Gazizza.Net

Amy Welborn has a great post about some supposed ordinations of women as Catholic priests on the rivers of Pittsburgh today (July 31st).

First, from a page by the Diocese of Pittsburgh (a great diocese, Archbishop Wuerl now in Washington. DC did a great job there):

Isn’t denial of the sacraments and excommunication extreme? The church doesn’t excommunicate those clergy who abused minors. And politicians who vote in favor of legal abortion are not denied Communion.
Those who present themselves for Communion are expected to be in communion with the church. People can be “not in communion” in several ways. Those who have committed mortal sin and are not in the state of grace are out of communion and should not present themselves until they are reconciled through the sacrament of reconciliation. Those who deny a core tenet of the faith either by publicly espousing something contrary to the faith, such as the denial of the divinity of Christ, or by a public action that repudiates the laws, teachings or morals of the church are also not in communion.

There are certain actions that by their public nature, by their immediate threat to the unity of the church, by their explicit undermining of the sacraments and by their conscious break with the apostolic authority of the church derived from Christ result in removing oneself from the community of the faithful. In regard to this ceremony, engaging in a public — and highly publicized — abuse of the sacrament of holy orders that threatens church unity, and to take such action knowingly and willingly in defiance of the apostolic authority of the church, does place oneself outside the church.

However, even in these cases, the goal of the church is reconciliation. Announcing that there are those who have removed themselves from the community of the faithful is not a punishment but a call to conversion.

Welborn herself writes:

If you wish to be ordained and to practice Christian ministry as an ordained person, there is no lack of denominations in which to do that, with all of the titles, regalia and pomp - perhaps even more, if you're going to be High Church Anglican - that you'll find in the Roman Catholic Church.

So...why stay? Why the determination to be Roman Catholic priests?
...
Perhaps they'll say that there is something marginally more "true" about Christianity, or even Catholic Christianity - that it has more direct historical ties to the apostles or something.

The problem is that if that's the point on which their choice lies, they run into a problem when we try to establish conclusions.

If The Catholic Church is the Christian church "closest" to Christ...wouldn't one conclude that this closeness is embodied in it? That its closeness is not just a matter of apostolic succession (a concept I'm doubting they care that much about either), but in what the successors of the apostles, you know...do and say?

More after the break...

Go here to see recent statements about the inadmissibility of female ordinations by the Catholic Church. In Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, John Paul II wrote:

Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.

I used to have trouble with this teaching. I accepted it out of trust for the Church, but I didn't quite buy it. But then while reading the Bible a few years ago, seeing all the guidelines God laid down for how the Israelites were to worship him and how exacting they were, I noticed that it's quite clear that in the Old Covenant the priests were to be male. No ifs ands or buts. I don't claim to understand why God did that, but I believe that in His infinite Wisdom, He has His reasons and they're obviously good ones.

By the way, the reason that these ordinations take place on a river is the foolish notion that water is beyond the reaches of the Church. As though God "forgot" about waters when giving dominion over the whole Earth to His Church. Some people will accept any idiocy if it allows them to act on their own wishes.

Here's a decent primer on the illicitness of female ordination. I do agree with the point raised in the linked article that the Church needs to come out with a solid theological argument explaining why God denied the Church the authority to ordain women. At a rough guess, it has to do with the priest standing in persona Christi during the performing of the sacraments and the obvious fact that a woman cannot be a man.

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Here's, I think, the best summary I've seen yet about Mel Gibson "interesting" night:

Alcohol brought out the worst in Gibson, evidently. And that news, let me tell you, brought out the worst in many e-mailers this weekend.

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Freshman House Republican Patrick McHenry of North Carolina introduced legislation last week to create a federal commission to reform government entitlement programs. But the McHenry bill has a catch that may cause budget experts on the left to start hyperventilating: It explicitly rules out any tax increases as part of the solution.

Mr. McHenry's approach directly conflicts with legislation proposed by Rep. Frank Wolf, a 13-term Republican from Virginia. Mr. Wolf specifically authorizes his own proposed bipartisan commission to consider revenue increases as part of any grand plan to avert the pending multi-trillion-dollar train wreck.

In his State of the Union message in January, President Bush called for the creation of such a commission, but left unanswered the issue of whether taxes should be "on the table." Most Democrats -- especially the economic guru of the party, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin -- say they will participate only if taxes are part of the solution. Mr. Rubin says he would want to start by canceling some or all of the Bush investment tax cuts. But to many Republicans, the idea of a bipartisan budget commission that leaves new taxes as an option is an all-too-familiar trap. Recall the Andrews Air Force Base "budget summit" of 1990 that led Mr. Bush's father to break his "no new taxes" pledge and lose his presidency as a consequence. Newt Gingrich, who remembers that debacle as if it were yesterday, tells me: "Bipartisan budget commissions have always been a disaster for Republicans. Democrats always want to talk about only one thing: higher taxes."

Mr. McHenry says that conservatives in the House have "no interest" in a commission that fails to rule out new taxes. "The problem with entitlements is runaway spending, so the commission I propose keeps the focus on that," he says.

A new study by Laurence Kotlikoff of Boston University calculates that if entitlement spending is not curtailed, the only way future taxpayers could accommodate all the promised Medicare and Social Security spending would be to see their "lifetime marginal net tax rates" (a measure of the tax disincentive to work) rise to between 55% and 80%. This would reverse all the gains in tax cutting starting with the Reagan tax cuts of 1981. "Taxes as a share of GDP would have to rise from 20% to perhaps 35% of GDP," says economist Larry Hunter of the Institute for Policy Innovation. "That would be economically crippling."

So the McHenry approach makes the most sense both from an economic standpoint and from the standpoint of averting the mayhem and carnage of the 1990 budget summit. Big government advocates in Washington have long argued for the need for a tax increase consensus. Buying into that idea is the fastest way for Republicans to lose their majorities in Congress.

So, basically, the Democrats will only agree to look at reining in runaway spending if they are allowed to reach even further into our pockets? Is their ever an opportunity they won't take to spend more of our money? If I were the GOP, I'd be trumpeting this all over the place between now and the elections. "Republicans want to look at controlling runaway spending that could bankrupt our nation, but the Democrats refuse to even discuss the issue unless they get to raise your taxes."

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"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." —George Washington

"In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong; honor that; try to imitate it, and your faults will drop off like dead leaves when their time comes." —John Ruskin

"The attitude of the state and culture toward the value of human life is in constant flux. Like the Dow Jones Industrial Averages, it is up one day and down the next. Some want to use embryonic stem cells for research into all sorts of afflictions and diseases, though no clinical tests have proved they are effective and stem cells from placentas and other sources, which cause no harm to human life, are available. Life in the womb—indeed life emerging from the womb—may be destroyed at any time and for any reason. There is pressure at the other end of life to euthanize the elderly and handicapped when they become 'burdensome' to family members or 'too costly' to the state." —Cal Thomas

"Only the morally obtuse—or perverse—cannot recognize the difference between a terrorist group that targets civilian population centers with anti-personnel weapons designed to maximize civilian casualties and a democracy that seeks to prevent terrorism by employing smart bombs designed to minimize civilian casualties. [UN Secretary General Kofi] Annan knows better than to suggest a moral equivalence. He is fully aware of the tactic employed by terrorists of launching their rockets from, and hiding behind, civilian shields, so as to make democracies have to kill some civilians to get at the terrorists... [E]ven worse than the one-sided condemnations that ignore Hezbollah and Hamas are the numerous statements that perversely suggest moral equivalence. The UN peacekeepers on the Lebanese border have turned out to be collaborators with Hezbollah, videotaping the Hezbollah kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers in 2000 and then refusing to release the video—which could have helped in the rescue—on the grounds that it might compromise their 'neutrality.' This is a real test for the UN. If it cannot—or will not—distinguish between terrorists who target civilians and a democracy that seeks to stop the terrorism while minimizing civilian casualties, it has become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution." —Alan Dershowitz

"Nations crumble from within when the citizenry asks of government those things which the citizenry might better provide for itself... [I] hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts." —Ronald Reagan

"[T]he government spending rate...has grown by more than $800 billion—nearly 50%—during the Bush administration. Excluding war and homeland security expenditures, it has grown about 7% a year, and virtually nothing has been done to stem it. A veto or two by the president would help, and so would some spine in the Republican House and Senate. A recent National Taxpayers Union Foundation study found that in 2005 the average Republican House member voted to increase discretionary spending by $168 billion, close to the average Democrat's $178 billion. Republicans senators' votes averaged $183 billion in new spending; Democratic senators $217 billion. Compare these numbers to the golden days of the Gingrich leadership: In 1997 the average House member voted to reduce spending by $6 billion while the average senator's increase was only $4 billion. So there is still economic work to be done in the White House and Congress. But President Bush's tax reductions have been the most successful economic growth and opportunity work of any president in a quarter of a century. To paraphrase JFK, tax rate reduction is indeed a rising tide that lifts all individuals to greater opportunity." —former Delaware Governor Pete du Pont

"I believe the Left has been wrong on virtually every great moral issue in the last 30 years. During that period, it was wrong on the Cold War—it devoted far more energy to fighting anti-communism than to fighting communism. It was wrong for attacking Israel for its destruction of Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor. It was wrong on welfare. It was wrong in its demanding less morally and intellectually from black Americans than from all other Americans. It was wrong in advocating bilingual education for children of immigrants. It was wrong in generally holding American society rather than violent criminals responsible for violent crime. It was wrong in imposing its view on abortion on America through the courts rather than through the democratic process... It was wrong in identifying 'flag waving' with fascism. It was wrong in supporting the teachers' unions rather than students and educational reform. It was wrong in allying itself with trial lawyers and blocking tort reform. It was wrong in blocking the military from recruiting on campuses and teaching a generation of young Americans that 'war is not the answer' when war is at times the one moral answer... In just about every instance, one could say that the Left was foolish, the Left was naive, the Left was wrong, even that the Left was dangerous." —Dennis Prager

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Some of These Are Quite A Turnoff

1. If they used the "mercy rule" in Major League Baseball, all games broadcast by Tim McCarver would end after five innings.

3. I'm surprised ESPN is not promoting "Monday Night Football" a little bit more.

5. Someone has to explain to me how "walk-off homer" improves on "game-ending homer."

6. When I go to a dinner party, I tell people I have a desk job on an oil rig before I tell them I have a TV job on a poker show.

7. In the remake of "A Clockwork Orange," they would torture the protagonist this time by making him listen to sports talk radio.

8. In the summer of 1980, I told a date that CNN, ESPN and MTV had "no chance of survival." That's why I don't date much.

20. Chris Berman has now said "New York Football Giants" a U.S.-record 38,231 times.

22. I tried to TiVo something on Fox Soccer Channel and TiVo sent me a "Dear John" letter.

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ESPN.com - MLB - Phillies send Abreu, Lidle to Yankees

I don't like the trade. When you get right down to it, all we're doing is dumping Abreu's salary. We're trading the 4th best right fielder in the majors (see here and scroll down)and getting low-level minor leaguers in return. In addition, we're trading our 2nd best starter in Cory Lidle. (It's sad he's our 2nd best, though.) I support that, but giving up two major leaguers and all we're getting in return is some low-level players who may never plan out.

This is a salary dump, plain and simple. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. This does little to prepare the Phillies to contend in the future.

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Click here if the embedding doesn't work for you

Norton was either completely clueless or a really good sport. More likely the second.

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More Peanuts strips

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Townhall.com::The Funnies::Chuck Asay

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This never would have happened if they were given free clean needles!

Oh, wait....

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Acts 4:34-35
There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet; and distribution was made to each as any had need.
--------------------
It used to be fashionable to note that in this passage one could read a Christian rationale for Marxism or communism. What was not so fashionable was to note that the early Church acted on the formula "from each according to his abilities to each according to his need" on the basis of the love and power of God, not on the basis of state terror and coercion. Now that communism (at least in Europe) is dead, Castro is getting to be an old goat and the regimes in Asia are getting more and more brittle with each passing year, we can now safely say that reading this passage as a justification for the atrocities of Stalin and Mao and the body and soul-killing experiment of communism was—how to put it?—stupid. However, in our healthy and wholesome rejection of communism, we must be cautious not to reject this passage. For in our culture, the problem is not so much state terror as hedonism and an individualism that rejects the claims of the poor upon the well-to-do. This does not mean we need more coercion. It means we need more conversion. In the early Church, Jesus Christ was able to do, through love, what all the guns in the USSR could not do: bring selfish people to abandon their selfishness. Now we must beg him to help us abandon our selfishness. Today, ask God to give you a heart for the poor and then put legs on that prayer in some concrete way.

Source

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"This balance between the National and State governments ought to be dwelt on with peculiar attention, as it is of the utmost importance. It forms a double security to the people. If one encroaches on their rights they will find a powerful protection in the other. Indeed, they will both be prevented from overpassing their constitutional limits by a certain rivalship, which will ever subsist between them."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention,
17 June 1788)

If only the states still defended us against the national government. Repeal the 17th!

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The 53rd anniversary of the ceasefire that ended the Korean War is today.

Interestingly, we're still only in a ceasefire with them. We could invade tomorrow. Which, in a vacuum, might not be such a bad idea. This war is sometimes mocked becasue all we did was "tie," but even that sent an important message to our Communist opponents: we weren't pushovers. We would stand up and try to prevent the expansion of Communism across the globe. While they didn't give up their imperialistic dreams, they did ahve to use less violent and more subtle methods instead, liking saving millions of lives in the process.

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"The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes." —Benjamin Disraeli

"Like a drug addict who focuses all his energy on scoring his next fix with no regard for the long-term consequences, the GOP majority in Congress is on a spending bender that may ultimately lead it to hit rock bottom as the minority party. The only way to stop it is for...economic conservatives to stop looking the other way in the interest of harmony and take action..." —former GOP Rep. Pat Toomey

"[T]here have been more cease-fires in the Middle East than anywhere else. If cease-fires actually promoted peace, the Middle East would be the most peaceful region on the face of the earth instead of the most violent." —Thomas Sowell

"The hardest stands in American political life may be the ones a statesman assumes to save the majority of the people from demagogues who offer material benefits at the expense of the principles that justify the people's claim to equal rights and self-government. They are also the stands that merit not only our applause, but our sincerest respect, admiration and support." —Alan Keyes

Jay Leno: White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said when President Bush was told that he was recorded saying a four letter word, he rolled his eyes and laughed it off. Which is ironic. Bush is now reacting to himself the way everyone else does. ... Vice President Dick Cheney said today when it comes to war, Americans need to know where he stands. Forget the war—I want to know where he stands when he goes on a hunting trip. ... More rockets were fired into Israel today. Israel responded by bombing more targets inside Lebanon. Now there's talk the U.S. might send some troops over there to help with border security. That's when you know the people over there are in trouble—when they start asking our advice on border security. ... Democratic Congressman Lincoln Davis from Tennessee said that we should outlaw adultery and make it a felony. You know what you call a Democrat who comes out against adultery? A Republican. ... And you thought a lot of congressmen went to jail for bribery. How overcrowded it is going to be now? ... John Kerry said today that if he were president the current conflict in the Middle East wouldn't be happening. And then his wife Teresa said, "Yes dear, I know. Now will you take the garbage out?"

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On Wednesday we observe the memorial of Sts. Joachim and Anne, the parents of Mary, Mother of God.

In his Introduction to the Devout Life, Francis de Sales includes St. Anne among the litany of different people who lived devotion in different ways: "It is an error - rather, a heresy - to wish to banish the devout life from the regiment of soldiers, the mechanic's shop, the court of princes, or the homes of married people. Is is true, Philothea, that purely contemplative, monastic and religious devotion cannot be exercised in the states of life stated above. However, besides these three specific kinds of devotion there are several others adapted to bring perfection to those living in the secular state. Examples in the Old Testament are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, David, Job and Tobias, and Sarah, Rebecca, and Judith, and under the New Covenant, St. Joseph, Lydia, and St. Crispin lived lives of perfect devotion in their workshops, and St. Anne, St. Martha, St. Monica and Aquila and Priscilla in their families, Cornelius, St. Sebastian, and St. Maurice in the army, and Constantine, Helena, and St. Louis, Blessed Amadeus and St. Edward on their thrones did the same. There have even been many cases of people who lost perfection in solitude...and have kept it in the midst of crowds...Wherever we may be, we can - and should - aspire to a perfect life." (Part I, Chapter 3)

In the end, the question is not: "Where is a life of devotion better practiced?" The real question is this: "How can I practice devotion in the life to which God has called me to live?"

Today?

Source: DeSales Spirituality Center

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"Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."

-- Rep. Robert Goodloe Harper, Chairman, Ways and Means Committee (Address, 18 June 1798)

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PR. Differently: How Not to Act on J-Date

Wow. This guy makes me look smooth.

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What if Mr T. was canonized a saint?

Closed to comments due to enormous comment spam.

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Henry A. Wallace was elected Vice President in 1940 to serve during Franklin Roosevelt's 3rd term in office. He was dropped from the ticket in 1944 in favor of Harry Truman. According to his WikiPedia entry (link above), he was dropped because many in the Democratic Party, fearing the imminence of Roosevelt's death, pushed him out due to his "moderate position" towards Stalin. (That's putting it mildly.)

Can you imagine if someone as pro-Communist as Wallace had been serving as President during the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War? How bad would he have made things? I shudder to think. (Note: I am not calling Wallace a Communist. I think it was David McCullough in his biography of Truman who wrote "Wallace was not a Communist. Howver, everyone around him was." Paraphrase, of course.)

We owe those Democrats who pushed him out a deep debt of gratitude.

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Expect less frequent blogging from me over the next few months. We've just started a big project at work which will also have me learning a new programming language. (For techies, I'm finally getting into .NET. VB.NET/ASP.NET 2.0/Microsoft Content Management Server 2002.) That should fill much of my workday, where I would do a lot of my blogging so I'll still be posting, but not as often or as lengthy as I sometimes am.

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"The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking." —A.A. Milne

"Wait a minute. Aren't Christians allowed to have a voice in politics like everybody else, or has the First Amendment been repealed?... The supporters of embryo-destructive research want to cross a great moral divide. They are seeking not only to destroy human life made in God's image but also to manufacture life made in man's image. Tragically, we are losing this fight, however, because too few people understand the issues... The secular world wants us to pipe down; but as Christians and as citizens, we need to speak out when it comes to new technologies that may lead us down the seductive path to a Brave New World and killing humans." —Chuck Colson

"I have a dream that some day, every child will be conceived from an act of true love between parents who love each other, are married to each other, and eagerly welcome him. I have a dream that every child will spend his childhood with those parents who brought him into being. Parents see the value of the small society they have created between themselves and their children, and do everything humanly possible to sustain that society. I have a dream that children can be children, take joy in their childhood innocence, and not become sexualized before puberty... I have a dream that the market accommodates the needs of the family, rather than the family adapting itself to the needs of the market. We create an economy in which people are prepared to earn a living before the age of twenty-five or thirty. Young people graduate from college without crushing debt, and without the prospect of unmanageable housing costs and tax burdens. Families can support themselves on one income, at least for a while... I want us to...become what we should have been from the beginning." —Jennifer Roback Morse

"Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us that they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy 'accommodation.' And they say if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he will forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer—not an easy one, but a simple one—if you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based upon what we know in our hearts is morally right... [E]very lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face." —Ronald Reagan

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Buckley: Bush Not A True Conservative, CBS News Exclusive: Buckley Criticizes President For Interventionist Policies - CBS News

I've argued before that conservatives need to repudiate Bush and establish in people minds the separation that exists between Bush's policies and conservative principles. There's many other issues we can do this on. I assume Buckley mentioned them, but CBS chose not to focus on them since Iraq is the most hot issue of the day. Hopefully, others will continue to do the same.

Hat Tip: Drudge

UPDATE (7/24/2006 12:17 PM): Ramesh Ponnuru has a good comment on the article on The Corner:

The CBS headline has Bill saying that Bush is "not a true conservative"; that's not far off, although I think Bill's actual formulation ("the absence of effective conservative ideology") is better. Bush has served some conservative purposes and frustrated others. My own assessment of the balance would be more positive than Bill's—I would, for example, put more weight on Bush's accomplishment in making the Supreme Court more conservative than he does—but judgments will differ. Where I disagree with Bill is that I don't think that Bush ran as a conventional ideological conservative in 2000. In particular, he didn't run as a government-cutter. And the reason he didn't run as one, and hasn't governed as one, is only partly explained by his not being one.

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Forwarded to me:

Ask a Marine what's so special about the Marines and the answer would be "Espirit de Corps", an unhelpful French phrase that means exactly what it looks like - the spirit of the Corps, but what is that spirit, and where does it come from?

The Marine Corps is the only branch of the U.S. Armed Forces that recruits people specifically to fight.

The Army emphasizes personal development (an Army of One), the Navy promises fun (let the journey begin), the Air Force offers security (its a great way of life).

Missing from all the advertisements is the hard fact that a soldier's lot is to suffer and perhaps to die for his people, and take lives at the risk of his/her own. Even the thematic music of the services reflects this evasion.

The Army's Caisson Song describes a pleasant country outing. Over hill and dale, lacking only a picnic basket.

Anchors Aweigh, the Navy's celebration of the joys of sailing, could have been penned by Jimmy Buffet.

The Air Force song is a lyric poem of blue skies and engine thrust. All is joyful, invigorating, and safe.

There are no land mines in the dales nor snipers behind the hills, no submarines or cruise missiles threaten the ocean jaunt, no bandits are lurking in the wild blue yonder.

The Marines Hymn, by contrast, is all-combat. We fight our Country's battles, First to fight for right and freedom, we have fought in every clime and place where we could take a gun, in many a strife we have fought for life and never lost our nerve.

The choice is made clear. You may join the Army to go to adventure training, or join the Navy to go to Bangkok, or join the Air Force to go to computer school. You join the Marine Corps to go to War!

But the mere act of signing the enlistment contract confers no status in the Corps.

The Army recruit is told from his first minute in uniform that "you're in the Army now", soldier. The Navy and Air Force enlistees are sailors or airmen as soon as they get off the bus at the training center.

The new arrival at Marine Corps boot camp is called a recruit, or worse, but never a MARINE. Not yet, maybe never. He or she must earn the right to claim the title of UNITED STATES MARINE, and failure returns you to civilian life without hesitation or ceremony.

Recruit Platoon 2210 at San Diego, California trained from October through December of 1968. In Viet Nam the Marines were taking two hundred casualties a week, and the major rainy season operation Meade River, had not even begun. Yet Drill Instructors had no qualms about winnowing out almost a quarter of their 112 recruits, graduating eighty-one. Note that this was post - enlistment attrition; every one of those who were dropped had been passed by the recruiters as fit for service.

But they failed the test of Boot Camp, and not necessarily for physical reasons; at least two were outstanding high school athletes for whom the calisthenics and running were child's play. The cause of their failure was not in the biceps nor the legs, but in the spirit. They had lacked the will to endure the mental and emotional strain, so they would not be Marines. Heavy commitments and high casualties not withstanding, the Corps reserves the right to pick and choose.

History classes in boot camp? Stop a soldier on the street and ask him to name a battle of World War One. Pick a sailor at random to describe the epic fight of the Bon Homme Richard. Everyone has heard of McGuire Air Force Base. So ask any airman who Major Thomas McGuire was, and why he is so commemorated.

I am not carping, and there is no sneer in this criticism. All of the services have glorious traditions, but no one teaches the young soldier, sailor or airman what his uniform means and why he should be proud of it.

But ask a Marine about World War One, and you will hear of the wheat field at Belleau Wood and the courage of the Fourth Marine Brigade, fifth and sixth regiments.

Faced with an enemy of superior numbers entrenched in tangled forest undergrowth, the Marines received an order to attack that even the charitable cannot call ill - advised. It was insane. Artillery support was absent and air support had not yet been invented, so the Brigade charged German machine guns with only bayonets, grenades, and indomitable fighting spirit. A bandy-legged little barrel of a gunnery sergeant, Daniel J. Daly, rallied his company with a shout, "Come on you sons a bitches, do you want to live forever"?

He took out three machine guns himself, and they would give him the Medal of Honor except for a technicality, he already had two of them. French liaison officers, hardened though they were by four years of trench bound slaughter, were shocked as the Marines charged across the open wheat field under a blazing sun directly into the teeth of enemy fire. Their action was anachronistic on the twentieth-century battlefield; so much so that they might as well have been swinging cutlasses. But the enemy was only human; they could not stand up to this. So the Marines took Belleau Wood. The Germans called them "Dogs from the Devil."

Every Marine knows this story and dozens more. We are taught them in boot camp as a regular part of the curriculum. Every Marine will always be taught them! You can learn to don a gas mask anytime, even on the plane in route to the war zone, but before you can wear the Eagle Globe & Anchor and claim the title "Marine", you must know about the Marines who made that emblem and title meaningful. So long as you can march and shoot and revere the legacy of the Corps, you can take your place in line. And that line is unified spirit as in purpose.

A soldier wears branch of service insignia on his collar, metal shoulder pins and cloth sleeve patches to identify his unit. Sailors wear a rating badge that identifies what they do for the Navy.

Marines wear only the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor, together with personal ribbons and their CHERISHED marksmanship badges. There is nothing on a Marine's uniform to indicate what he or she does, nor what unit the Marine belongs to. You cannot tell by looking at a Marine whether you are seeing a truck driver, a computer programmer, or a machine gunner. The Corps explains this as a security measure to conceal the identity and location of units, but the Marines' penchant for publicity makes that the least likely of explanations. No, the Marine is amorphous, even anonymous, by conscious design.

Every Marine is a rifleman first and foremost, a Marine first, last and always! You may serve a four-year enlistment or even a twenty plus year career Without seeing action, but if the word is given you'll charge across that wheat field! Whether a Marine has been schooled in automated supply, automotive mechanics, or aviation electronics, is immaterial. Those things are secondary - the Corps does them because it must. The modern battlefield requires the technical appliances, and since the enemy has them, so do we, but no Marine boasts mastery of them. Our
pride is in our marksmanship, our discipline, and our membership in a fraternity of courage and sacrifice. "For the honor of the fallen, for the glory of the dead", Edgar Guest wrote of Belleau Wood, "the living line of courage kept the faith and moved ahead."

They are all gone now, those Marines who made a French farmer's little wheat field into one of the most enduring of Marine Corps legends. Many of them did not survive the day, and eight long decades have claimed the rest. But their actions are immortal. The Corps remembers them and honors what they did, and so they live forever.

Dan Daly's shouted challenge takes on its true meaning - if you lie in the trenches you may survive for now, but someday you will die and no one will care. If you charge the guns you may die in the next two minutes, but you will be one of the immortals.

All Marines die; some in the red flash of battle, some in the white cold of the nursing home. In the vigor of youth or the infirmity of age, all will eventually die. But the Marine Corps lives on. Every Marine who ever lived is living still - in the Marines who claim the title today. It is that sense of belonging to something that will outlive your own mortality, which gives people a light to live by and a flame to mark their passing.

Posted by Paul Smith Jr at 9:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This quote was referenced in Looking for God in Harry Potter:

Enemy occupied territory --- that is what the world is.

May Christians always remember that. And may we act more like the Poles than the French.

Posted by Paul Smith Jr at 9:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm just about finished the book. I started it yesterday and have been reading pretty since then. (Although, I have watched a few episodes of Firefly from the DVDs loaned to me by Anonymous Opinion. It's a great show!)

There's a lot more Christian imagery in these books than I could ever have imagined. "Deconstructing" character names gives insight to their characters and can reveal plot twists, who's good, who's bad. (Once again, I wish I knew more Latin.) One really interesting point: the bad guys in the series are called Death Eaters. As Christians, we eat the Body of Christ in the Mass, so we are "Life Eaters." Underscoring this, the ritual in which Voldemort gets his body back in Goblet of Fire (which is a type of the Holy Grail) is a Black mass that mocks the Christian Mass.

There's lots more like this in this book. Far more illuminating that I could have ever imagined If you're a Harry Potter fan, definitely worth reading. If you're a Christian who's not a Harry Potter fan, you should read it to find out why you should be.

The only bad part of this book is that now I want to go back and read the whole series again.

Posted by Paul Smith Jr at 8:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Monday through Thursday of this week, St Ann's Church in Wilmington (1801 N Union Street) will be having a "novena" to our patron saint, Ann, the mother of Mary and maternal grandmother of Jesus.

It will be led by Father Richard DeLillio, OSFS Executive Director of Nativity Prep in Wilmington.

Call St. Ann Parish rectory at 6545519 for more information.

More about Saint Ann:
The Life of Saint Ann
Catholic Forum
Catholic Encyclopedia

Posted by Paul Smith Jr at 6:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For anyone who enjoys Dawn Eden's blog, there's a interview with her in last week's National Catholic Register about her journey from a lukewarm Reformed Judaism to Protestantism to Catholicism.

Posted by Paul Smith Jr at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I moved the Catholic B-Team logo to the left side of the page and added a blogroll of all the other Catrholic B-Team members.

Check them out!

Posted by Paul Smith Jr at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don't get to watch The Colbert Report much, but I do like it. It's kind of like The Daily Show, but with only faked smugness and actual humor instead of condescension.

Here Colbert does a report on religion, where he actually recites the Nicene Creed and then pokes fun at Unitarians:

One of my favorite jokes from the Simpsons: Bart is playing a video game ("Billy Graham's Bible Blasters") with the Flanders kids where you try to convert heathens by shooting them with a Bible. Bart hits one and says "Got him!" One of the Flanderseses says "You only winged him. He's just a Unitarian."

Posted by Paul Smith Jr at 2:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

My email servers are back up and working as of early this morning. If you emailed me since late afternoon Friday, I should eventually get it and respond. They're still being worked through on the server on my end.

Posted by Paul Smith Jr at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)