Category Archives: government, law, and politics

Dodging?

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I’m not sure how I feel about the USCCB‘s official comment on the Communion controversy. It seems a bit wishy-washy at points, but it might be the right response. It sounds like a much softer version of what one of the bishops (can’t recall who) said on his own a while ago. Paraphrased, he said, “No Catholic would dare bring his/herself to communion while supporting abortion.” He sidestepped election-year issues by not singling out particular politicians, but he still made his point clear.

Pro-Abortion Politicians Can Be Denied Communion, Says Episcopate
U.S. Bishops Warns Catholics of “Cooperating in Evil”

WASHINGTON, D.C., JUNE 20, 2004 (Zenit.org).- The U.S. bishops’ conference issued a rebuke to Catholic politicians who support abortion, and said that the decision to deny them Communion is up to individual bishops.

Priests Thank U.S. Bishops for Statement
Sat Jun 19,12:27 PM ET
Contact: Jerry Horn of Priests for Life, 540-785-4733

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y., June 19 /U.S. Newswire/ — In a statement released on Saturday, June 19, Fr. Frank Pavone expressed the gratitude of the Priests for Life association, of which he serves as national director, for the June 18 statement of the U.S. Bishops, “Catholics in Political Life.”

On a related note:

U.S. Bishops’ Panel Urges New Kind of Politics
Calls for Focus on the Common Good, Not Demands of Special Interests

WASHINGTON, D.C., JUNE 18, 2004 (Zenit.org).- In testimony submitted to the Democratic and Republican party platform committees, U.S. bishops have called for “a new kind of politics — focused on moral principles not on the latest polls.”

Calling all Fiskers

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This is a long, intelligent, well-written, logical, and rather wrong piece about the Communion controversy written by an atheist. If it were just just laughable pretzel logic, I probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Since is so skillfully written, it ought to be refuted with at least as much skill. Even if I had the time, I wouldn’t present myself as equal to the task. So I’m putting a call out for one or more persons to step up to the soap box. This article screaming for a good fisking.

The Communion Question
[link fixed 06/21/04 – Funky Dung]
Posted by John Holbo

I’ll assume you are an educated person who’s already read Josh Marshall’s post about – what to call it? Bush’s Al-Sadrist gambit: locked in a death-struggle with the forces of democratic reconstruction in your country? See if you can get zealous souls to lay down suppressing fire from the holy places. If you succeed, fine. If the holy places end up getting shelled when the targets lose patience, you cry religious persecution (even if it was pure self-defense) and make hay out of that. It’s win-win.

Fighting Fire With Fanaticism

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Stop
Congress from Amending the Constitution to Limit Free Speech
Urge your Members of Congress to Oppose the Flag Desecration Amendment!

For more than a decade, numerous members of Congress have tried to amend — with
seemingly endless resources — the U.S. Constitution to give the government the
power to prohibit the physical desecration of the American flag. Civil libertarians
have fought back hard with coalitions of veterans, religious leaders and other Americans
who believe that such a constitutional amendment would undermine the very principles
for which the American flag stands.

*Sigh* How many more times with this monstrosity rear its ugly head? The American
flag – any flag for that matter – is just a symbol. Citizens of any free country
should have the right to protest what they see as disgraceful actions taken in their
name by their government, so long as doing so doesn’t not endanger others. A legal
expression of such a protest should be the “desecration” of a symbol of
that government/country, including its flag.

This should be especially true for the US. Our constitution, and the Supreme Court
interpretations thereof, guarantees the rights of free expression and to petition
the government with grievances. To ban flag-burning would violate both.

Perhaps flag-burning is a distasteful thing. I’d have to be pretty ticked off to
do it myself, but tastefulness should not guide legislation of constitutional law.
If it were, we might as well ban foul language, sandals worn with socks, reality
TV, and Hillary Clinton.

Rolling My Eyes

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CHURCH & STATE
by Neal Pollack

A lunatic Christian cult has the run of the White House and the ear of the president. What do they want? The end of the world. Be afraid.

I almost didn't blog this article due to it's secular silliness and lack of intelligent analysis, but the author offers the following pile of stinking feces (Ad hoc or accurate assessment? Let me know.) as a prayer. It reeks of the kind of warm, fuzzy, "I'm OK. You're OK" relativism that defeats the whole point of having faith at all.

"Dear [Higher Power of Choice], give us the will to restore religion in this country, as our Founding Fathers intended, to an abstract guiding principle, not the theologically unsound justification for a twisted foreign policy. Let us fight our enemies with peace and wisdom, not anger and indiscriminate force. Allow our country to serve as a symbol of what's good in humankind, not what's corrupt. Most of all, grant us the strength and wisdom to remove President George W. Bush from office. In your name, we say: Amen."

"abstract guiding principle"?!? Why believe in God at all? Why not just stick to secular humanism? It makes you feel like you're a good person acting on an informed, enlightened conscience without any of the nasty thankfulness, codes of conduct, or global implications and applications inherent to most religions. No fuss, no muss. "Ethos Lite: All of the Flavor, None of the Obligations"

Spam Left or Spam Right?

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No, I don’t mean junk email. I mean something closer to the Monty Python skit. The two major parties in America both nauseate me, just in different ways. You get left-wing corruption with the Democrats and right-wing corruption with the Republicans. It’s a lose-lose scenario at election time.

Everyone seems to want to jump on one bandwagon or another without consideration for real options. I just can’t fathom why people demand competition in economics, but not in politics. A duopoly is bad for everyone.

I’ve talked to people who don’t really like the party they usually vote for. They just do it because they hate the other party more. When I ask them why they don’t vote "outside of the box", they tell me they fear throwing their votes away. If people voted with their consciences, rather than by following others, they’d have real power. Worse yet are the people who are too disgusted to vote. Their votes "don’t count". Well, duh, if you don’t use them, how can they?

I wish I had more free time. I’d love to start a political organization for independent moderates. Heck, I’d be happy to get a comprehensive "alternative" politics web page up with information about beating the current system.

From the looks of things, I’m not the only disgusted blogger.

Rally around the label

I’ve recently become disillusioned with the state of American politics… okay, more disillusioned with the state of American politics. I just keeps hitting me how hard people on each side of the traditional aisle are trying to distinguish themselves from each other, while actually differing on very little.