Month: October 2005

Of course that Harriet Miers’ blog is a parody.

Yes, she’s got one.

EDITORIAL OF THE DAY: “Even though military officers like Capt. Fishback and retired senior generals Colin Powell and John Shalikashvili endorsed the McCain measure, the Bush administration fought it, insisting that it would tie U.S. hands in waging the war on terror. Yet when Americans feel free to treat other human beings, even evil ones, with the kind of cruelty that the whole world saw at Abu Ghraib, their hands deserve to be tied.
We congratulate the Senate majority, including Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, for standing up to the president and siding with the Ian Fishbacks and Colin Powells, not the Alberto Gonzaleses and Donald Rumsfelds. The House of Representatives should lift itself up in protest by its moral backbone, too, and Mr. Bush should stand down from his threatened veto. There is no honor in it.’ – Dallas Morning News, today. (Reg req.) Good for them.

TNR names names.

Bush’s approval numbers keep going down. Independents give him 29 percent approval.

“Mirengoff, note, said that Miers ‘probably should be confirmed’ even though this will definitely hurt Republicans in the upcoming election. So he was hardly saying that GOP success in the election counts more than her actual qualifications for the post — he was simply noting that she WILL hurt the GOP in the election. In short, he was actually saying the opposite of what you accuse him of.”

Not quite. A Miers’ defeat would also deeply weaken the president at a time when he is reeling anyway – and therefore hurt the president’s party in 2006. So Mirengoff’s calculation is that the least worst option is to complain loudly but go along with the Great Leader anyway. The bottom line is: loyalty. Always. Even when you disagree profoundly. Party before principle. Always.

The Catholic bishops of England tell American fundamentalists the bleeding obvious: not everything in the Bible is literally true. Money quote: “We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision.” Of course. Anyone who believes that the world was literally created in six days a few thousand years ago is not expressing his or her “religious beliefs”. Believing something that is demonstrably and empirically untrue is not religion. It is simply superstition or lunacy. It has nothing to do with faith in things we cannot know. The notion that it should actually be taught in public schools as science is beneath even debating.

I recently felt compassion for the lawmakers from Louisiana. Now I feel contempt. The indispensable Veronique de Rugy reveals the scandal of Landrieu’s pork-fest. $25,490,073 to complete the Sugarcane Research Laboratory? Senator Landrieu: I have a few ideas where you can put that sugarcane.

Ryan Sager points out that social conservatives are finally experiencing from this president what libertarian conservatives have endured for four long years.

After an internal uproar from all wings of the Church, it appears that the Pope has backed off his reported intent to ban all gay priests and seminarians, regardless of their commitment to celibacy or priestly vocation. This is hugely encouraging news, although it still leaves an aura of stigma around the issue of homosexual orientation:

A forthcoming Vatican document on homosexuals in seminaries will not demand an absolute ban, a senior Vatican official told NCR Oct. 7, but will insist that seminary officials exercise “prudential judgment” that gay candidates should not be admitted in three cases.

Those three cases are:

* If candidates have not demonstrated a capacity to live celibate lives for at least three years;
* If they are part of a “gay culture,” for example, attending gay pride rallies (a point, the official said, which applies both to professors at seminaries as well as students);
* If their homosexual orientation is sufficiently “strong, permanent and univocal” as to make an all-male environment a risk.

In any case, the Vatican official said, whether or not these criteria exclude a particular candidate is a judgment that must be made in the context of individual spiritual direction, rather than by applying a rigid litmus test.

This language is in contrast with earlier news reports that had suggested a much more sweeping ban on gays in the seminary.

I think the sheer theological incoherence, cruelty and bigotry in the previous policy has forced a shift. I worry that celibate gay priests will still be unable to speak about their orientation and reach out to other gay Catholics; and the secrecy and shame that was the prime cause of the sex abuse crisis could linger. But in so far as in some seminaries, there has developed a gay subculture that is not conducive to serious preparation for the priesthood, it’s appropriate to set standards of public and private behavior that allow for priestly formation to take place as it should. I see no problem with that. My other concern is that the standards for celibacy be applied to straight and gay seminarians alike. No straight candidate who has been unable to maintain celibacy for three years should be admitted either, if those are the rules. I don’t think it’s harder for gays than for straights to maintain celibacy. (Of course, if a married clergy is in the works, those rules may change again.) But in general, this is a very welcome moderation of what was an extremist and brutal policy. It’s especially important that those who run seminaries be able to make prudential judgments in individual cases and not to apply broad, discriminatory litmus tests. I cannot express how relieved I am by this news. I hope it holds up. But I will reserve final judgment when I can read and study the document itself.

Esquire has just done an article. Good for them. The news from Rome is also encouraging on that front. Benedict is actually allowing freer internal debate than John Paul II did. There is nothing that would make me happier than seeing Ratzinger return to his roots of tolerance and openness. Of course, the sheer crisis of personnel in the Church has become much worse in the last few years – and some change may simply be required to prevent the complete collapse of the institution, especially the practical difficulty of administering the Eucharist when there are no priests to do it. For the record, I favor optional celibacy for the priesthood. Celibacy is a strange, unnatural way of life – but history has told us it can work for many individuals in sublimating their human nature for divine service. But it doesn’t exhaust the ways of serving God. I also favor, of course, allowing women to be priests. The theological arguments against it are circular and entirely opposed, in my view, to the message of the Gospels where Jesus clearly violates every sexist taboo of his time and treats women as complete equals in ministry and service to God. The idea that women – who discovered the empty tomb – are somehow to be designated second class persons in Jesus’ church is so repulsive and immoral a notion that only an all-male club could sustain it. Oh, wait …