read the two comments below, I was just about heart-broken:

-----Email-----
Hi Frank - My husband and I are not able to have children. Or at least I'm not. I had my 2nd ectopic pregnancy the day before Thanksgiving and they took my last fallopian tube. I would love to get my contact info to the poster of the abortion secret in case she changes her mind and considers adoption. We would make amazing parents!...[email removed]...

-----Email-----
Hi Frank - Can you please take down my email? I'm getting hate mail. I guess it wasn't the right thing to do. Thank you!

Can you even begin to imagine what sort of person would send hate mail to someone so desperate and earnest?

all right we are two nations

In reaction to the Occupy Wall Street movement, a group in Minnesota put up this bill-board:



In the past thirty years our tax code has been completely re-written to benefit the rich, our jobs have been sent over-seas, productivity per worker has doubled yet wages have been hammered down by at least 30%, economic inequality has grown to Gilded Age proportions, basic healthcare has become unaffordable for the working classes, millions have lost their homes due to predatory lending practices, bail-outs that were supposed to prop-up "key sectors of the economy" have been paid out as bonuses —
but somehow the people objecting to this are the "covetous" ones?

Words

Herman Göring is famous for saying, "Whenever I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my revolver," except, of course, that he didn’t say it. (It actually is a line from the play Schlageter, written by Hanns Johst.) But the concept is pretty clear, don’t you think?

There are some words that make us “reach for our revolvers,” and the Liberal/Conservative divide is fairly riven with these words. Of course, there is the controversy over so-called “inclusive language” but there are many more subtle shibboleths such as:

• Liberal parishes refer to themselves as “welcoming parishes” while conservative will admit to being “traditionalist” but prefer to call themselves “authentic Catholics.”

• Welcoming Churches list the times for “liturgy,” while Traditionalist Parishes list the “mass times.”

• While Traditionalists often criticize the behavior of “the bishops,” centering the fault on these individuals personally and by name, Liberals routinely blame “the hierarchy” and thus blame the very existence of an authoritarian structure for the problems.

• “Reconciliation” is usually offered for about half-an-hour on Saturday afternoons in Liberal parishes, while “confessions are heard before each mass” at Traditionalist parishes.

• Liberals often drop the article in front of nouns, speaking of “church,” “community,” or “spirit,” as in “church is community lead by spirit.” Traditionalists would say “The Church is a community lead by the Holy Spirit.” I’m not sure why Liberals drop the other articles, but in the case of “church” it’s because they don’t want to commit to saying that the Catholic Church is “a church” or “the Church.” They also don’t capitalize “Church” nor pronouns referring to the Deity, as in “Christ and His Church.”

• Bonnie Wheeler, in a history of women in the Middle Ages (definitely a liberal undertaking), referred to the popularity of “making journeys to sacred spaces” instead of saying (more accurately) “making pilgrimages to shrines.” I have no idea of what her agenda was, but such bizarre circumlocutions must have some purpose.

• Liberals say “eucharistic minister” instead of “extra-ordinary ministers of the Eucharist” because they don’t want to acknowledge that you’re only supposed to have them in the extra-ordinary circumstance of having an huge congregation and only one priest to give out communion.

• Traditionalist say “Tridentine mass” and “Novus Ordo mass” while liberals say “extra-ordinary form of the mass” to stress that the Tridentine form is not usual and not to be encouraged.

• Liberals say “contemporary music” to make it sound fresh and new, Traditionalist say “folk mass” to make it sound idiotic.

• I once read a piece in the Tribune about a mother whose child was celiac and could not eat wheat without serious medical consequences. She wanted rice-wafers to be consecrated for her daughter (neither valid nor licit), but the priest offered instead to give her communion under the species of wine. (The very same solution Father Phillips offered my celiac daughter.) The woman objected to this, because she “didn’t think children should be drinking alcohol.” Only a Liberal would think of the Blood of Christ as booze.

• Liberals never use the word “sermon,” always “homily.” I don’t know if there is a difference, but I do know that I like it when I am preached to, told that I am wrong/weak/licentious, and told to cut it out. I don’t need anyone to explain the Gospel to me, I need someone to harangue me into living the Gospel.

• Liberals say “abstinence,” Traditionalists say “chastity.”

• What Liberals denounce as the “rhythm method” is referred to by Traditionalists as “periodic abstinence.” Note that this is the correct use of abstinence (i.e. abstaining from something), as a married couple would still be “chaste” (i.e. abstaining from illicit sexuality) even if they were to engage in relations at such a time.

• Though it is a perfectly good term, Traditionalist never say “acolyte,” always “altar boy,” because they ought to be boys. Liberals usually use the “inclusive” term “altar server.”

• Some fool of a retired friar, looking to raise funds for a perfectly worthy missionary effort, gave an homily at Saint John’s that began with the phrase, “You have a beautiful worship space here!” After mass, I took him aside and told him that the phrase “worship space” hit the wrong note with the crowd at Saint John’s. “Really? What should I have said?” he asked. “Church,” I said, “We have a beautiful church here.” I hope he got the message, and was not lynched by the arch-traditional 12:30 crowd.

An Insight Bound to be Unpopular

“The Tridentine Mass has great mystical power and the proof of this is that no Satanist has ever bothered to make fun of the Novus Ordo Mass. Every Black Mass ever said has been based on the Tridentine Model. Our enemy knows where our strength lies better than we do.”

— Scott Apton

There is NOTHING He Can Say

Monday morning I got word that my fiend Tom Roeser had died the day before. In the early 1970's, when I was eleven or twelve, I read a series of articles in the Sun Times by Mr. Roeser about the Catholic Church, Vatican II, and how most people held misconceptions about both. They were informative, well written, and they had an influence on me. Years later, when I had the good fortune to meet Tom Roeser, I was able to tell him that these articles were one of about a dozen factors in my decision to become a Catholic. He was visibly touched and said that bringing someone to the Faith was the best work a man could do and that he was gratified to know that he had in some small way helped me to find God. That was fifteen years ago, and we have been friends ever since.

Of course, I'll be going to his funeral. I've already written a letter of condolence to his wife. In a few weeks, I will probably have an opportunity to talk to her after mass and I can think of a dozen things to say that will probably make her feel better. I imagine it is a comfort to her to know that many, many people's lives were touched by Tom and will miss him. He was eighty-two years old, he had enjoyed a good measure of success in his life, he died a loyal Catholic with every expectation of God's mercy, and so his death is not a tragedy, but rather the inevitable final act of a long life well spent.

Somebody else died early Sunday morning.

Sunday we had gotten a call. A boy had fallen off a building. Police weren't giving out any details, but someone we knew in the building called to tell us that one of the two people in the building unaccounted for was my son's friend "D." It wasn't until the next day that we got word that, in deed, D. had fallen to his death in what was probably a senseless accident. My son was told that all of D's friends were going over to be with D's parents at in their dreadful hour of loss. My son spent the better part of the day there, only coming home late in the evening.

When he got home, my son was plainly worn out, depressed, dragging. Wife-mate gave him some soup and no one spoke. After a few minutes, I mentioned that our friend Mr. Roeser had passed away on Sunday. My son nodded and said, "I'll have to write Mrs. Roeser a letter."

"I've already written one; you can just add your signature to mine."

"I'd like to write her a letter, I know what to say to her."

And we all understood what he meant by that. He meant that he had just spent a whole day with people that will never be consoled, who will never find comfort in his words, whose loss is unspeakable. After that, writing a letter to Mrs. Roeser would not only be easy, it would be a comfort to him.

Exactly What To Expect

This post card was sent in to PostSecret, a blog that publishes anonymous cards sent in from all over the world:

Thoughts on "Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Month"

I picked up a book recently that was simply fascinating in its disingenuousness, “Why We’re Liberals: a Political Handbook for Post-Bush America,” by Eric Alterman. The book’s format is catechial, with his asking a question and then appearing to answer it. The problem is, he never really answers the question.

For instance, Chapter Nineteen is called “Why do Liberals Love “Activist Judges”?” where Alterman simply dodges the questions of why or whether liberals like judges who legislate from the bench, and why or whether this is a good thing, by pointing out instead that conservative judges have in many cases also usurped legislative functions.

Or Chapter Sixteen, “Why Do Liberals Hate Religion” is mostly taken up with a discussion of how there are plenty of religious liberals, like Jim Wallis, and that their only real objection is to “Biblical literalism” that threatens the separation of church and state. Alterman never acknowledges, or even mentions, that the primary role of religion is in dealing with personal sin, whereas the predominant trend in liberalism thought for at least the last forty years is that personal failings are usually a result of social and environmental factors, which largely negates the idea of personal sin.

Which leads us back to Chapter Twelve, “Why Won’t Liberals Admit That America is Suffering from a Crisis in Moral Values” where Alterman devastates the opposition by pointing up that the Teenage Pregnancy Rate has been falling for the last twenty years!
So, let’s look at the "problem" of teen pregnancy.

Like all pregnancy rates, teen pregnancy was at an historical low in 1940, primarily because after ten years of economic depression people just weren’t having a lot of babies. And then the rate shoots up with post-war prosperity to an all time high around 1960, but this isn’t a problem because throughout the 1950’s the average bride was only 20.3 years old. That’s right: about half of all brides were teenagers, so naturally the teen pregnancy rate would be high. Since 1960, the average bride has aged some five years (she is now 25.6) and teenage marriages have become a rarity.

What hasn’t gone down is the rate of Illegitimate Births! The Out -Of-wedlock Birth Rate rose steadily from 1940 to 1990 and has remained fairly stable in the low forties per thousand since then. About twenty times what it was in 1940.

Even more distressing, Birth Out-Of-wedlock as a percentage of Total Births has grown from a negligible one in fifty in 1940, to one in three today. Putting all moral or religious concerns aside, this is still an important issue from a purely practical standpoint. I didn’t have to look very far to find dozens of documented ill effects of bastardy, a sampling of which I offer below:

• Fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness, suicide, poor educational performance, teen pregnancy, and criminality.
• A majority victims of child sexual abuse came from disrupted or single-parent homes. Whereas only 31% of sexually abused children live with both biological parents, 42% lived in single parent homes, and 27% of the abused children lived with either a stepfather or the mother's boyfriend.
• According to police reports, 49% of all child abuse cases are committed by single mothers.
• Children of never-married mothers are more than twice as likely to have been treated for an emotional or behavioral problem and six times as likely to exhibit violent behavior at school.
• Children in single-parent families tend to score lower on standardized tests and to receive lower grades in school and are nearly twice as likely to drop out of school as children from two-parent families.
• Children from low-income, two-parent families outperform students from high-income, single-parent homes. Almost twice as many high achievers come from two-parent homes as one-parent homes.
• The proportion of single-parent households in a community predicts its rate of violent crime and burglary, but the community's poverty level does not. The relationship between family structure and crime is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature.
• 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes.
• 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes

The fact that nowadays the overwhelming majority of teen mothers are unmarried masks the real problem but, when you separate these variables, statistical analysis shows that the real problem is bastardy. The emphasis on “Teenage Pregnancy” is simply a red-herring, a way of pretending to deal with a social problem while avoiding the real issue. It is a way of being “nice” and “non-judgmental,” of not appearing to “stigmatize” people, when a revival of the social stigma against bastardy is exactly what is needed.

What we need is a Bastard Prevention Month!

Those Socialistic Popes!

“No one is in a state of salvation who knowingly lives on the profit of usury.”

— Pope Innocent III

“Would justice permit anyone to own and enjoy that upon which another has toiled? As effects follow the cause producing them, so it is just that the fruit of labor belongs precisely to those who have performed the labor.”

— Pope Leo XIII
“Rerum Novarum [On the Condition of the Working Classes]”

“It is shameful and inhuman, however, to use men as things for gain and to put no more value on them than what they are worth in muscle and energy.”

— Pope Leo XIII
“Rerum Novarum"

“It is incontestable that the wealth of nations originates from no other source than from the labor of workers.”

— Pope Leo XIII
“Rerum Novarum"

“Free competition, though within its limits is productive of good results, cannot be the ruling principle of the economic world. It is necessary that economic affairs be brought once more into subjection to a true and effective guiding principle.”

— Pope Pius XI
“Quadragesimo Anno”

“[It is the] function of government to adjust ownership to meet the needs of the public good.”

— Pope Pius XI
“Quadragesimo Anno”

“The system is vicious, both ethically and ontologically … capitalism degrades men to mere economic facts of cost, to be bargained for at lowest possible market prices.”

— Pope Pius XI
“Quadragesimo Anno”

Juno and the McGilla

The classic “McGilla” goes something like this:

A very agitated fellow walks into a bar and asks: “Is Joe McGilla here?”

“I don’t know,” the bar-tender replies, then he turns around and calls out: “Is Joe McGilla in the house?” He calls this out once or twice and, when no one answers, he says to the fellow asking, “I guess not.”

"Well,” the fellow says excitedly, “If you see Joe McGilla, tell him he’s just become an uncle!”

“Oh, congratulations!” the bar-tender offers his hand, “Let me set you up with a drink on the house!”

Now, the trick here is that there is no Joe McGilla;.

This story is about a fellow who wants a free drink and the whole thing about McGilla becoming an uncle is just the trick he uses to get the drink. Most movies have a McGilla, that is, a plot element that sets up the whole story. Just as in the bar, if the bar-keep didn’t believe that there was a real Joe McGilla, then the fellow wouldn’t get the drink, so too in a movie, if the audience doesn’t believe the McGilla then there really is no movie.

Either you buy it that Carry Grant is mistaken for a spy in “North by Northwest,” or the rest of the movie doesn’t matter. Either you believe Jimmy Stewart has a guardian angel willing to intervene in his life, or it’s not “A Wonderful Life.” Either Bill Murray has to re-live the same day again and again, or the next day isn’t “Groundhog Day.” Theorists call this “willing suspension of disbelief,” I just call it “buying the McGilla.”

So here’s this movie “Juno,” about the trials and tribulations of a pregnant teenager. The movie is not about her getting pregnant, it’s about her being pregnant, and so if she doesn’t stay pregnant then there is no movie. So we need a McGilla: we need a reason for why an intelligent, sarcastic teenage girl, from a typical middle American family, who’s pretty cavalier about getting herself pregnant, would not just do the usual thing and get rid of it. The problem is compounded by the fact that having a baby is a whole lot more trouble than setting someone up with a free drink, so the McGilla has got to be pretty good.

And it is.

When Juno, the girl in trouble, ducks on down to a clinic to have herself a quick scrape, she runs into Su-Chin, a dorky Asian girl holding a sign that reads “No Babies Like Murdering” and crying out in broken English “All babies want to be borned!” (Not since Benson Fong played Charlie Chan’s #3 son has an Asian stereotype been simultaneously so degrading and sympathetic.) Juno walks up and has a conversation with Su-Chin about school, neither of them mentioning why they are there, until Juno walks on to the clinic with Su-Chin calling after her “Your baby has fingernails!” Juno walks on, has a seedy encounter with the receptionist in the clinic, and then finds herself unable to fill out the forms required. In the next scene she is on the phone to her best friend saying that she’s decided to keep the baby, citing the fact that the baby already has fingernails among her reasons.

Now, that’s a pretty good McGilla and I buy it. I actually know sidewalk counselors and they regularly report conversion experiences of that type. Perhaps they are not common, but they do happen and usually for the same reason: the counselor says something that makes the pregnant woman come to see her child as a real person.

So this is actually a very good Pro-Life message — right?

Well, not according to the film makers. On the commentary track (and evidently in interviews as well) both writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman say that this movie is actually Pro-Choice, essentially because Juno makes her own choice.

Do you buy that? I don’t.

Let’s try a thought experiment. Can we imagine someone who’s on the fence about abortion going to that movie, hearing the thing about the fingernails, and then coming down on the Pro-Life side? I think that is plausible. They might also see how happy the baby’s adoptive parent is at the end of the movie, or how the process causes Juno to become more mature, or how crass the clinic employee was; any of these factors might constitute a persuasive Pro-Life message.

Now, can you find anything, any reason at all why someone on the fence might see Juno and become Pro-Choice as a result? I can’t imagine such a thing.

So here’s a lovely irony. Two decidedly Pro-Choice film-makers have made a demonstrably Pro-Life film just to have a plausible McGilla!

I love it.

Soviets Against Abortion!

Super cool Soviet poster from 1925, warning against midwives performing abortions.

Abortions performed by either trained or self-taught midwives not only maim the woman, they also often lead to death.