Month: May 2006

Good news. But, alas, the critical decisions have, even now, yet to be made. Money quote:

But the challenges facing the new government were obvious when al-Maliki was unable to make a final decision about the top three security posts: defense minister, who oversees the Iraqi army; interior minister, who is responsible for police; and minister for national security.
Al-Maliki, a Shiite, said he would be acting interior minister for now, and he made Salam Zikam al-Zubaie, a Sunni Arab, the temporary defense minister. Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh, a Kurd, was made acting minister for national security.
Al-Maliki hopes to fill all three posts with politicians who are independent and have no affiliation with any of Iraq’s militias.

I’m glad to see some progress. But as sectarian violence intensifies, a real government will only be one where the militias and insurgent groups come under some kind of central control or even influence. So far: it’s hard to be optimistic on that score.

A reader writes:

These commencement speeches also seem to have begun the process of lancing a pair of boils: that McCain is too old and too hotheaded to be President. By stressing his half century of service and the manner in which age has matured and moderated his views and tempered his conceit of himself, he presents himself as the wise old man of politics, blessed with experience and the ability to put matters into their proper perspective. He may have more to do to combat these concerns, but these speeches seem to be a more than decent start.

Above all, however, McCain seems to be stating one obvious, but frequently over-looked, truth. You need not agree with me on every issue to support me. It’s laughable to suppose otherwise, yet that’s where we seem to be as any deviation form party orthodoxy is treated as an act of excommunicable heresy. That’s crazy and childish. If McCain can change that dynamic then he’ll have done his country yet another service. After all, that’s how most people actually think and feel.

Above all, perhaps, McCain is interesting – and not just to journalists. He’s not perfect, but nor does he pretend to be and that is another plus. But he does seem to have an honesty that allows him to gently, and politely, rebuke Falwell et al for their intolerance of dissent even while trying to reach out to voters who might be sceptical of his intentions. Since politics does require one to engage with folk with whom we disagree I should have thought McCain’s willingness to speak anywhere, to any audience is a matter for celebration not regret. I’m not sure it counts as pandering.

Whether he can win with this strategy remains to be seen of course. It would be nice to think he could though, no?

Yes, it would. And if he continues in this vein, I’ll do what I can to support him. And I have a feeling I won’t be alone.

Theocon-in-chief, Richard John Neuhaus, has a problem on his hands. No one has gone so far out on a limb defending Father Maciel from charges of rampant abuse and rape of minors. Neuhaus smeared the reporters who helped bring Maciel’s abuse to light, and declared his innocence was a "moral certainty." Yesterday, we got two messages from Neuhaus. One is in the New York Times today, where Neuhaus refuses to budge from his previous position, and essentially says that Benedict XVI is wrong to discipline Maciel:

On Friday, Father Neuhaus, editor of First Things, an ecumenical magazine based in New York, said he still believed that the charges against Father Maciel were unfounded. "There is nothing in the Vatican statement that suggests that the word penance is meant as a punitive measure," he said. Asked why the Vatican would take any action, he said, "It wouldn’t be the first time that an innocent and indeed holy person was unfairly treated by church authority."

On his blog, the clearly rattled Neuhaus says something else entirely. Not that he has the decency to apologize to the reporters he smeared. But there is the most minimal concession as to the evidence for Maciel’s long and documented history of sexual abuse:

Since there was no canonical hearing, there is no canonical judgment regarding his guilt or innocence of the alleged wrongdoings … I do not know all that the CDF and the Holy Father know, and am not privy to the considerations that led to their decision. It is reasonable to believe that they think Fr. Maciel did do something wrong.

Something wrong? He is accused of sexual predation and molestation. Then Neuhaus cites John Paul II for leading him astray:

It was hardly the only factor, but one of the many factors that entered into my moral certainty regarding Fr. Maciel’s innocence was my great respect for John Paul II and his repeated statements of support for Fr. Maciel. With similar respect for the office and person of Pope Benedict, I do not protest this directive implying that Fr. Maciel is guilty of wrongdoing. It is obvious that CDF and the Holy Father know more than I know with respect to evidence supporting the guilt or innocence of Fr. Maciel.

So Neuhaus exonerated a man of sexual abuse with unsubstantiated "moral certainty" – and attacked the credibility of the victims of the abuse and the reporters who exposed it – because the former Pope supported Maciel. If the pope said someone was innocent, that was good enough for Neuhaus. Evidence and testimony be damned. There you have a central theme of theoconservatism: the abdication of rational judgment to ecclesiastical authority. That mindset is partly what enabled the sexual abuse crisis in the first place and the cover-up that continued for decades. It was sadly perpetuated by some of the most doctrinally conservative men in the Vatican. In the Maciel case, there can no longer be any doubt that among them was Pope John Paul II. The last Pope, and his enabler, the current Pope, were directly implicated in covering up minor abuse in order to protect one of their powerful friends. That’s the bottom line.

They represent a Who’s Who of American theoconservatives. Money quotes:

"The recent revival of long discredited allegations against Father Maciel would come as a surprise were it not for the fact that the U.S. is currently experiencing a resurgence of anti-Catholicism. One would have thought that Father Neuhaus’s meticulous analysis of the evidence in First Things had put the matter to rest once and for all. As one who sat near Father Maciel for several weeks during the Synod for America, I simply cannot reconcile those old stories with the man’s radiant holiness.

The most powerful refutation, however, comes from the spiritual vibrancy of the great organization he founded, and the thousands of lives that have been touched and transformed by the men and women he has inspired. As Our Lord has told us, "By their fruits ye shall know them." That irresponsible journalists keep dredging up old slanders is perhaps best viewed as a tribute to the success of Regnum Christi and the Legionaries of Christ in advancing the New Evangelization," – Mary Ann Glendon.

Bill Donohue came to Maciel’s defense in this letter to the Hartford Courant:

The headline story of February 23 on the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Father Marcial, might have been more persuasive if you didn’t expect your readers to be so gullible. After all, what am I to make of the third paragraph: "Several [of the accusers] said Maciel told them he had permission from Pope Pius XII to seek them out sexually for relief of physical pain." To think that any priest would tell some other priest that the pope gave him the thumbs up to have sex with another priest ‚Äî all for the purpose of relieving the poor fellow of some malady ‚Äî is the kind of balderdash that wouldn’t convince the most unscrupulous editor at any of the weekly tabloids. The wonder is why this newspaper found merit enough to print it.

Bill Bennett also backed the Legion against the claims of the victims of teen molestation. Duh.

A reader makes a good point:

You observe with regard to Tim Graham’s remarks at NRO that "it’s stigmatization that these people are so adamant about." That’s spot on and it got me thinking. Why so adamantly oppose abortion, but also convenient access to birth control and sex education, or oppose the HPV vaccine? Because they allow people to "sin" without bearing the stigmatizable (if that’s a word) results of that sin.

From ancient times until now, abortion wasn’t condemned because it was the destruction of "human life," but because it allowed women to conceal the result of an illicit affair. Similarly, the pill and HPV vaccine prevent society and medicine from stigmatizing sinful women’s bodies as the proper punishment for their behavior. Allowing gays full civil rights, or teaching tolerance of homosexuality, removes from their lives the stigma they deserve to live with as a result of sin. What Christianists (as well as their Islamist brethren) fear most is a world where any expression of sexuality outside the confines of a procreative marriage goes unpunished and women’s sexuality in particular slips out of the control of religious patriarchy. Imagine a world where sexual pleasure were possible with no risk of pregnancy or STD, or even in the case of gays, occurs entirely from outside a procreative framework. Modern medicine makes it possible and it’s the Christianists’ worst nightmare.

Hence the growing realization that they have to stop contraception.

The Telegraph’s Craig Brown has the scoop.

Tomorrow – live at noon on C-SPAN, I’ll be part of a political lunch session at the Book Expo of America. Pat Buchanan, Arianna Huffington, Frank Rich and I will be talking about our respective upcoming books. I’ll be previewing "The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How To Get It Back." I just sent off the final copy-edits. C-SPAN will have me taking listener calls from 2 pm till 2.20 pm.

Washington has a bad case right now. Ana-Marie Cox witnessed the source of the infection – the new documentary hailing the prophet of global warming. Money quote:

Viewed through the optimistic lens of the post-premiere chatterers, An Inconvenient Truth is intended to be a political biography whose power comes from the film’s terrifying argument about global climate change: Elect me or we will all die.

Or ManBearPig will eat you alive!

A reader writes:

My wife and I loved your essay My Problem with Christianism. We have been discussing the same issue for a while now but so far we have not been nearly as articulate and precise as you were in that essay. We both grew up Catholic and have remained so. Our kids are in 2nd and 3rd grade and right now going to a Christian school. However, we have decided to send them to a Catholic school next year because of the exact problems you describe in your essay. The administrators and the teachers at the Christian school, as you say, believe "Christianity is compatible with only one political party" and can’t understand how any Christian could possibly be truly Christian and vote for a Democrat. They are intolerent of others to the point of almost constant condemnation.  Their narrow view of the world is almost unbelievable.
I hope your essay and others like it will convince others that the Christian right has gone too far in this area. In expressing our views though, I believe we have to stop just short of condeming them the way they condemn others.

Agreed. But what we have to do is describe them in plain English. I’m encouraged that two weeks after its publication, the essay is still among the most emailed articles on Time.com. There are more Christians out there disgusted by the religious right than the MSM would have you believe.

The story I linked to earlier today is now being questioned. I’ll link to any developments as soon as I come across them.