One “dirty bomb” could make Manhattan uninhabitable for decades, expert testifies in Senate; this just in: Clinton lied; Arafat’s suicide bombers plan more murder of civilians; cost of Cardinal Law’s cover-up increases to $45 million of Catholics’ money; world’s first womb transplant performed.
THE UNSERIOUSNESS OF THE DASCHLE DEMOCRATS: John Ellis (friend and supporter) nicely highlights the sheer fatuous narcissism of Daschle Democrats toward this war for our national survival. They’re still playing the news cycle game, the Washington status game, and the blame game. Mike Kelly makes a similar point: “The administration does not know exactly how, in the end, it is going to prevail. But it does seem to know what Daschle does not — that in the end it must prevail, that it cannot settle for declaring victory and going home: Home is where they attacked us.” Kelly is right that Daschle et al are simply not serious leaders. Worse, they simply aren’t serious people. Thank God they aren’t in charge right now. And heaven help us if they control the government any time soon.
BUSH ON GORE: “Bush had little use for Gore. Publicly, he never said so, but privately, when he talked to friends and political allies, he made it clear that he saw Gore as equal parts pompous blowhard and preening chameleon, a spineless panderer ready to be anything for anyone. For Bush, this was distilled in a single, oddly chosen detail: ‘The man dyes his hair… What does that tell you about him? … He doesn’t know who he is.'” The more I read Frank Bruni’s book on the real George W. Bush, “Ambling Into History,” the more I like this president. I’m not sure that’s Bruni’s intention, but there you have it. There are still two weeks to get a fresh, insider insight into Dubya and join the discussion with me and Bruni and your fellow readers. You can get the book and thereby join this month’s club here.
PAUSE: “It gives pause. That is the reaction here in Washington to the news that the White House has created a shadow government in the mountains. We are not frightened or panicked, just, you know, pausing, briefly, to mull the implications of a government program for which the possible obliteration of one’s community is the premise.” That’s the opener for a hilarious take by Joel Achenbach on the jitters in Washington right now.
CRIMES OF OMISSION: How Bob Herbert can write a column about New York City’s success against crime while barely mentioning Rudy Giuliani is beyond me. Yes, he gives some scant credit to Giuliani’s computer-assisted strategy. But really, the ingratitude and ideological blinders are still staggering.
SIMON’S OK: “Voters can register here as “Decline To State” which is great for me as my own term would be “none of your damn business”. As a DTS I could ask for any party ballot. I was happy and excited to vote for Simon. The first time I’ve been happy to vote for an R on the state ballot since 1992.” – from the Letters page today. You also defend Clinton, Rall and the liberal media.
TED’S BUDDY: Here’s a blog from one John Scalzi who is, apparently, a friend of Ted Rall, the cartoonist who recently mocked “terror widows.” James Taranto points out something I almost missed. One of Rall’s panels has a clear reference to Mariane Pearl. One “terror widow” says, “of course it’s a bummer that they slashed my husband’s throat – but the worst was having to watch the Olympics alone.” What point does that conceivably make? Apparently, according to Scalzi, a fair one:
The question then becomes, regardless if it’s insensitive to point it out or not, whether Ted’s satirical take on these telegenic widows has some basis. I think it does; anyone who watched Mariane Pearl on TV while she was waiting for word on her husband marveled how composed she was on camera, in a situation where your typical spouse would need to be deeply medicated. I don’t personally ascribe Mrs. Pearl’s poise to an inappropriate hunger for the media glare; like her husband, Mariane Pearl is a journalist and can probably compose herself when she needs to — and she also knew that presenting a calm and collected front could help to defeat the purpose of her husband’s kidnapping, which was to instill terror. This is how I read it; Ted may have (probably did) read it differently. Neither of us is Mariane Pearl, so we don’t know what she was really thinking. We have to go on our guts from there.
Hmm. What does it say about someone’s gut that he sees a woman whose husband has his throat slit for being a Jew and he ridicules her and mocks her mourning? If this is what is motivating some elements of the anti-war left, they’re even more depraved than I thought. No paper should ever run Rall again. Censorship? Nah. Decency. And editorial judgment. (See the Letters page for an alternative view.)
EVEN ANTI-ZIONISTS: Binyamin Jolkovsky has an interesting insight into a recent terrorist attack in Israel. Usually, the justification is that this is a war against the “occupation” of land in the west Bank and Gaza, or secondly a war against Zionism and the Jewish state – not simply against Jews as such. Of course we know that the Palestinian and Arab press is still riddled with Hitlerian hatred of the Jews, but we look the other way. What Jolkovsky shows is that the recent bombing of a Hasidic neighborhood is very clarifying in this respect: the massacre targeted Hasidic Jews who specifically oppose Zionism and whose opposition to the Jewish state even leads many of them to carry Palestinian passports. It’s the Jews these Islamist murderers hate. Even if Israel were destroyed as a state, Arafat and his allies would still murder every Jew left behind. That’s the reality. It’s time we faced it.
GAY PRIESTS ETC: Thanks for all your emails. I apologize for seeming angry these last couple of days. The truth is I have never been as depressed about a Church I love. Perhaps this story will help explain why. Some of you may remember my brief account of a wonderful ordination I attended last summer. It was of a friend of mine, my own age, who, unlike me and most of his peers, has dedicated his life to vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and service to God and his fellow men and women. He trained for seven years as a Jesuit. He ha
s worked among the poor, the blighted of the inner city, the young, the needy. He does God’s work, without any expectation of worldly rewards, and when I see what he has done to reach out to African-American Catholics in places others fear to tread, I feel only awe and shame at my own selfishness. At several moments in my own faith-journey, he has picked me up and helped me back on my feet. He is a good, good man. I love him as a brother. And, yes, he’s gay. When I hear his life and work and dignity trashed, violated, insulted and demeaned by the pope’s spokesman, my anger rises, and now, as I write this, the tears well. But you know what? My friend is the real church. He is the real spokesman for the Gospels. And this other spokesman for a Vatican who declared every gay priest a molester-in-waiting has only his conscience to answer to. My friend tells me to go back to the sacraments, to pray that the real church will survive this, and to believe that Our Lord will guide his church back from the secrecy, shame and evil that now infects it. His faith under siege is an inspiration and a goad. Those of us in a state of disbelief and depression need to remember that these hierarchical gay-baiters and protectors of child-molesters cannot take our faith from us, and that our church – the real church – needs us now as never before.
NOW, THE DIFFICULT QUESTION: But some of you raise important questions. Couldn’t it also be true that there are indeed some cliques of gay priests in seminaries and elsewhere, and that celibacy is flouted by some of these people, if not many? Isn’t it also true that some of these incidents are not classic pedophile cases, but more like pederast cases, where the victims are not children but under-age youths? I think the answer to both questions is, sadly, yes. The question is what do we make of it? We don’t have clear data but it’s a fair bet to say that disproportionate numbers of priests are gay. I think that proportion may have increased over the decades as fewer and fewer men become priests and those who get ordained may do so to avoid conflicts over sexual identity. But why should this matter? Celibacy is the rule – for gays and straights. If gays are flouting it, they should be called to account on exactly the same grounds as straights. It becomes a deeper practical and pastoral issue for gays, in my opinion, because the struggle for gay priests to remain celibate is not openly and frankly dealt with. The lingering stigma of homosexuality in the church means that the closet is still the rule rather than the exception, and so these priests are driven underground where they cannot get help and guidance. The closet forces people into further feelings of shame and guilt and secrecy, generating an unhealthy atmosphere in which cliques thrive, cover-ups multiply and scandals are inevitable. The solution? Not more secrecy and purges, but more openness and honesty. If every gay priest were out to his superiors, out to his parishioners, and out to the world, I think we’d be in a much healthier place. Since being gay is not sinful as such, there’s no doctrinal problem with this. And such fresh air is not as conducive to psycho-sexual pathologies as the current stifling secrecy. But of course the Church would be embarrassed to announce that gay men are among its strongest pillars, because it still harbors in attitude if not doctrine a lingering loathing of homosexuality, and its own increasingly strained sexual doctrines would seem far less potent if gays were front and center in the church’s public image. So the shame continues, the secrecy deepens, the pathologies worsen and the scandals multiply. The only way out is candor and serious pastoral care for gay and straight priests alike.
BUT ARE THEY PEDOPHILES OR PEDERASTS?: This question seems to me to be interesting but beside the point. Priests are supposed to be celibate. And if they’re not celibate, they’re breaking their vows, whether they’re gay or straight. If they’re not celibate with consenting adults, they’re criminals, whether they’re gay or straight. What more do we need to discuss? The sly point of raising this issue, of course, is to insinuate that homosexuality is somehow more likely to be expressed with children and under-age youths than heterosexuality. But there’s no credible evidence for this. In fact, much evidence points in the other direction. Britney Spears, anyone? Anna Kournikova? You think straights are less attracted to youth than gays? When this slur fails to stick, the Church’s spinmeisters try another one: that being gay is a form of sickness and that part of that sickness is an inability to control one’s sexual desires. So gays should be purged from the church because they cannot help themselves, while straight pedophiles can. Here’s a quote that addresses that precise point: the notion that homosexuals are sexually compulsive and cannot restrain their desires is an “unfounded and demeaning assumption.” Moreover, the “human person, made in the likeness and image of God, can hardly be adequately described by a reductionist reference to his or her sexual orientation.” That’s from the 1986 Vatican authoritative document called “The Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons.” This is the document that Navarro-Valls single-handedly threw out the window over the weekend to promote his own personal, heretical agenda. The authentic teaching of the Church unequivocally rebuts the hierarchy’s current attempt to scape-goat its own gay priests to deflect attention from hierarchical malfeasance. That shows just how desperate and unprincipled they have become. Their arguments are not only expedient, cynical and self-serving. They are un-Catholic in every sense of the word.
The Dish 