Month: July 2005

The anti-gay, anti-abortion domestic terrorist, Eric Rudolph, might be described as a Christianist terrorist. He certainly echoes some of the more extreme right-wing rhetoric about abortion. But it’s unfair to Christianists to tar them with Rudolph’s murderous brush. Christianists overwhelmingly support peaceful democratic means to advance their control over others’ lives. Rudolph’s protestations to being a Catholic are also suspect. His letters to his mother tell a slightly different story than his official line. Here’s an extract from one:

“Many good people continue to send me money and books. Most of them have, of course, an agenda; mostly born-again Christians looking to save my soul. I suppose the assumption is made that because I’m in here I must be a ‘sinner’ in need of salvation, and they would be glad to sell me a ticket to heaven, hawking this salvation like peanuts at a ballgame. I do appreciate their charity, but I could really do without the condescension. They have been so nice I would hate to break it to them that I really prefer Nietzsche to the Bible.”

Friedrich strikes again. And we know what Nietzsche thought of Christianity. Just read your Allan Bloom.

Good news on the abortion front: there are fewer and fewer, although the decline is not as pronounced as during the Godless, heathen Clinton years. Go figure.

A PRIEST IN CRISIS: Here’s an email that speaks to the agony many Catholic priests are now going through, under the new Benedict regime:

“I have been reading your blog for a couple of months now, but never felt compelled to comment before, but I felt I had to after what I read about the possible upcoming Vatican document on banning gay men from the priesthood. The reason is that I myself am a gay Roman Catholic priest. For some reason, I was unaware of the response of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in 2002. I know that it was a response to a question of whether or not a homosexual could be ordained, but the idea that such a person is “unfit to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders” certainly refers to every gay man who has ever been ordained. Reading it sent a shiver down my spine.

There is a certain irony in the statement, of course, since many who are ‘unfit’ have indeed been ordained as you well know. The response seems to assume that no one has been. On an intellectual level, I am curious as to whether the response is meant to say the a gay man could not be ordained much in the same way the Vatican argues women cannot be ordained. From this point of view it is not a question of whether it is possible; it is not because of the very nature of the person to be ordained.

For myself, the whole thing makes me even more seriously question my relationship with the institutional Church. I love what I do and the people that I serve, it is just becoming more and more difficult to be part of an organization that has formally declared me to be ‘disordered’ and has already declared that I am ‘unfit’ to be ordained. This document could be a turning point for me, and possibly other priests like me. When it comes out, if ever, my response will depend on what it has to say. I think it unlikely that a ‘purge’ of any sort might occur among those already ordained; there are just too many of us and it would do more damage than could possibly be imagined.

The question would remain for me as to whether I could continue being part of the official leadership of such an organization. Still, I feel this is where God has called me; I am just not sure that God has called me to a life of such hiddeness and hypocrisy. I don’t know if I would have the guts it would take to come out to the parish and explain why this policy is so wrong as you wrote about in your blog. It would most certainly mean that I would lose my job. There is no way that an ‘out’ priest would be left in active ministry. It is a time of great soul searching for me and for many of my brother priests who have faithfully and lovingly served the Church for years, despite their being ‘unfit’.”

The decision to remain in an institution that demonizes people for who they are is one only an individual can make. We can only pray that the many priests caught in this trap of bigotry can find a way forward to serve God and their consciences in a darkening time.

Yes, of course, James Buchanan and, for a while, Grover Cleveland. My point is about today. We have become in some ways less tolerant over the decades, haven’t we?

More great ideas from the Republican far right.

It’s a little hard to verify the Harper’s Index statement cited below, because it does not specify who the “nine” Founding Fathers were. The definitions vary in number and importance. But it is nevertheless true to say, from all that I have read, that the following seven critical early American leaders were Deists and denied the divinity of Jesus: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, and Thomas Paine. In fact, can you imagine what a senior Republican would say today about the following statement: “The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion”? That’s from the Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Tripoli, Article XI, passed by the Senate under John Adams’ presidency. No one saying that could be nominated in today’s explicitly Christianist GOP. In fact, many of the statements of the Founding Fathers sound more like Christopher Hitchens than George W. Bush – and would be characterized as bigotry by much of the Republican right. It’s important to realize that today’s Christianists are not representative of the constitutional order and philosophy of this country’s founding; and are, in fact, one of the deeper threats to the maintenance of the freedom bequeathed to Americans as a birthright. Some online resources here, here, and here.

Yes, the Wall Street Journal is correct. From the 2004 Financial Report of the United States Government, we are told that

“The increase in the present value of Medicare represents a $9,609 billion increase over fiscal year 2003. For current participants (closed group), the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan (Part D) added $6,306 billion to the $9,609 billion increase over fiscal year 2003; this amount is $8,119 billion when computed for all current and future participants (open group).”

Here’s the latest GDP data. Yep: $8,000 billion beats China’s GDP of $7,300 billion. Amazing. But this is what Bush conservatism is all about: the biggest unfunded expansion of the welfare state in history. This isn’t debt. It’s mega-debt – to be paid for eventually by inflation, or tax hikes.

Two little factoids leaped out at me recently, and I wonder if they’re true. One is from the current issue of Harper’s. (Yes, I know. They won’t stop sending me the bloody thing.) In the current Harper’s Index, they say:

Number of America’s nine “Founding Fathers” who denied the divinity of Jesus: 7

The magazine ascribes the information to Frank Lambert at Purdue University. It’s pretty striking, if true. Is it? The second factoid was from the other side of the spectrum: the Wall Street Journal’s editorial of last Friday. In a sentiment with which I heartily agree, the WSJ’s editors say:

Republicans share a hefty part of the blame for creating the most fiscally unaffordable new spending program in the past quarter century: the Medicare prescription drug bill, with an unfunded liability that is larger than the GDP of every other country in the world.

Again: amazing, if true. Is it? Any help clearing these up would be greatly appreciated. You guys tend to be more accurate and far quicker than Google.

Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru do their best to make the case that Bush hasn’t lowered the bar on firing a leaker in his administration. They’re not crazy or wrong. You make your own mind up. But this is surely finesse worthy of the 42d president, not the official version of the 43d.

HEATH AND THE TORIES: An emailer recalls:

For what it’s worth, at the time when the Tories rose up against Mrs. Thatcher and forced her out as party leader and PM, I saw Jeffrey Archer, speaking for the Tories, debate a Labour MP on a news program. Whatever you may say about Archer, he is a very quick-witted speaker, quite witty and sharp in a way that the English pull off and Americans rarely do. Anyway, Archer was saying at one point that the Tories should not be considered ‘conservative’ but progressive in some ways. As he put it, to the Tories credit must be given for ‘the first Jewish prime minister, the first lady prime minister, the first bachelor prime minister.’ The way he emphasized the word ‘bachelor’ left no ambiguity about what he meant. Clearly he was referring to Mr. Heath, and clearly he was saying Heath was gay.
All of which is to say, I too wish the obituaries had made more of his private life, because quite clearly it is something that distinguished him – and something some Tories (or at the very least, Jeremy Archer) felt was worth celebrating.

Maybe the bachelor thing is really the astonishing part. A bachelor president is pretty much unthinkable, isn’t it? Far more transgressive than a woman or an African-American or a Jew or even a married gay man.

A pretty dreadful prime minister, in my view. A viscerally anti-American Tory who wanted to submerge Britain into a European super-state, and never managed to forgive Margaret Thatcher for succeeding where he so manifestly failed. There was barely a dictator he couldn’t find an excuse for. Of Tiananmen Square, he said: “There was a crisis after a month in which the civil authorities had been defied. They took action. Very well.” I must also say that it is very weird that the obits barely say anything about his private life. He never married. It was widely assumed he was gay. Why is this somehow a subject that we cannot even discuss after someone has died? I know of no one in British politics who didn’t talk of it privately. And a gay prime minister – however terrible he was at the job – is an historic matter of fact or at least inquiry. Or was he just a gay man of a cerain generation who learned that the only way to control his feelings was to kill them off?

An Iranian dissident’s hunger strike may be drawing to a close.