Your Political Profile |
Overall: 65% Conservative, 35% Liberal |
Social Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal |
Personal Responsibility: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal |
Fiscal Issues: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal |
Ethics: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal |
Defense and Crime: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal |
But here goes: I’m officially an ex-Catholic. Yes, you read that correctly. Liberace has left the Cathedral. Truly, this has been the most difficult decision of my life. But how can I continue to lend my voice to Benedict XVI’s agenda of anti-gay pogroms? I love the Church; I’ll miss it terribly; but any religion that can’t tolerate my repeated intentional violations of its most basic moral precepts is no religion I want to be a part of. And while my belief in an omniscient deity whose will is unchanging is as strong as it’s ever been, I can’t help but ask myself, “Didn’t God learn anything from Stonewall?” Thus are Protestants made.Go read it all.
There’ll be an adjustment period, of course, but I’m already starting to feel at ease in my new home, the profoundly gay Episcopal Church. Like me, it’s an English transplant to America, and like me, it couldn’t be more enthusiastic about anal penetration.
There were cities like Berlin that did not work right. The width of the streets, the firewalls, the abundance of greenery and canals opposed the fire-injections and responded wrong. But Dresden's narrow streets, decorative old town and wooden buildings fed the fires according to plan. The carefully selected triangle between the Ostragehege park and the main railway station functioned as a "fire-raiser". The old cities, bent with age, testimonies to the distant past, were best suited to such attacks. Freiburg, Heilbronn, Trier, Mainz, Nuremberg, Paderborn, Hildesheim, Halberstadt, Würzburg: this avenue of German history shared the lot of Dresden in these months. For the allied fire bomb strategists, the study of their material composition was a science in itself.
In Watford, England, as well as in Eglin Field, Florida, and Dugway Ground, Utah, dummy towns were built complete with German and Japanese materials and inventories. This sort of thing requires thoroughness. Only real Japanese floor matting can be used, only the right number of real German toys in the German house. More woollen coats are stored in Germany than in Japan, in solid cupboards of oak, pine and beech. How many books, which curtains, what type of cushions? The German roof beams provide the crowning touch. Then the practise can start.
You only needed to walk through one of our roasted targets and take a look at the ruins of the countless tiny houses. Some kind of drill press stuck out of every pile of rubble. The entire population was involved in building aeroplanes or war munition. Men, women and children. . . . There are no innocent civilians. Nowadays you fight a people, not armed forces.Although, as I indicated back in 2002, when I first wrote about this, my main problem is assuming that the civilians who were forced to become soldiers, sailors, and Marines when their country was attacked are expendible combatants while those who served the beligerant state in civilian costume are considered to be somehow protected or insulated from the conduct of their nation.
As Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctine of the Faith (the Holy Office) since 1981, Ratzinger has been treated as a kind of grand inquisitor by the media. This is based on the “persecution” of a handful of theologians, most famously Hans Küng. In reality, this persecution amounted to a change of job title: Küng could no longer call himself a professor of Catholic theology, but continued to teach exactly the same things at the same university.
It's his humility, indeed his lack of desire for the job, that I find most compelling. Anyone who has seen him up close (as I have) knows the reality of the man confounds his image as an enforcer. Shy and soft-spoken, he possesses a scholar's temperament and in his youth was considered a theological innovator. He often wins over the wary after personal meetings. Many Protestant theologians in Germany and America, for example, speak warmly of him after engaging in scholarly give and take. Far from being power mad, he has for years pleaded to be allowed to resign from his office and return to teaching, but John Paul wouldn't consent.
You see, we dialogue partners have become friends. The dialogue group is a collection of disparate individuals – clergy and lay, male and female, young and old, parents and childless, with various racial, theological, vocational and other backgrounds. I am certain that we would not all have freely chosen each other as friends. But now, the bond is there. By now we’ve gone through so much together—births and deaths, divorces and marriages, illness and healing, job changes, promotions, travel. We’ve shared the seasons of the year, good food, quiet walks, a funny joke, a hug of condolence, and evening prayers.Melinda, with whom I so strongly disagree, is a friend. Our disagreement is the more painful for that friendship, just as a fight in the intimacy of a family is more painful than one with a stranger. It would be an easy thing, a tempting thing, to show my love by saying “It’s OK. I will agree with you. I will accept your understanding, your vision, of what is true and right.” It is a more difficult, a more costly thing to say, “I love you, but no. You are wrong.”
Sometimes I think our sexuality group is bound together by this fierce, agonizing difference. And sometimes, I think or hope or pray, that we are bound together, in spite of our imperfections, our errors, or misunderstandings and mistakes, by Jesus Christ.
Still More
This is from an e-mail forwarded by a friend, active in the renewal of the Presbyterian Church (with a correction):
Our dear friend and colleague in renewal, Diane Knippers, died this afternoon a little before 2 p.m. She had been failing for the last several weeks and was in the midst of chemo treatments, but had weakened enough that they could not continue them. Late this morning her kidneys began to shut down and several planned procedures were canceled. Her husband, Ed, was with her, as well as her Mother and Father, Vera and Clancey LeMasters, and her brother Doug.Still More
Diane was a dear friend and colleague and a giant among those in renewal ministry. How we will miss her and her clear, mature voice. Many of you would not be aware that Diane was on the staff here at Good News in 1981, when I came to be Executive Secretary. She helped me get settled in for that first year, helped me learn to write, and was such a wonderful help in so many ways. After a year, she and her husband, Ed, moved to Washington, D.C. He is a Christian artist and wanted to pursue his career there in the nation’s capitol. So, Diane has been a long-time friend and has remained close to the work of Good News and our RENEW Network, under the leadership of Faye Short in Georgia. She was United Methodist for many years, having been reared in a home in which her father was a UM clergyman. Some 15 or so years ago, she became Episcopalian, and was a member and a leader at Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, VA. She also served on the board of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) for a number of years. She was so widely respected across many different communions of Christ’s Church. I know we rejoice and give thanks to the Father for her faithful and fruitful life.
We will let you know about arrangements as soon as we learn what they are. Let’s continue to pray for Ed and all the family. Richest blessings on all of you.
Your friend and colleague in renewal,
Jim Heidinger
Under her gentle but always brave leadership, IRD was very often the mouse that roared, terrifying the great grey elephants of national church bureaucracies into frantic panic. Calmly, Diane told the truth, and those who had been disguising suspect politics under cloaks of outward piety had to defend themselves in public, and often couldn't. Her sweetness of disposition was a gift of God. She now returns with it intact, enhanced by her consistent acts of courage, to restore it to her Maker and Redeemer.And TitusOneNine has a letter from Mary Ailes to Diane, here.
Belgian Jean-Paul Georges Ringaud, Cardinal Archbishop of the sprawling industrial diocese of Sprout to the east of Brussels is widely considered to be the standard bearer for the left-liberal wing of the church. Cardinal Ringaud wants to reach out to other denominations by canonizing Martin Luther and naming the first Jewish cardinal. He would make the use of birth-control a sacrament and declare a Feast of the Contraception. He sees no reason why the faithful should not be allowed to attend Mass via cell-phone or Blackberry. A Biblical scholar by training, Ringaud shares with reformist Dutch and German theologians progressive views on the interpretation of the Gospels. The most dramatic is the possibility - according to the latest biblical research - that Jesus of Nazareth was actually a woman. Cardinal Ringaud welcomes the hypothesis: as he has said: the world is ready for a ‘Ms.-iah’ He is well known in his native Belgium for leading congregations in a prayer he penned himself: The Maternostra (Our Mother). This gibes with another of his convictions: the Church has not apologized to nearly enough injured groups – for instance to all women for the existence of the penis. His first act as Pope would be to abolish the papacy.
Our dissenting colleague says that “the denial of Plaintiffs’ request for an injunction frustrates Congress’s intent, which is to maintain the status quo.” Dissenting Op. at __. The status quo is that Mrs. Schiavo is not receiving nutrition and hydration....
BROWN V. PAYTON (03-1039)
346 F.3d 1204, reversed.
At the beginning of this month, the court in a clear case of judicial overreach, struck down all death sentences imposed on minors. Roper v. Simmons. Apparently wanting to show that he was not a cheese-eating surrender monkey (audio), Justice Kennedy, of Rubicon fame, upheld a sentence of death after the prosecutor repeatedly lied to the jurors about what could and could not be considered as mitigation in the penalty phase of the case.
Specifically, as Kennedy himself notes,
In his closing, the prosecutor offered jurors his opinion that factor (k) did not allow them to consider anything that happened “after the [crime] or later.” Id., at 68. The parties do not now dispute that this was a misstatement of law.One must see the dissenting opinion by Justice Souter to see how persistent and egregious this "misstatement of law" was. See § II.
It could be that the jury could have come back with the exact same sentence, even if the prosecutor hadn't lied to the jury, but we will never know. For the Court today has held that a prosecutor, the agent of the state, can mislead a jury in a capital case and allow him to trick that jury into thinking it must disregard all mitigating behavior following the crime.
What is surprising is that he didn't cite to well-settled law in places such as Cuba, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam.
Ahh, the sweet mysteries of life.
Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold identified by name six Episcopalians for having detrimentally influenced the course of the primates’ meeting in remarks to the House of Bishops at their March 11-17 spring retreat at Camp Allen in Navasota, Texas.Of this gang of six, two, Minns and Knippers are at Truro Church.
The devil is a liar and the father of lies and the devil was certainly moving about Dromantine, the site of the primates’ meeting in Northern Ireland, the presiding Bishop said, according to accounts from several bishops who spoke to THE LIVING CHURCH on the condition that their names not be revealed. The primates were “out for blood,” Bishop Griswold told them.
The Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh; the Rev. Canon Bill Atwood, general secretary of the Ekklesia Society; the Rev. Canon Martyn Minns, rector of Truro Parish, Fairfax, Va.; the Rev. Canon David Anderson, president of the American Anglican Council; the Rev. Canon Kendall Harmon, canon theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina; and Diane Knippers, president of the Institute for Religion and Democracy, were singled out for opprobrium by the Presiding Bishop for their behind-the-scenes roles at Dromantine.
("I know exactly what he'll tell you, lies. He was no different from any other officer in the ward room, they were all disloyal. I tried to run the ship properly, by the book, but they fought me at every turn. . . . But they encouraged the crew to go around scoffing at me, and spreading wild rumors about steaming in circles, and then old yellow-strain. I was to blame for Lt. Maryk's incompetence and poor seamanship. Lt. Maryk was the perfect officer, but not Captain Queeg. Ah, but the strawberries, that's where I had them, they laughed at me and made jokes, but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt, with geometric logic, that a duplicate key to the ward room icebox did exist, and I've had produced that key if they hadn't pulled the Caine out of action. I know now they were only trying to protect some fellow officer . . . Naturally, I can only cover these things from memory. If I've left anything out, why, just ask me specific questions and I'll be glad to answer them one by one.")
The emergence of the Renewal following the Second Vatican Council was aIf you're interested in more on the subject, I recommend Richard Quebedeaux's The New Charismatics (1976).
particular gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church. It was a sign of a desire on
the part of many Catholics to live more fully their Baptismal dignity and
vocation as adopted sons and daughters of the Father, to know the redeeming
power of Christ our Saviour in a more intense experience of individual and group
prayer, and to follow the teaching of the Scriptures by reading them in the
light of the same Spirit who inspired their writing. Certainly one of the most
important results of this spiritual reawakening has been that increased thirst
for holiness which is seen in the lives of individuals and in the whole Church
I also cherish the dialogue, which admittedly sometimes became fractious, that I had with readers. From the moment that I published my e-mail address at the bottom of this column, my goal had been to respond to every reader comment with a personal message. As is often the case with such high-minded intentions, I sometimes became overwhelmed by the volume of e-mail that I received.I can affirm, from personal experience, that this was the case -- I was (pleasantly) surprised to see his reply to a message I sent once.
FALLUJAH, Iraq (Dec. 02, 2004) -- "You’re still here, don’t forget that. Tell your kids, your grandkids, what Sgt. Peralta did for you and the other Marines today."
As a combat correspondent, I was attached to Company A, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment for Operation Al Fajr, to make sure the stories of heroic actions and the daily realities of battle were told.
On this day, I found myself without my camera. With the batteries dead, I decided to leave the camera behind and live up to the ethos "every Marine a rifleman," by volunteering to help clear the fateful buildings that lined streets.
After seven days of intense fighting in Fallujah, the Marines of 1/3 embraced a new day with a faceless enemy.
We awoke November 15, 2004, around day-break in the abandoned, battle-worn house we had made our home for the night. We shaved, ate breakfast from a Meal, Ready-to-Eat pouch and waited for the word to move.
The word came, and we started what we had done since the operation began – clear the city of insurgents, building by building.
As an attachment to the unit, I had been placed as the third man in a six-man group, or what Marines call a 'stack.' Two stacks of Marines were used to clear a house. Moving quickly from the third house to the fourth, our order in the stack changed. I found Sgt. Rafael Peralta in my spot, so I fell in behind him as we moved toward the house.
A Mexican-American who lived in San Diego, Peralta earned his citizenship after he joined the Marine Corps. He was a platoon scout, which meant he could have stayed back in safety while the squads of 1st Platoon went into the danger filled streets, but he was constantly asking to help out by giving them an extra Marine. I learned by speaking with him and other Marines the night before that he frequently put his safety, reputation and career on the line for the needs and morale of the junior Marines around him.
When we reached the fourth house, we breached the gate and swiftly approached the building. The first Marine in the stack kicked in the front door, revealing a locked door to their front and another at the right.
Kicking in the doors simultaneously, one stack filed swiftly into the room to the front as the other group of Marines darted off to the right.
"Clear!" screamed the Marines in one of the rooms followed only seconds later by another shout of "clear!" from the second room. One word told us all we wanted to know about the rooms: there was no one in there to shoot at us.
We found that the two rooms were adjoined and we had another closed door in front of us. We spread ourselves throughout the rooms to avoid a cluster going through the next door.
Two Marines stacked to the left of the door as Peralta, rifle in hand, tested the handle. I watched from the middle, slightly off to the right of the room as the handle turned with ease.
Ready to rush into the rear part of the house, Peralta threw open the door.
‘POP! POP! POP!’ Multiple bursts of cap-gun-like sounding AK-47 fire rang throughout the house.
Three insurgents with AK-47s were waiting for us behind the door.
Peralta was hit several times in his upper torso and face at point-blank range by the fully-automatic 7.62mm weapons employed by three terrorists.
Mortally wounded, he jumped into the already cleared, adjoining room, giving the rest of us a clear line of fire through the doorway to the rear of the house.
We opened fire, adding the bangs of M-16A2 service rifles, and the deafening, rolling cracks of a Squad Automatic Weapon, or “SAW,” to the already nerve-racking sound of the AKs. One Marine was shot through the forearm and continued to fire at the enemy.
I fired until Marines closer to the door began to maneuver into better firing positions, blocking my line of fire. Not being an infantryman, I watched to see what those with more extensive training were doing.
I saw four Marines firing from the adjoining room when a yellow, foreign-made, oval-shaped grenade bounced into the room, rolling to a stop close to Peralta’s nearly lifeless body.
In an act living up to the heroes of the Marine Corps’ past, such as Medal of Honor recipients Pfc. James LaBelle and Lance Cpl. Richard Anderson, Peralta – in his last fleeting moments of consciousness- reached out and pulled the grenade into his body. LaBelle fought on Iwo Jima and Anderson in Vietnam, both died saving their fellow Marines by smothering the blast of enemy grenades.
Peralta did the same for all of us in those rooms.
I watched in fear and horror as the other four Marines scrambled to the corners of the room and the majority of the blast was absorbed by Peralta’s now lifeless body. His selflessness left four other Marines with only minor injuries from smaller fragments of the grenade.
During the fight, a fire was sparked in the rear of the house. The flames were becoming visible through the door.
The decision was made by the Marine in charge of the squad to evacuate the injured Marines from the house, regroup and return to finish the fight and retrieve Peralta’s body.
We quickly ran for shelter, three or four houses up the street, in a house that had already been cleared and was occupied by the squad’s platoon.
As Staff Sgt. Jacob M. Murdock took a count of the Marines coming back, he found it to be one man short, and demanded to know the whereabouts of the missing Marine.
"Sergeant Peralta! He’s dead! He’s f------ dead," screamed Lance Cpl. Adam Morrison, a machine gunner with the squad, as he came around a corner. "He’s still in there. We have to go back."
The ingrained code Marines have of never leaving a man behind drove the next few moments. Within seconds, we headed back to the house unknown what we may encounter yet ready for another round.
I don't remember walking back down the street or through the gate in front of the house, but walking through the door the second time, I prayed that we wouldn't lose another brother.
We entered the house and met no resistance. We couldn't clear the rest of the house because the fire had grown immensely and the danger of the enemy’s weapons cache exploding in the house was increasing by the second.
Most of us provided security while Peralta's body was removed from the house.
We carried him back to our rally point and upon returning were told that the other Marines who went to support us encountered and killed the three insurgents from inside the house.
Later that night, while I was thinking about the day’s somber events, Cpl. Richard A. Mason, an infantryman with Headquarters Platoon, who, in the short time I was with the company became a good friend, told me, "You’re still here, don’t forget that. Tell your kids, your grandkids, what Sgt. Peralta did for you and the other Marines today."
As a combat correspondent, this is not only my job, but an honor.
Throughout Operation Al Fajr, we were constantly being told that we were making history, but if the books never mention this battle in the future, I’m sure that the day and the sacrifice that was made, will never be forgotten by the Marines who were there.
I have received Christmas wish lists from Ann, William and Debbie, the Gallahans, and Brian. For the rest of you this Tuesday I will be purchasing the underwear--maybe socks too! :-)My wife told the kids about these messages, seeking to compile their wish lists for Grandma.
[Stone's] Alexander, as expressed through the weepy histrionics of Colin Farrell, is more like a desperate housewife than a soldier. He's always crying, his voice trembles, his eyes fill with tears. He's much less interesting, except as a basket case, than Richard Burton's Alexander of far less enlightened times -- 1956 -- in Robert Rossen's "Alexander the Great." Burton got Alexander's dissipation, but also his martial spirit; this was, after all, one of the great light-cavalry commanders of all time and a general who fought by leading his troops, sword in hand, not directing them from some safe hill. But in this one you think: Teri Hatcher could kick this twerp's butt.The whole review is witty and a work of art which should be read. [More: Read Mr. Bradley's take as well.]
* * *
Then there's Angelina Jolie as Mom. Really, words fail me here. But let's try: Give this young woman the hands-down award for best impression of Bela Lugosi while hampered by a 38-inch bust line. Though everyone else in the picture speaks in some variation of a British accent, poor Jolie has been given the Transylvanian throat-sucker's throaty, sibilant vowels, as well as a wardrobe of snakes.
Stephen Pressfield has just released a novel of Alexander, The Virtues of War. Based on my read of one his prior novels, Gates of Fire, a novel about the stand at Thermopylae, I have moved this to the top of my reading list. In Gates of Fire, Pressfield not only tells the story of the stand, but he conveys a sense of the philosophy, the religion, and the social structure of the men and women of that period of time. It also makes the USMC's reading list.
But for me, Alexander's defining preoccupation wasn't sex or power or subjecting other peoples to his will (as I've read in other books, and which are all legitimate approaches.)And this comport with my study of the ancient Greeks. Don't waste time with bad movies, read a good book instead.
I believe his life was about heroic ambition, and I use the word "heroic" in the Homeric sense, that is, derived from an era of legend and from characters like Achilles and Heracles, who were semi-divine and who lived their lives according to a code that transcends what we would call justice or morality. Alexander did that too, but not in an era of legend, in a real historical era. He's accessible to us. He's "modern." But he lived, I believe, according to that ancient heroic code. In the loftiest terms, I think, he sought to achieve undying glory, to set a mark for the ages. But justice, or at least the concept of conventional justice, took a back seat to glory.
Like I said, read it all.For my wife and her family, being a Catholic meant being a Democrat, and being a Democrat meant fighting for the little guy - literally. That included the poor, the homeless, racial and ethnic minorities, and the unemployed. It also meant defending the unborn child.
For my wife, arguing whether an unborn child was a "full human person" or a "developing human being" was irrelevant - or worse, a kind of lying. The dignity of the unborn life involved was exactly the same, whatever one called it.
In the years since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion on demand, my wife and I have struggled many times with the choice of voting Democratic. Our youngest son has Down syndrome, and Democratic policies often benefit the disabled in ways Republican policies don't.
But it's also true that children like our son are becoming extinct in part because the abortion lobby has a stranglehold on the Democratic Party platform, with all that it implies for legislation and judicial appointments. The easiest response to handicapped children is to kill them before they arrive. That's not a solution. That's homicide.
Had I picked it up a day earlier, I would not have been surprised to find bin Laden still alive -- Miniter presented solid evidence for this in the first 5 pages. Nevertheless, I had been reluctant to read this one, assuming that since it was on the Regnery label, it was right-wing screed and/or rah-rah Bush. Not so. While Miniter does make the case that the War on Terror is largely being won, he does not pull his punches, critizing Bush where warranted.
I'm also reading Wormwood by G. P. Taylor, and am frankly finding it quite boring. Maybe it's the British narration, but I'm finding it like Dickens, without plot or characterization. Rev. Taylor seems to be spending all his time showing you a very dark menagerie, but there doesn't appear to be any redeeming point to this tale. I'm not going to go so far as to label this "spiritual pornography," but I'm almost half-way through and I keep waiting for a glimmer of light. Right now, I'd recommend reading any of the Harry Potter books and stay away from this one.
Recently, I finished reading the final two books in the Jasper 
Fforde "Thursday Next" series, Well of Lost Plots and Something Rotten. The series is great fun and the conclusion of "Something Rotten" is very satisfying. (BTW, I read half of Rotten, then had to return it to the library and ended up listening to the whole book on audiobook -- a good reading. I'm not sure if the other three books in the series could've made the jump to audio book, but this one does. Nevertheless, there are a lot of gimmicks that only work on paper. Think e.e.cummings.)
Some people spend their entire lifetime wondering if they have made a difference,
the Marines don't have that problem.
-- Attributed to President Ronald Reagan
In an interview on Sunday with Charles Gibson, an anchor of "Good Morning
America" on ABC, Mr. Bush said, "I don't think we should deny people rights to a
civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do so." . . .According to an ABC transcript, Mr. Gibson then noted to Mr. Bush that the Republican Party platform opposed civil unions. "Well, I don't," Mr. Bush replied.
He added: "I view the definition of marriage different from legal arrangements that enable people to have rights. And I strongly believe that marriage ought to be defined as between a union between a man and a woman. Now, having said that, states ought to be able to have the right to pass laws that enable people to be able to have rights like others."
