A Rising Anti-Government Tide

By Newt Gingrich

Americans should look carefully at the anti-politician, anti-government mood exhibited in California this week. Just as Proposition 13 and the anti-tax movement of 1978 were the forerunners of the Reagan presidential victory, so the results of Tuesday's vote are a harbinger of things to come.

The repudiation of the California establishment in the series of initiative defeats could hardly have been more decisive. Five taxing and spending measures were rejected by 62.6 to 66.4 percent of the voters. That is a consistent majority of enormous potential. An even larger majority, 73.9 percent, approved the proposition limiting elected officials' salaries when there is a deficit.

This vote is the second great signal that the American people are getting fed up with corrupt politicians, arrogant bureaucrats, greedy interests and incompetent, destructive government.

The elites ridiculed or ignored the first harbinger of rebellion, the recent tea parties. While it will be harder to ignore this massive anti-tax, anti-spending vote, they will attempt to do just that.

Voters in our largest state spoke unambiguously, but politicians and lobbyists in Sacramento are ignoring or rejecting the voters' will, just as they are in Albany and Trenton. The states with huge government machines have basically moved beyond the control of the people. They have become castles of corruption, favoritism and wastefulness. These state governments are run by lobbyists for the various unions through bureaucracies seeking to impose the values of a militant left. Elections have become so rigged by big money and clever incumbents that the process of self-government is threatened.

Sacramento politicians will now reject the voters' call for lower taxes and less spending and embrace the union-lobbyist-bureaucrat machine that is running California into the ground, crippling its economy and cheating residents. This model of high-tax, big-spending inefficiency has already driven thousands of successful Californians out of the state (taking with them an estimated $11 billion in annual tax revenue). The exodus will continue.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a smart, tough, charismatic leader who has been forced to submit to policies he knows are ruining California on behalf of interests he knows are cheating the state. His failure to tame the union-lobbyist-bureaucrat machine that owns the legislature is a symptom of just how powerful it is.

Albany is even more corrupt and dysfunctional. The special interests that own the legislators in both parties have been exploiting New York for two generations. They have impoverished the Upstate region to the point where it is a vast zone of no jobs and no opportunities. Their predatory tax and bureaucratic union behavior is beginning to cripple New York City. More and more successful New Yorkers are leaving the state. In the face of multiple crises, Gov. David Paterson has shown himself incapable of carrying out reform.

In other words, the political machines in California and New York are wrecking the states' economies and driving out successful residents. But the machines don't care because all they want to do is own the wreckage.

This system of ruining communities on behalf of interest groups first appeared in Detroit. Bad government, bad politicians and bad policies drove a city that had, in 1950, the highest per capita income of any large American city to No. 62 in per capita income as of 2007. The population has declined from 1.8 million to fewer than 950,000. Recently, 1,800 homes were sold for under $10,000 each. The human cost of bad politics and bad government in Detroit is staggering.

Now President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid want to impose on the nation this style of politics in which interest groups, politicians and bureaucracies dominate. Look at their record: a $787 billion stimulus no elected official had read, 8,000 earmarks, an Environmental Protection Agency plan to control the economy through carbon regulations, the government threatening retaliation against those who would protect their property rights against theft in the Chrysler bailout -- again and again, this team is moving toward a government that owns the country rather than a government that is owned by the people.

Watch Sacramento politicians and interest groups work to overrule the people of California. Watch Albany politicians and interest groups continue to undermine the economy of New York. Watch the arrogance of the elites in Washington as they impose their costs and special deals on the American people.

Then look again at the 62 percent-plus majority in California in favor of smaller government and lower taxes.

In the great tradition of political movements rising against arrogant, corrupt elites, there will soon be a party of people rooting out the party of government. This party may be Republican; it may be Democratic; in some states it may be a third party. The politicians have been warned.

The writer, a Republican, was speaker of the House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. He is chairman of the Gingrich Group, a communications and consulting firm, and general chairman of American Solutions for Winning the Future. © The Washington Post

Fickle Gods of Global Warming

Rex Murphy

I believe there's a God, and while it is legendarily difficult to pronounce on such questions, I believe he lives in Texas or Fort McMurray. It's one or the other.

I'm driven often to the Bible, both for its wisdom and its prose. Strange that the only text that seriously can be said to rival Shakespeare in trenchancy and power of expression should be a work primarily of religion, not literature, a compound book by many authors and, for English readers, a work of translation as well. The King James Bible is the only -- as we say these days, though perhaps with some impiety considering my subject -- standalone creation that can claim equal status, for its literary excellence, with the otherwise unmatchable harmonies of Shakespeare.

Apocalypse and end days are naturally powerful themes in biblical literature as they are in the traditions of most religious movements. The end of terrestrial or earthly history, the great summoning to judgment are urgent concerns of all religious minds as, for example, the quickest reference to modern-day environmentalism will very easily confirm. Not surprisingly, dramatic material produces the most vivid, electric prose. There is the Book of Revelation, with its many arresting images and surreal visions, but also other moments in the Bible, perhaps referencing post-apocalypse, the New Jerusalem, which address the end of all disharmonies, the mutual embrace of all that before was in conflict.

These passages almost always speak of a bringing together in harmony of prior opposites, conjure scenes of exemplary reconciliation. Perhaps the most famous is from Isaiah: "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox."

It is hauntingly arresting stuff: hunted and hunter, prey and predator, their differences resolved, the carnivorous lion going vegetarian, all with innocence their guide -- the "little child."

Well, there are signs, for "those who have eyes to see them" that these days may be upon us. On April 19, an expedition team set out from Plymouth, England on a 5,000-mile carbon emission-free roundtrip to the Greenland ice cap. It was planned by an organization called Carbon Neutral Expeditions, one of whose founders explained the journey's focus, and very endearing it was: "The expedition will hopefully show how it is possible to explore some of the most beautiful places on Earth without contributing to their destruction." Their boat, the Fleur, was a 40-foot yacht fitted with solar panels and a wind turbine.

On arrival, they planned to trek to the highest point of the ice cap, then return to their boat and make the journey home, by sail. The return, they noted, was the most significant part: "Return journeys are in the true spirit of expeditions, and essential if this is to be carbon neutral."

Unfortunately even the most glassy-eyed idealism can be confronted by reality, and such was the case with Carbon Neutral's expedition. They hit a bad patch of weather. Their poor boat was thrice capsized. And the fickle Gods of Global Warming must have been taking a siesta, for in one of those incidents one of the team "hit his head and the wind generator and solar panels were ripped from the yacht." I can only imagine them at this moment, staring soulfully into the hurricane-whipped sky, and pleadingly imploring: "Al Gore, Al Gore, why has thou forsaken us? "

They were in a powerless pickle. Solar and sail had failed them and green intentions will not float your boat -- they were not so much "carbon neutral" as carbon deprived. Bobbing around the North Atlantic in a gale without motor power of any kind is not the most soothing experience. Fortunately, Providence, in one of its most artful facsimiles, was on hand in the shape of the Overseas Yellowstone -- a ship that was, to put it mildly, not relying on solar power or a wind turbine.

It was a 113,000-ton oil tanker, carrying 680,000 barrels of crude oil. We may reach for many adjectives to describe the Overseas Yellowstone but "carbon neutral" will not be among them. Indeed, the Overseas Yellowstone, looked at from a carbon-neutral perspective, is the Life Raft from Hell. Nonetheless the oil tanker picked up the eco-people.

They are now being taken to Maine, from whence presumably they will fly home. By jet. Not kite.

And verily, it is written, the carbon-spewing wolf shall lie down with the global-warming lamb ... the petroleum-devouring lion shall eat straw like the carbon-neutral ox, or something like that. And the Overseas Yellowstone shall lead them.

The voyage was followed by up to 40 schools across Britain to promote climate-change awareness. And how.

Light from the East

Russian Orthodox theologian weighs in on the liturgical reform after Vatican II

Patriarchia.Ru, the official website of the Moscow Patriarchate (Russian Orthodox Church) has posted a very interesting interview with Archpriest Maksim Kozlov, a Russian Orthodox theologian and commentator on Catholic-Orthodox relations. The interview was posted on the said website last May 7, 2009. Mr. Oleg-Michael Martynov of Una Voce Russia has kindly translated the article for Rorate Caeli. According to Mr. Martynov, "Rt. Rev. Maksim Kozlov, born in 1963, ordained in 1992, is a popular preacher whose target audience are young educated people. A man of scholarship himself, he graduated Moscow State University with a degree in Latin and Greek, and has been teaching at the Moscow Ecclesiastical Academy since 1985. Among his subjects there have been Catholicism in the course of Western Confessions History and then Comparative Theology, two fields where he showed himself as a dedicated anti-Catholic but not a good expert in these areas, something quite fitting the needs of modern ROC education."

It should be noted that the interview also contains many factual errors, which will be noted in [a comments below]. Nevertheless, Fr. Maksim's ideas on the liturgical and ecclesiastical reforms in Catholicism post-Vatican II, and his view of Marcel Lefebvre are of interest in that these have now been published on the official website of the Moscow Patriarchate. Hence this post. Translation of the interview, thanks to the generosity of Mr. Martynov [...]

How is the Catholic Church’s reform experience useful for us
Protoiereus Maksim Kozlov

The Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church (1962-65) has caused the most radical reforms in her history. One of the main tasks was to bring in a ‘Church open to the world’ by ‘modern exposition of religious truths’. One of the results, reproaches cast upon the Church for becoming too modern and worldly. Protoiereus Maksim Kozlov believes the main mistake to be thinking that the society in general is willing to live in a Christian way.

– What do you think was the reason behind Vatican II’s radicalism?

– We need to understand the situation of the Catholic Church by early 1960s, as well as the general situation in the world. It was the time when people both in Western Europe and, to a certain degree, in the Americas were abandoning regular participation in church life in mass. It was the era of the starting sexual revolution, of considerable parts of the society, especially the young, showing extreme sympathy towards radical left ideas, both pro-Soviet and Maoist. It was since then that Che Guevara started to be perceived as a kind of a self-sacrificing symbol, one perhaps even greater than that of Christianity. It was the time of a profound spiritual crisis, churches were deserted, and under these circumstances the Catholic Church had to react to the situation, try to find new possibilities of dialoguing with the society as it was then – perhaps, even at the price of errors. Vatican II became an attempt at the Church’s answer to the world’s secularism, like once upon a time the Catholics’ Trent answered to the Lutheran Reformation. This move itself, requiring courage and resolution, can definitely be praised.

– Which of the reforms of Vatican II do you think to be positive?

– Among the most positive turnabouts I would number the understanding, in a new way declared and, to a considerable degree, experienced by the Catholic Church, of all-Christian unity in the face of danger, of which Alexander Solzhenitsyn was writing during the same period: there are considerable powers in the world that would like no Christians to exist at all. Facing the challenges of modern era, in spite of all our doctrinal differences and their indisputable importance, there is something that unites the Christians. This is a new approach to, let me utter some terrible words, the ecumenical problem, and it was expressed by the Catholic Church and should, of course, be welcomed: at Vatican II, the Catholic Church has renounced equating herself and the Universal Church. Before the Council, Catholics have been stating: Catholic Church is the Universal Church, and now the Catholic Church describes herself as a ‘part of the Universal Church’, recognizing also the way of Orthodox East. The Orthodox are no longer schismatics (heretics) for the Catholics. The direct consequence of this is that the Catholics now recognize the validity of Sacraments celebrated in the Eastern Churches (both Orthodox and Oriental), i. e., in the Churches that retain historical episcopate. An Eastern Church Christian can receive the Sacraments in the Catholic Church without first accepting her teaching as it has been before. Of course this does not mean that we should take a similar approach to recognizing all the sacraments of the Catholic Church. Orthodox theology goes not currently provide an unequivocal answer to the question of the existence of Eucharist in Christian Churches that retain historical episcopacy but are outside of Universal Orthodoxy, such as the Catholics and the Monophysites.

As far as the changes in Vatican’s internal ‘policies’ are concerned, here I would mention a move to overcome Rome’s centuries-old clericalism as a very important issue. I mean a very stern division of the Catholic Church into two unequal parts, the teaching Church, which is the clergy, and the taught Church, which is the laity, framed already in Trent. Vatican II has repeatedly emphasized the importance of lay people, who were now able to take a more active part in the Church. The status of lay organizations has been increased, the ecclesiastic communities were recognized as an important component of the Church. This penetrates the life of Catholic Church considerably. For example, in the town of Rimini, Italy, there are annual conventions of Christians with about a million participating every year. These includes exhibitions and lectures on the Bible, there was, by the way, a large section dedicated to Solzhenitsyn this year. These conventions are initiated and conducted by lay volunteers only, the priests are not an organizing force there. Priests can be invited, take part, etc., but the lay people are the main organizers and inspirers.

As something positive, I would also mention Vatican II’s new approach to liturgical worship. Before the Council, Catholic mass was celebrated in Latin, which even among the Europeans few could understand by the middle of 20th century. And after the Catholic Church’s mission to Latin America, Africa, Asia – countries with obviously connection to Romance culture – it became clear that Latin liturgy has come into obvious conflict with the pious needs of many millions of Catholics. This [caused] switching into national languages, which, by the way, was carried out in the spirit of Eastern Christian tradition, that supposes liturgy to be celebrated in the national language of the faithful.

But the methods by which these, reforms, per se right, were carried out, were of diverse value, and the implementation of the reforms itself can not be numbered among the Council’s positive results.

When reforms are declared, there often appears a certain managerial ardor, and at times it’s not the most wise people who find themselves in the lead of the process. In practice, alas, it was not simply permitted to celebrate in national languages, but pre-reform Latin mass virtually prohibited, for it was required to get very many permissions virtually from Vatican itself in order to celebrate it. People who wanted to pray in the old way, especially the clergy, appeared so disloyal and suspicious in the eyes of the predominating trend that Latin worship has virtually ceased to exist.

From the very beginning already, the Council’s reforms have invoked criticism from two directions. The ‘left’ majority were unhappy with lack of radicalism. People who lived in the Western secular society with its priority of human rights as a humanist secular value, and still identifying themselves as Catholics, wondered why has not the Council permitted female priests, abolished celibacy, granted even more rights (like those enjoyed by the priests) to the laity, or allowed divorce and abortions.

The ‘right’ criticism is connected with the name of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1905-1991). He and his followers criticized Vatican II in a number of aspects: for its excessive ecumenism, for the liturgical reforms that have, in their view, caused the loss of sacral language of worship as well as the secularization of liturgical awareness. Indeed, the secularized understanding of liturgy was one of the reforms’ negative consequences. This manifested in excessive emphasis on the ‘horizontal’ component, i. e. the fellowship of the faithful, to the prejudice of ‘vertical component’, which is the congregation’s aspiration for Heaven. The altars were taken out of the sanctuary into the middle of the churches, the priests were now celebrating facing the people and not what we would call the synthronon, as it was before, there were unrestrained and numerous variants of translations and ordos for celebrating mass. There was a rupture, loss of the liturgy’s identity and sameness. Before, for example, a Catholic could everywhere, from Africa to Polynesia, come to a service and realize that he was attending a mass, but this is not so now.

Lefebvre is absolutely correct in his criticism of the progress ideology, adopted by the Catholic Church, where ‘progress’ as progressive motion of the society is considered as a religious value regardless of this society’s religious status. This means that growth of material benefits, gentler morals, tolerance towards different value systems, human rights – regardless of their connection with Christianity are taken as a positive value. The society is estimated more by the presence or growth of these categories of progress than by the grade and quality of its piety. This is something which the Orthodox Church, of course, can not agree with.

The idea of progress is associated with the notion of ‘anonymous Christianity’, developed at Vatican II. It means that not only people who visibly belong to the Church, but also those who do not openly run counter to her, to her spirit, are recognized as those not alien to her. This can perhaps be true for non-Christian countries, for communities that have not encountered the Gospel. But this is absolutely inapplicable to European and American society that is, step by step, turning away from Christianity. This is not anonymous Christianity but rather apostasy from God and the Church.

The Catholic Church’s experience after the reforms shows: in spite of the Church’s coming to meet the society trying to become more modern, intelligible, and close to this society, the society did not come to meet the Church. This is to be realized and admitted, practically, historiosophically, and eschatologically: to expect that the society in its majority will be willing to reaccept Christian values not as declarations but as norms implemented in real life means to live in an illusion.

Another important lesson that we can learn from the experience of Vatican II is how cautiously should we approach the centuries-old Church Tradition, first of all in the field of liturgy. It is important to recognize that we are on the same side with the Catholics, also suffering from certain impenitence among a considerable part of churchgoing folk, a view that service is something not to be understood but rather to incite a kind of pious mood. On the other hand, it is important to realize that the way to modifying the liturgy should not be through its adaptation to the society’s simplistic conceptions formed by the mass media and simply by the very low level of education in the humanities. Christianity as such is something complicated. But understanding Church Slavonic it is not the most complicated thing in Christianity. Rather we should put the question, and look for the answer, on how to bring the beauty and significance of this liturgy to the people.

Note: The final paragraph refers to the current debates in the Russian Orthodox Church on whether to allow the celebration of the liturgy (within Russia) in modern Russian instead of only in Church Slavonic. Patriarch Kirill and Archbishop Hilarion have both indicated that they are against the use of modern Russian in the liturgy. CAP)[Thanks] to my friend J. Felix Valenzuela for first tipping me to the existence of this article.

Published by Carlos Antonio Palad in his very interesting blog.

A Growing Crisis

M. R. Raymond L. Burke

Keynote Address at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast

1. I am deeply honored to give the Keynote Address at this annual gathering of Catholics to pray for our nation. I express my heartfelt esteem and gratitude to those who, each year, organize and support the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.

2. The theme of this year’s Breakfast is most fitting to the difficult time through which our nation is now passing. Before the fundamental and great challenges which we as a nation are facing, how better to express our patriotism than by celebrating the teachings of our Catholic faith. The most treasured gift which we as citizens of the United States of America can offer to our country is a faithful Catholic life. It is the gift which, even though it has often been misunderstood, has brought great strength to our nation, from the time of its founding. Today more than ever, our nation is in need of Catholics who know their faith deeply and express their faith, with integrity, by their daily living.

3. Although I no longer have my residence in our beloved nation, I am no less bound to practice the virtue of patriotism, taught and exemplified by Our Lord during His public ministry. It is Our Lord Who gives us, in the Church, the grace to practice patriotism as a fundamental expression of the bond of charity which we have, in Him, with our fellow citizens. From my earliest formation in the life of the faith, received at home from my parents and in the Catholic schools, it was clear to me that duty to one’s nation, to one’s fellow citizens, is integral to our life in Christ in the Church. In the Baltimore Catechism, the virtue of patriotism is joined with filial piety. These essentially connected virtues, in the words of the Catechism, dispose us to honor, love and respect our parents and our country (Revised Baltimore Catechism and Mass, No. 3, New York: Benziger Brothers, Inc., 1949, 1952, no. 135). Surely, the most fundamental expression of patriotism is daily prayer for our homeland, the United States of America, her citizens and her leaders. Our participation in the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast is, I trust, an extraordinary expression of the daily prayer which we all offer for our country, as good Catholics and, therefore, good citizens.

4. It pleases me that today’s celebration included a presentation by Mother Shaun Vergauwen, Superior General of the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist. I have known Mother Shaun’s religious congregation for all the years of my priestly life. The consecrated life of the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist is an inspired witness to the truths of our Catholic faith, especially what pertains to the Gospel of Life, and, therefore, also makes a strong contribution to the good of all citizens in our nation.

Growing Crisis in Our Nation

5. I come to you, this morning, with the deepest concern for our nation. I come to you, not as someone who stands outside of our nation but as a citizen who, with you as fellow citizens, takes responsibility for the state of our nation and, therefore, cannot remain indifferent and inactive about what most concerns the good of us all, especially those among us who are small, weak and defenseless.

6. Over the past several months, our nation has chosen a path which more completely denies any legal guarantee of the most fundamental human right, the right to life, to the innocent and defenseless unborn. Our nation, which had its beginning in the commitment to safeguard and promote the inalienable right to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” for all, without boundary, is more and more setting arbitrary limits to her commitment (cf. The Declaration of Independence: Action of Second Continental Congress, 4 July 1776, in The Constitution of the United States with the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation, New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2002, p. 81). Those in power now determine who will or will not be accorded the legal protection of the most fundamental right to life. First the legal protection of the right to life is denied to the unborn and, then, to those whose lives have become burdened by advanced years, special needs or serious illness, or whose lives are somehow judged to be unprofitable or unworthy.

7. What is more, those in power propose to force physicians and other healthcare professionals, in other words, those with a particular responsibility to protect and foster human life, to participate, contrary to what their conscience requires, in the destruction of unborn human lives, from the first or embryonic stage of development to the moment of birth. Our laws may soon force those who have dedicated themselves to the care of the sick and the promotion of good health to give up their noble life work, in order to be true to the most sacred dictate of their consciences. What is more, if our nation continues down the path it has taken, healthcare institutions operating in accord with the natural moral law, which teaches us that innocent human life is to be protected and fostered at all times and that it is always and everywhere evil to destroy an innocent human life, will be forced to close their doors.

8. At the same time, the fundamental society, that is, the family, upon which the life of our nation is founded and depends, is under attack by legislation which redefines marriage to include a relationship between two persons of the same sex and permits them to adopt children. In the same line, it is proposed to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. At the root of the confusion and error about marriage is the contraceptive mentality – which would have us believe that the inherently procreative nature of the conjugal union can, in practice, be mechanically or chemically eliminated, while the marital act remains unitive. It cannot be so. With unparalleled arrogance, our nation is choosing to renounce its foundation upon the faithful, indissoluble, and inherently procreative love of a man and a woman in marriage, and, in violation of what nature itself teaches us, to replace it with a so-called marital relationship, according to the definition of those who exercise the greatest power in our society.

9. The path of violation of the most fundamental human rights and of the integrity of marriage and the family, which our nation is traveling, is not accidental. It is part of the program set forth by those whom we have freely chosen to lead our nation. The part of the program in question was not unknown to us; it was announced to us beforehand and a majority of our fellow citizens, including a majority of our fellow Catholics, chose the leadership which is now implementing it with determination. For example, I refer to our President’s declared support of the Freedom of Choice Act, which would make illegal any legislation restricting procured abortion; his repeal of the Mexico City Policy, permitting U.S. funding of procured abortion in other nations, together with the grant of fifty million dollars to the United Nations Fund for Population Activities which, for example, supported the Republic of China’s policy of one child per family by means of government-dictated sterilization and abortion; his proposal to rescind the regulations appended to the federal Conscience Clause, which assure that, not only physicians, but also all health-care workers may refuse to provide services, information or counsel to patients regarding medications and procedures which are contrary to their conscience; his removal of limitations on federal funding of embryonic-stem-cell research, involving the wholesale destruction of human life at the embryonic stage of development; and his choice of the members of his administration, who are remarkable for the number of major officials, including several Catholics, who favor the denial of the right to life to the unborn and the violation of the integrity of marriage and the family. These are only some examples of a consistent pattern of decisions by the leadership of our nation which is taking our nation down a path which denies the fundamental right to life to the innocent and defenseless unborn and violates the fundamental integrity of the marital union and the family.

10. As Catholics, we cannot fail to note, with the greatest sadness, the number of our fellow Catholics, elected or appointed by our President to public office, who cooperate fully in the advancement of a national agenda was is anti-life and anti-family. Most recently, the appointment of a Catholic as Secretary of Health and Human Services, who has openly and persistently cooperated with the industry of procured abortion in our nation, is necessarily a source of the deepest embarrassment to Catholics and a painful reminder of the most serious responsibility of Catholics to uphold the natural moral law, which is the irreplaceable foundation of just relationships among the citizens of our nation. It grieves me to say that the support of anti-life legislation by Catholics in public office is so common that those who are not Catholic have justifiably questioned whether the Church’s teaching regarding the inviolable dignity of innocent human life is firm and unchanging. It gives the impression that the Church herself can change the law which God has written on every human heart from the beginning of time and has declared in the Fifth Commandment of the Decalogue: Thou shalt not kill.

11. As is clear, the anti-life and anti-family path down which our nation is being led has repercussions for many other peoples who rely upon the United States for aid or who are influenced by the international policies upon which our nation insists. The interest of so many nations in our recent presidential election is a clear sign of the world leadership which our national leadership exercises. What those who were so enthused about the strong message of change and hope in the United States, delivered during the last election campaign, are now discovering is a consistent implementation of policies and programs which confirm and advance the culture of death, which can only finally leave our world without the great hope, described by our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI in these words:

"Let us say once again: we need the greater and lesser hopes that keep us going day by day. But these are not enough without the great hope, which must surpass everything else. This great hope can only be God, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can bestow upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain. The fact that it comes to us as a gift is actually part of hope. God is the foundation of hope: not any god, but the God who has a human face and who has loved us to the end, each one of us and humanity in its entirety. His Kingdom is not an imaginary hereafter, situated in a future that will never arrive; his Kingdom is present wherever he is loved and wherever his love reaches us.

"His love alone gives us the possibility of soberly persevering day by day, without ceasing to be spurred on by hope, in a world which by its very nature is imperfect. His love is at the same time our guarantee of the existence of what we only vaguely sense and which nevertheless, in our deepest self, we await: a life that is truly life" (Pope Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter Spe salvi, On Christian Hope, 30 November 2007, Acta Apostolicae Sedis no. 31).

The change which brings hope can only be the renewal of our nation in the divine love which respects the inviolable dignity of every human life, from the moment of its inception to the moment of natural death, and which creates and gives growth to new human life through the love of man and woman in marriage. Any hope which is incoherent with the great hope is truly illusory and can never bring forth justice and its fruit, peace, for our nation and world.

Addressing the Crisis

12. How can we as Catholics address effectively the critical situation of our nation in what pertains to the fundamental right to life and the integrity of the family? What does the virtue of patriotism, together with all of the virtues inspired by the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, require of us for the common good, for the good of the whole nation? First and foremost, it demands what we are doing this morning, that is, prayer, and the serious reflection which arises from our communion with God in prayer.

13. When Our Lord descended from the Mount of the Transfiguration, he found that his disciples had tried, without success, to help a boy afflicted by an unclean spirit. Our Lord then cast out the unclean spirit, prompting his disciples, when they were alone with Him, to ask why they had been unable to free the boy from his affliction. Our Lord responded with these words: This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting (Mk 9:29). Our Lord reminded them that the good which they wished to accomplish in the face of great evil could only be attained through prayer and fasting. In other words, evil cannot be overcome by our own forces alone, but by the grace of God which inspires and strengthens our thoughts and actions. It is Christ alone who has accomplished the victory over sin and its most evil fruit, eternal death, and it is Christ alone, in the Church, who continues to bring forth the fruits of His victory in our lives and in our world.

14. In the battle for the protection of the right to life and for the safeguarding of the integrity of marriage and the family in our nation, we are easily tempted to give way to discouragement. And it would be right to do so, if the outcome of the battle depended upon us alone. But it does not. Christ is with us always in the Church and, in a particular way, in the struggle to restore the respect for the right to life of all of our brothers and sisters, especially those who are helpless and who have the first title to our care, and to safeguard the integrity of marriage and the family. Christ Who is the Gospel of Life, encountered in prayer and through the Sacraments, will give us the strength to announce His word of life and to act upon His word of life, on behalf of all in our nation, especially those who depend upon us to care for them and protect their God-given rights.

15. If we are serious about our patriotic duty, then we must pray everyday for our leaders, especially our President, and our nation. We should also practice more fervently our fasting and abstinence for the conversion of our lives and the transformation of our society. If we want to act for the common good, the good of all, in our nation, then we will seek to convert our lives each day to Christ, especially through the Sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist. Christ desires to announce the Gospel of Life and bring about its saving effects in our nation by the complete conversion of our lives to Him for the sake of all our brothers and sisters, without boundary, and for the sake of the preservation of the sanctuary of human life, marriage and the family.

16. At various times of great crisis in our nation and in the world, the Holy Father and our Bishops have called upon all Catholics to offer special prayers for the nation and for the world. I recall so well, from my youth, the Leonine Prayers offered at the conclusion of every Mass to address the growing threat of atheistic materialism in our world. Remember, too, how Pope Saint Pius V, in 1571, called upon the whole Church to pray, especially through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, when the Christian world was under attack by the Turks. After the victory of the Battle of Lepanto, on October 7, 1571, he established October 7th as an annual feast in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary and introduced the title of Mary Help of Christians into the Litany of Loreto. In the present crisis, praying daily the Rosary for our nation and invoking daily the intercession of Mary Help of Christians will be powerful forces for the victory of life and love.

17. At every Mass, we should offer special prayers for our nation and her leaders, in order that the culture of death may be overcome and a civilization of love may be steadfastly advanced. All Catholics throughout the nation should take part in Eucharistic adoration and in the praying of the Rosary for the restoration of the respect for human life and for the safeguarding of the integrity of the family. In our prayers, we should seek, above all, the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, under her title of the Immaculate Conception. Mary Immaculate is the patroness of our nation. In a most wonderful way, she appeared, on our continent, in what is present-day Mexico City, in 1531, as the Immaculate Mother of God, in order to manifest the all-merciful love of God toward His children of America. Through her example and intercession, the Native Americans and Europeans, who were on the brink of a most deadly conflict, were brought together to form one people under her maternal care, and the widespread practice of human sacrifice among the native people was brought to an end. In our time, in many parishes and dioceses there are campaigns of prayer for our nation and her leaders. May these powerful spiritual works continue and prosper, so that, through prayer and fasting, the grave evils of contraception, procured abortion, euthanasia, the experimentation on embryonic human life, and so-called same-sex marriage may be overcome in our nation.

18. Connected with our prayer must be the thoughtful and faithful reflection upon the Church’s teaching on the respect for all human life and the integrity of the family. In our homes, in our Catholic schools and universities, in parish study groups, and in everyday conversations and discussions with our neighbors, we are called to give an uncompromising witness to the Gospel of Life. Parents, parish priests and institutions of Catholic education must be aware of the constant anti-life and anti-family messages which constantly bombard us and our young people. One has only to think, for example, of the corruption of the goodness of our youth by the multi-million dollar industry of pornography, especially on the Internet. Our reflection as individuals and groups must open our eyes to the gravity of the situation in our nation, lest we fail to take responsibility for the widespread attacks on human life and the family. Our reflection must help us all and, in a particular way, our young people to see the godless secularism and relativism which underly and justify our nation’s anti-life and anti-family programs, policies and laws.

19. Our encounter with the world must be clear and uncompromising. Parents must reflect in their daily living the lifelong and rich fruit of the Gospel of Life, which they are called to teach to their children. Catholic educational institutions must devote themselves ever more strenuously to the study of the truths of the faith, addressing them to the moral challenges of our time. In a culture marked by widespread and grave confusion and error about the most fundamental teachings of the moral law, our Catholic schools and universities must be beacons of truth and right conduct. Clearly, the same is true of our Catholic charitable, missionary and healthcare institutions. There can be no place in them for teaching or activities which offend the moral law. Dialogue and respect for differences are not promoted by the compromise and even violation of the natural moral law. The profound granting of an honorary doctorate at Notre Dame University to our President who is as aggressively advancing an anti-life and anti-family agenda is a source of the gravest scandal. Catholic institutions cannot offer any platform to, let alone honor, those who teach and act publicly against the moral law. In a culture which embraces an agenda of death, Catholics and Catholic institutions are necessarily counter-cultural. If we as individuals or our Catholic institutions are not willing to accept the burdens and the suffering necessarily involved in calling our culture to reform, then we are not worthy of the name Catholic.

Catholics and Public Life

20. Our prayer and conversion of life, and the serious reflection upon and study of the truths of the moral life, both as individuals and in our Catholic institutions, require that we accept our responsibility as citizens to work tirelessly to change unjust programs, policies and laws. In a nation set so firmly on a path of violation of the most fundamental moral norms, Catholics and others who adhere to the natural moral law are pressured to think that their religious commitment to the moral law as the way of seeking the good of all is a merely confessional matter which cannot have any application in public life. Apparently, a number of Catholics in public life have been so convinced. How often do we hear Catholic legislators who vote in favor of anti-life and anti-family legislation claim that they are personally opposed to what the legislation protects and fosters, but that they as public officials may not allow religious beliefs to affect their support of such legislation? How often do we hear fellow Catholics supporting candidates for office, who are anti-life and anti-family, because of political-party loyalties or for reasons of other policies and programs supported by the candidate, which they deem to be good? How often is such thinking justified by the claim that religious faith is a purely private matter and has no place in the public forum? On the contrary, the common good depends upon the active engagement of religious faith in the public forum.

21. Addressing the role of the Church in the political order, Pope Benedict XVI reminds us:

"It must not be forgotten that, when Churches or ecclesial communities intervene in public debate, expressing reservations or recalling various principles, this does not constitute a form of intolerance or interference, since such interventions are aimed solely at enlightening consciences, enabling them to act freely and responsibly, according to the true demands of justice, even when this should conflict with situations of power and personal interest" (Pope Benedict XVI, Ad Congressum a Populari Europae Faction provectum, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 98 [2006], 344).

In his Encyclical Letter Deus caritas est, our Holy Father reminded us of the great gift of our faith which enables reason to do its work more effectively and to see its proper object more clearly (Pope Benedict XVI, Encylical Letter Deus caritas est , On Christian Love, 25 December 2005, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 98 [2006], 239, no. 28). When the Church addresses her social teaching to issues of the common good, she has no intention of giving the Church power over the State or to impose on those who do not share the faith ways of thinking and modes of conduct proper to faith (Deus caritas est, no. 28). Her aim, which is our aim as patriotic Catholics, is simply to help purify reason and to contribute, here and now, to the acknowledgment and attainment of what is just (Deus caritas est, no. 28). In addressing the critical issues of our nation, the Church and we, as her faithful sons and daughters, intervene on the basis of reason and natural law, namely, on the basis of what is in accord with the nature of every human being (Deus caritas est, no. 28).

22. Our uncompromising commitment to protect the inviolable dignity of innocent human life and to safeguard the integrity of marriage and the family are not based on peculiar confessional beliefs or practices but on the natural moral law, written on every heart and, therefore, a fundamental part of the Church’s moral teaching. At the same time, what is always and everywhere evil cannot be called good for the sake of accomplishing some other good end. All of us must be concerned about a wide range of goods which are important to the life of our nation, but the concern for those goods can never justify the betrayal of the fundamental goods of life itself and the family. We must take care to uproot from our moral thinking any form of relativism, consequentialism and proportionalism, which would lead us into the error of thinking that it is sometimes right to do what is always and everywhere evil.

23. An important part of our moral reflection must include a clear understanding of the principles regarding cooperation in evil, especially by the act of voting. Too often, in our time, our inability to accomplish all that we should for the sake of the defense of the right to life and of the protection of the integrity of the family is used to justify the direct choice of a political leader who espouses a position or positions in violation of the natural moral law. The Servant of God Pope John Paul II, in his Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae, addresses at length the question of cooperation in evil which violates the dignity of innocent human life. He offers as an example the case of a legislator who has the possibility of voting for a law which would restrict the evil of procured abortion, even though it would not eradicate it completely. He concludes that the legislator could vote for the legislation, while his own opposition to procured abortion remains clear, for his vote does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects (Pope John Paul II, Encylical Letter Evangelium vitae, On the Good and Inviolability of Human Life, 25 March 1995, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 87 [1995], 487, no. 73). In an analogous manner, as voters, we are often faced with a choice among candidates who do not fully oppose unjust laws. In such a case, we must choose the candidate who will most limit the evil effects of unjust laws. But, there is no element of the common good, no morally good practice, which a candidate may promote and to which a voter may be dedicated, which could justify voting for a candidate who also endorses and supports the deliberate killing of the unborn, euthanasia or the recognition of a same-sex relationship as a legal marriage. The respect for the inviolable dignity of innocent human life and for the integrity of marriage and the family are so fundamental to the common good that they cannot be subordinated to any other cause, no matter how good it may be.

24. In the present situation of our nation, a serious question has arisen about the moral obligation of Catholics to work for the overturning of the Supreme Court decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. There are those who would tell us that such work is futile and, therefore, is to be abandoned, so that we can devote ourselves to help prevent individuals from choosing abortion. As Catholics, we can never cease to work for the correction of gravely unjust laws. Law is a fundamental expression of our culture and implicitly teaches citizens what is morally acceptable. Our efforts to assist those who are tempted to do what is always and everywhere wrong or are suffering from the effects of having committed a gravely immoral act, which are essential expressions of the charity which unites us as citizens of the nation, ultimately make little sense, if we remain idle regarding unjust laws and decisions of the courts regarding the same intrinsic evils. We are never justified in abandoning the work of changing legislation and of reversing decisions of the courts which are anti-life and anti-family.

Conclusion

25. As we gather this morning to pray for our nation, let us draw courage and strength from the glorious pierced Heart of Our Lord Jesus. Let us not give way to discouragement in our exercise of patriotism but rather be confident of the essential contribution which our Catholic faith makes to the life of our nation.

26. May the courage and strength which comes to us from the Sacred Heart of Jesus enlighten our minds to see more clearly the gravity of the situation of our nation and inflame our hearts to do our part to transform the life of our nation, in accord with the natural moral law, that is, with what is just and serves the good of all. Let us draw courage and strength from the Sacred Heart of Jesus through prayer and the Sacraments, especially the Sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist. May the courage and strength of Christ guide our reflection on the state of our nation and lead us to that just action, taught to us by our faith, which serves the good of all.

27. Invoking the intercession of Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother of America, let us pray today and everyday that we as Catholics, true to our faith and, therefore, patriotically devoted to our nation, may promote respect for all human life, safeguard the sanctity of marriage and the family, and, thereby, foster the good of all in the nation and in the world.

Thank you. God bless you.

(Most Rev.) Raymond L. Burke
Archbishop Emeritus of Saint Louis
Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura

End Times for Christian America?

Hunter Baker

Christian America is busy dying again.

If you believe some partisan historians, it was dead before the American Revolution, or at least, nobody important was a Christian by then. The Founders had all moved on to deism. Then again, maybe Christian America died at the Scopes Trial during the 1920s when Clarence Darrow pinned down the non-theologian, non-scientist politician William Jennings Bryan with the power of hostile cross-examination. If it wasn’t dead by then, it was really dead by the late 1960s when every other religion book seemed to be about either the death of God movement or "secular" Christianity. The most memorable volume of the period was Harvey Cox’s The Secular City, which put a happy face of the death of public Christianity and heralded a new, more mature age of secular community.

Meanwhile, a host of prominent sociologists of religion sagely assured the public (and each other) that public faith simply could not co-exist with a world full of technological wonders like conveyor belts, cathode ray tubes, and time and motion studies. The great sociologist Peter Berger imagined tiny groups of believers huddled together against the coming of the 21st century.

In the years following Cox’s book, Christian America exploded back into the American consciousness. Evangelists popped up all over television (just as they had on radio earlier). The former Nixon hatchet man Chuck Colson (who once said he’d run over his own grandmother to help Richard Nixon) experienced a religious conversion and turned Born Again into a household expression with his mega-selling book. America followed Nixon by electing Jimmy Carter, an outspoken evangelical enthusiastically backed by...wait for it...Pat Robertson! Disappointed with Carter, Christian conservatives became part of the coalition that elected Ronald Reagan to two terms in the White House.

Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club began selling Christian books in huge numbers and better metrics often put religious titles at the top of the bestseller list (Prayer of Jabez, anyone?). Along the way, many sociologists of religion, like Berger and Rodney Stark, turned on the old secularization thesis and began to proclaim the theory more ideologically-loaded than truly descriptive. Cox, looking back on his once-important book, would eventually note apologetically that he had relied on what the sociologists were claiming at the time. Christian America, it seemed, was not actually dead at all. Not even close.

Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek, is in line to become the new Harvey Cox. In a recent issue of the magazine, he wrote a major piece on the end of Christian America. Meacham relies on a longitudinal survey of the American public (the ARIS study) which shows a 10 percent drop in the number of self-identified Christians and a 7 percent increase in the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation to suggest religious decline. Triumphant secularists and worried Christians alike are chattering away about the decline of Christianity in America.

The meme will make for good newsprint (or maybe I should say newspixels as the papers are dying much more rapidly than Christian America ever could), but it is all severely premature. Consider the work done in 2006 by Baylor University with funding from the Templeton Foundation and fieldwork by Gallup. Their findings countered the secularization narrative and tellingly showed that even among the religiously unaffiliated, nearly two-thirds believe in God or some higher power. That study got a lot less attention, in part because it did not play into the persistent story of religious decline pushed by those anxious for it to occur.

The smart money is on Christianity to be around and relevant for as long as the American republic endures. The even smarter money says the faith will outlast the republic just as it did the empire into which it was born.

"Christianity is important in America!" is no more a story than "dog bites man." "The death of Christianity," on the other hand, grabs eyeballs. Secularists are joined by many Christians who assume religious decline will precede an eschatological event in which God removes his church from the earth. Thus, they expect to hear this kind of story. The narratives of ideological secularists on one hand and end-times theorists like Hal Lindsey (The Late Great Planet Earth) or Tim LaHaye (Left Behind) are not as different as one might assume.

The wise observer will be more cautious. It was less than five years ago that Garry Wills, flustered by the re-election of George W. Bush, wrote histrionically for The New York Times about "The Day the Enlightenment Went Out." He bemoaned the power of Christianity over the American people and expressed his own disbelief that his fellow citizens endorsed the Virgin Birth more readily than Darwin’s theory. Bush’s victory, a substantial improvement over his performance in 2000, was largely credited to an unusually heavy turn-out among Catholics and Evangelicals in his favor. Does anyone really think that things have changed so much in five years?

The simple truth of the matter is that America turns on the margins. A movement gets the right politician, finds the right message, and builds a coalition that can command the levers of power. Suddenly, it seems the losers have been cast out and the winners are ascendant. But it is never as simple as that. Nor is it ever really over. Barack Obama is the president. To many, particularly to many social elites, he appears to be the avatar of secular enlightenment. But don’t tell that to the overwhelming majority of his ethnic fan base or to the young, white evangelicals his campaign actively courted. Ronald Reagan was president, too. His rise seemed to augur a new era for religion in the public square. Yet that was not the reason many libertarians and corporate interests supported him.

America is a complicated place. We are a dynamic society because we are a free society. From our birth as a republic, we have been a quasi-stable partnership of enlightenment modernism and vigorous Christian belief working together for the preservation of ordered liberty. There will be more proclamations of the death of Christian America. It is as good a story as the "war" between science and religion, which gets a makeover every time we have a slow news day.

The smart money is on Christianity to be around and relevant for as long as the American republic endures. The even smarter money says the faith will outlast the republic just as it did the empire into which it was born.

Hunter Baker. "End Times for Christian America?" Acton Institute (May 13, 2009). Reprinted with permission of the Acton Institute. Hunter Baker, J.D., Ph.D. is the author of The End of Secularism which comes out with Crossway Books in August 2009. He serves as contributing editor to The City and to Salvo Magazine and is an assistant professor of government at Houston Baptist University. Copyright © 2009 Acton Institute

Bishop Martino and Misericordia University

Deacon Keith Fournier

On October 14, 1986 the Vatican’s “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith”under the leadership of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, released a clearly written and pastorally directive document entitled “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral care of Homosexual Persons”. It should be considered a “must read” by every concerned Catholic. In Paragraph 14 of that letter we read these words of warning:

“…this Congregation wishes to ask the Bishops to be especially cautious of any programs which may seek to pressure the Church to change her teaching, even while claiming not to do so. A careful examination of their public statements and the activities they promote reveals a studied ambiguity by which they attempt to mislead the pastors and the faithful. For example, they may present the teaching of the Magisterium, but only as if it were an optional source for the formation of one's conscience. Its specific authority is not recognized.

“Some of these groups will use the word "Catholic" to describe either the organization or its intended members, yet they do not defend and promote the teaching of the Magisterium; indeed, they even openly attack it. While their members may claim a desire to conform their lives to the teaching of Jesus, in fact they abandon the teaching of his Church. This contradictory action should not have the support of the Bishops in any way.”

Once again Bishop Joseph Martino of the Diocese of Scranton is in the news. This faithful and courageous Bishop understands his Episcopal obligation to teach and defend the truth and is unafraid of criticism. He has now asked Misericordia University, a Catholic College in his Diocese, to consider "…discontinuing its Diversity Institute." This Institute sponsored two talks given by openly homosexual activist Keith Boynkin on the campus on February 17, 2009. The Bishop had asked the University not to sponsor the talks. They did so anyway. The speaker promoted the activist homosexual agenda.

The University simply did not comply with the Bishop’s direction. Still, they continued to claim to be faithful to the teaching office of the Catholic Church. They issued a release after the event: "Misericordia University has been committed deeply to its Catholic mission and the teachings of the Catholic Church for 85 years. Misericordia University welcomes the opportunity to discuss these matters with the Bishop and his delegates at their convenience."

Bishop Martino has responded. Here is the newest Press Release from the Diocese:

In response to Misericordia University’s assertion that it “is committed deeply to its Catholic mission,” Bishop Joseph F. Martino observes that the institution should convey to its alumni, and in fact to all the faithful of the Diocese of Scranton, its efforts to teach Catholic morality regarding sexuality and homosexuality.

In doing this, the Bishop believes the school should speak precisely, naming courses, content and even catalog numbers.

Bishop Martino’s position at this time follows his “absolute disapproval” of the university’s hosting of Keith Boykin, a proponent of morality that is disturbingly opposed to Catholic teaching.

Mr. Boykin made two presentations at the school on Feb. 17. In at least one of his talks, he discussed advocacy for issues such as same sex marriage, and he addressed the intersection of religion and sexuality. The Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality was not presented at the event.

A statement from the Diocese issued the day before the talks noted that “Mr. Boykin has authored three books and all three have been nominated for a Lambda Literary award. Lambda is a legal advocacy effort for homosexual causes. Mr. Boykin is an avid supporter of same sex marriage and is an activist for positions disturbingly opposed to Catholic moral teaching.

“Bishop Martino wants Catholics of the Diocese of Scranton to know of his absolute disapproval of Misericordia University’s hosting Mr. Boykin. By honoring this speaker through allowing his positions, so antithetical to Catholic Church teaching, to be broadcast on its campus, the University has rejected all four essential characteristics of a Catholic institution of higher learning. These are: its Christian inspiration, its obligation to reflect on knowledge in light of the Catholic faith, its fidelity to Catholic Church teaching and its commitment to serve the people of God.

“The faithful of the Diocese of Scranton, the Bishop observed, should be in no doubt that Misericordia University in this instance is seriously failing in maintaining its Catholic identity.”

Misericordia responded with a statement saying it understood the Bishop’s criticism, but “Mr. Boykin’s appearance . . . is not meant to be a forum for advocacy on any singular issue.” The statement also said the University “welcomes legitimate scholarly discussion among its students, faculty, staff and guests from diverse religious and cultural backgrounds.”

The statement also said that “Misericordia University is committed deeply to its Catholic mission.”

Regarding the request for specific information from Misericordia, Bishop Martino said that students attending a Catholic institution should have a clear understanding that while all persons should be treated with dignity, homosexual activity is not condoned by the Church and should never be construed as acceptable behavior.

Bishop Martino is also asking Misericordia to seriously consider discontinuing its Diversity Institute, which co-sponsored Mr. Boykin’s appearance. He had previously served for a week as a visiting scholar with the Institute.

The Bishop’s rationale is that students should learn respect for all races and cultures, but that viewpoints that are in direct opposition to Catholic teaching should not be presented under the guise of “diversity.” Doing so within a formal structure sanctioned by the institution gives the impression that these viewpoints are acceptable, or that all morality is relative.”

Bishop Martino is to be commended and deserves the support and prayer of every Catholic.

Published originally by Catholic On Line

Those Bus Ads

David Warren

The fool hath said in his heart, "There is no God," according to the Psalmist; or as an advertising standards council in Britain ruled, the line should read, "There's probably no God," when it appears on the sides of transit buses. Ottawa's city council voted last week to make OC Transpo the latest carrier of this message, which is already appearing on buses in other Canadian cities, and across former Christendom.

I seldom agree with advertising standards councils, and there is no reason why I should make an exception here. While the word "probably" improves the ad, rhetorically, by making it seem a little more open-minded, it also adds two new layers of deceit.

First, the sponsors don't think God "probably" doesn't exist, they have actually bet that He doesn't. And good on them for that: for I admire people who will put their money where their mouth is, at least some of the time. If disbelief in God will take them to Hell, they will ride into Hell triumphantly -- and I would guess on something like OC Transpo.

But second, the laws of probability cannot help you make a decision about the existence of God. They just don't apply to metaphysical questions. You may use the math (usually rather crudely) to determine the odds against various things happening in nature -- for instance, to calculate the insuperable odds against life randomly evolving on earth, or intelligent life evolving from sponges. But supernature is an odds-free zone. This is a point on which intelligent atheists and believers ought to be able to agree.

Advertising is a vexing business. It attracts all kinds of smart and talented people, because the money is usually fairly good, and smart people often prefer more money to less. The purpose of advertising -- which you might never guess from reading literature from an advertising council -- is to sell things. One might even say advertising is intrinsically biased.

Having established that, however, we must then consider the effects of advertising. Not all of it works. Sometimes it is counter-productive. And while I enjoy a brilliant advertisement for almost anything, I even more enjoy spotting an advertisement that is "too brilliant by half."

In my own humble yet authoritative opinion, an absolutely overt advertisement for atheism is a Godsend, but not for the atheists. How could this be? To explain, I must (hardly for the first time) invoke Warren's Iron Law of Paradox, which holds, among other things, that the more clearly you state the case for a false proposition, the better you undermine it.

The case here is against belief in God. But in order to state your case, you must mention Him. From the moment you do that, you are fighting a rearguard action. You have just made people think about God. Your case would work better if they weren't thinking about Him.

The Iron Law of Paradox has many dimensions, and it seems to me there are quite a few on which this bus ad is scoring an "own goal," in the course of sticking a poker in the face of the religious. I want to focus exclusively on the sharp end, however, and not waste space on all the rusted metal behind it. So let me just say that almost everything else the advertising industry produces is more effective against "God belief" than this pointy little bus ad.

The secret of advertising, in a largely post-Christian society, is to use a semblance of the theological virtues against the actual cardinal virtues. That is to say, the advertising propagandist must try to convince the prospective purchaser of mass-market goods that he may enjoy a mild parody of faith ("it's the real thing"), hope ("you can lose 10 kilos"), and charity ("make them smile"), if he will only abandon the sales resistance that comes from prudence, justice, temperance and courage.

Perhaps this idea will be plainer if I express it negatively. The routine advertising strategy is to flog the attractiveness of the deadly sins: avarice, lust, gluttony, vainglory, and so forth. It is to tell the target audience, "stop worrying and enjoy your life."

This is a much more effective atheist strategy, because it leaves God entirely out of the equation. Indeed, the mass-market punter is being subtly persuaded to forget about God, Who, we can only assume, must contribute to sales resistance by His general opposition to sin.

Let us make this argument plainer still. The average modern urban dweller driving to and from work (as opposed to those trapped inside the buses, who don't get to stare at the ad in traffic jams), is not an atheist, nor a Christian, nor anything in between. He is rarely a person who devotes much thought to God. He is more often a person who has subconsciously trained himself -- or been subconsciously trained by things like advertising -- to avoid this subject entirely. The poor, harassed creature may only have time to think in traffic jams.

And now, thanks to the Freethought Association of Canada, he can think about God.

A Conservative Warrior Rests

Jeffrey Bell

Kemp Brought America Back from 1970s

There were two big ideas that changed the world in the 1980s: Supply-side economics and a bold strategy for winning the Cold War. One was the handiwork of Jack Kemp, the other of Ronald Reagan.

It’s important to understand that the first, introduced into American politics by a then-young Kemp in the 1970s, preceded the second. No look back on the life of Jack Kemp is complete without the recognition that, without Kemp’s success, the Reagan-led peaceful victory in the Cold War could never have happened.

Restoration of strong economic growth while ending double-digit inflation was a vital political and psychological building block to Reagan’s optimistic, pro-active strategy in the Cold War. It facilitated a massive defense buildup while generating the domestic political strength that Reagan needed during the confrontational phase of his foreign policy in the early and mid-1980s.

As the magnitude of the Reagan economic expansion became clear, it revived the worldwide charisma of capitalism from its low point in the 1970s. This unexpected resurrection of capitalism demoralized the global left. It also paved the way for Mikhail Gorbachev’s conciliatory foreign and domestic policy and his announcement in 1988, Reagan’s final year in office, that the Soviet Union would carry out a complete unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan. Nobody predicted it at the time, but this was the critical first step in ending the Cold War and in the unraveling of the Soviet empire which quickly followed.

If Reagan had not adopted Kemp’s economic program as his own, he almost certainly would not have been elected president in the first place. More than any other factor, Jack Kemp’s agenda ended the fixation on disasters of the 1970s that had left the U. S. economy, American morale, and the Republican Party at historic lows.

Even today’s financial meltdown, painful and scary as it is, pales in comparison to the demoralizing decade of the 1970s. It’s hard to convey how bad the 1970s were to anyone born after 1950.

Kent State. Arab oil embargo. Stagflation. Watergate. Impeachment. Fall of Saigon. Interminable lines at gas stations. Explosion of the welfare rolls. Explosion of the rate of violent crime. Explosion of divorce, abortion, and births out of wedlock. Eurocommunism. Armed Communist takeovers of Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Granada, Laos and Cambodia, as well as South Vietnam. The Red Army invasion of Afghanistan. The fall of the Shah of Iran and the subsequent imprisonment of more than 100 American foreign service officers to be publicly humiliated, every day, in Tehran for nearly 15 months.

Have I left anything out? Yes. For four years we had a president, Jimmy Carter, who presided over flop after flop, fiasco after fiasco, never showing the slightest awareness of personal accountability or the slightest alteration in a demeanor of smug, superior self-congratulation.

Because of the collapse of the Nixon administration, Republicans blamed themselves for all this. So did the vast majority of voters. Following the 1974 elections, the Republican Party had 144 representatives, 38 senators, and 12 governors. Here is the list of states that Republicans still ran in 1975, in the sense of possessing the governorship and both houses of the legislature: Kansas. Two years later, Carter completed the dismantling of the GOP by ousting Gerald Ford from the White House, while the colossal post-1974 Democratic dominance in Congress and the states stayed roughly the same.

Think the Republican Party is in bad shape today? You should have seen it then. In the wake of stagflation, Watergate, and America’s first lost war—all either starting or ending in ignominy in the Nixon-Ford years — early GOP recovery was far from a betting favorite.

It happened because of two men, Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. It is because of them — their leadership, their determination, their creativity — that for Republicans, the bleak 1970s turned out to be in a deep sense the best of times,

exceeded in their ultimate positive impact only by the founding of the party and the rise of Abraham Lincoln in the 1850s. I had the good fortune to work closely with both of these extraordinary men in this, their most politically creative period.

To say we now know all about Ronald Reagan is tempting, but as yet far from accurate. Although virtually no one realized it at the time — I count myself among the ignorant — in retrospect Reagan had nearly unerring political and policy judgment, yet zero desire — perhaps minus desire — to call attention to his own shrewdness. He was accused of living in a Hollywood-inspired dream world, and maybe he did. But the more we learn of him from the release of his notebooks and private papers, the more we sense that Reagan was a deeply intuitive politician who knew how to mold reality until it resembled his dreams.

Like the Hollywood movies of the 1940s, every one of Ronald Reagan’s dreams had a happy ending for America. Jack Kemp, a native of Southern California, was a star quarterback for the Buffalo Bills of the American Football League who retired after the 1969 season to run for Congress as a Republican from the blue-collar Buffalo suburbs. He upset an incumbent Democratic congressman in 1970 at the age of 35 and was easily re-elected until he vacated his seat to run for President in 1988. Defeated for the nomination, he served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993 and was the Republican Party nominee for Vice President, running unsuccessfully with Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole against President Bill Clinton in 1996.

But this thumbnail biography, impressive as it is, gives the merest hint of the impact Kemp had on his party, his country, and the world. He achieved by far the most positive impact on global economic policy of any legislator of the past century.

From his earliest days in the House of Representatives, Kemp asked penetrating questions to knowledgeable people about all sorts of issues. His interests ranged widely across foreign policy and social issues as well as economics. But as with many men and women who entered politics in the 1970s, he found himself drawn inexorably to the crisis of stagflation and monetary breakdown that overshadowed those times.

Pessimism about the free market was pervasive. In 1971, Kemp’s first year in Congress, a center-right Republican president, Richard Nixon, severed the post-World War II link of the dollar to gold, imposed wage and price controls on the economy, and proclaimed “We are all Keynesians now.” The Club of Rome issued a widely celebrated report predicting a dim global future of shrinking natural resources and limits to growth.

Kemp’s rise from working-class origins to football fame and a seat in Congress left him with a far different view of America’s economic potential. It undoubtedly helped that, like Reagan, he radiated the self-confidence of a high achiever from outside politics at a time when conventional politics had become sterile.

The backbencher from Buffalo found himself drawn to a small contrarian band of economists, journalists, and political activists. It was a group that was often at each other’s throats but was united by a desire to break free from the pessimism that pervaded conventional economics throughout the 1970s.

The late conservative Keynesian economist Herbert Stein, who had chaired Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisors and whose son is the writer and comedian Ben Stein, gave us the sobriquet “supply siders,” to distinguish us from the “demand side” views of both Keynesians and monetarists. It was not meant to be flattering, but we accepted the label anyway as a reasonable capsule of what was different about our views.

Kemp was the undisputed quarterback but proved willing on occasion to switch to the role of referee when that was needed. It often was.

From early on, supply siders focused on the need for tax cuts. An early package of Kemp tax proposals focused on multiple credits and deductions for capital investment.

But in 1976 Kemp decided to simplify things by offering an across-the-board 30 percent reduction in income tax rates. The new bill was written to mimic the Kennedy tax cut that passed and was signed into law by President Johnson in 1964 and became fully effective a few months later on New Year’s Day of 1965. Most congressional Republicans, including 1964 presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, had charged fiscal irresponsibility and opposed the tax cut, which was followed by several years of accelerated growth and higher-than-expected Federal revenues.

In 1977, the Kemp bill became Kemp-Roth by gaining the co-sponsorship of Sen. William Roth of Delaware, a member of the Senate Finance Committee. To get Roth to sign on, Kemp agreed to stretch out implementation to three years, 10 percent a year. This reassured fiscal conservatives and broadened rank-and-file congressional backing. Kemp convinced Republican national chairman Bill Brock to make Kemp-Roth a key GOP plank in the 1978 congressional elections. A diluted version of the bill actually passed Congress in 1978, only to be vetoed by President Carter. But supply siders scored their first big legislative victory when Carter was maneuvered into signing a cut in the top capital gains tax rate from 49 to 28 percent.

The tax cut had added significance because it was the handiwork of Wisconsin Congressman William Steiger, a respected young GOP moderate who had several years of seniority on Kemp. Increasingly, Kemp-Roth appeared capable of uniting the right, center and left of the Republican Party and attracting some conservative Democratic backing as well.

Getting Reagan to make it the centerpiece of his campaign, however, was a complex process that culminated with success in 1979, but left his campaign team with multiple wounds that never fully healed on the personal level.

The resistance was never from Reagan himself. He was attracted to Kemp-Roth from the moment it was unveiled, and endorsed it often in his speeches and radio commentaries. But as the frontrunner for the 1980 nomination, Reagan had attracted a cross-section of elite Republican economic advisers, nearly all of whom thought in then-prevalent demand-side terms. This translated into their fear that a massive personal income tax cut would put too many dollars into the pockets of American taxpayers, causing these taxpayers to bid up prices, which in turn would cause a damaging spike in inflation. They were dismissive of Say’s Law, promulgated by a 19th-century French economist who argued that stimulating increased supply would of itself create a corresponding demand.

Ultimately the gridlock in Reagan’s camp was broken on the political side. Reagan’s campaign manager and chief strategist was John Sears, a canny, pragmatic veteran of the 1968 Nixon campaign and manager of Reagan’s surprisingly strong 1976 primary challenge against President Ford. Sears’ greatest fear was the possibility that Kemp, at the time 44 years old to Reagan’s 68, would enter the 1980 primaries and divert conservative votes toward a younger and more programmatic alternative, potentially costing Reagan the nomination. Sears was attracted to the supply-side agenda on substantive,

future-oriented grounds, but he probably would not have overcome elite opposition to highlighting the supply-side agenda had it been a political vehicle for anyone other than the attractive and articulate Kemp. Sears persuaded Reagan to offer Kemp a prominent role in the campaign as “economic spokesman,” and Kemp endorsed Reagan as the “oldest and wisest” of those in the 1980 race.

From then on, the alliance for supply side between the movie star and the quarterback was unbreakable, and together they accomplished a reduction in the top income tax rate from 70 percent (its level in 1980) to 28 percent in 1988. As taxpayers know, Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama have done their best to push marginal income tax rates back up to as much as 40 percent, and this battle will never truly end.But one thing did end. In the wake of the Reagan-Kemp tax revolution, the steeply progressive income tax -- once as high as 91 percent in this country and as recently as 1979 still at an amazing 98 percent in Great Britain -- a cornerstone of the worldwide economic left was no longer viable. Dynamiting of this cornerstone helped end not just Soviet-style communism, but old-fashioned confiscatory socialism as a live option in the democratic world as well.

One of the most revealing tests of a historic political leader is whether major unfulfilled elements of his or her agenda stay alive following the leader’s departure from the scene. Reagan passes this test in spades, perhaps most strikingly when one of his central goals, decentralization of the Federal welfare entitlement, was signed into law by a Democratic president in 1996, nearly eight years after the end of the Reagan era.

For Jack Kemp, a major Republican failing was political outreach to minorities, particularly black and Hispanic voters. By his advocacy of tax-favored enterprise zones and urban homesteading, and his close collaboration with such prominent minority legislators as Congressmen Robert Garcia of the South Bronx and Walter Fauntroy of the District of Columbia, Kemp was a pioneer in left-right, white-black and white-Hispanic coalition building. His strategy was not to play down conservative doctrine in the manner of a liberal Republican, but to adapt conservative beliefs to the needs of these communities. At a time when minorities are a growing share of the national vote and the Republican share of this vote more dismal than ever, either Republicans will find a way to revive Kemp-style conservative outreach or resign themselves once again to their own version of minority status.

Even today’s financial crisis, on one level an undeniable threat to the revitalization of capitalism that the political achievements of Reagan, Kemp, and Margaret Thatcher made possible, is a vindication of Kemp and the supply siders of the 1970s. It is sometimes forgotten that the origin of supply-side economics was intertwined not with tax policy, but with the 1971 breakdown of the Bretton Woods monetary system which provided a residual link of the dollar to gold. It was the double-digit inflation that ignited in the wake of the Nixon administration’s “liberation” of the dollar that pushed millions of middle-class taxpayers into marginal tax brackets never designed for them. This in turn helped create the mass base of the tax revolution that took off in the late 1970s.

The most important article about early supply-side theory appeared in Irving Kristol’s Public Interest magazine in 1975. Written by Wall Street Journal editorial writer Jude Wanniski, it was titled “The Mundell-Laffer Hypothesis.”

I remember avidly reading it as a frazzled director of research at Reagan’s exploratory campaign committee in Washington, preparing issue papers for the1976 nomination fight. The article was almost exclusively about monetary policy, most immediately the dangers of fiat money in the newly created “dollar standard.” Columbia professor Robert Mundell, along with Arthur Laffer the academic godfather of the supply side, won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1999 not for fiscal studies but for his groundbreaking work in monetary policy.

A long-time advocate of fixed currency exchange rates, the Canadian Mundell is today widely credited as the prime architect of the Euro and as a major behind-the-scenes adviser to the top economic policymakers of the People’s Republic of China. It seems logical to wonder if it is an accident that this increasingly important nation in today’s global economy, holding in Beijing dollar-denominated debt instruments in the amount of two trillion dollars as their national monetary reserve, has consistently opposed floating exchange rates and recently singled out for blame the distorting role of the dollar — a single nation’s debt — as the world’s official reserve currency.

Regardless of where this interesting new debate leads, it is patently absurd to allow Barack Obama and Lawrence Summers to treat a pure crisis of monetary policy centered in the liquidity of the global banking system as a repudiation of (take your pick) modern capitalism, American-style entrepreneurship, or of private American medicine. Jack Kemp, who lost his courageous battle with cancer amid all the prayers of his many friends, fellow agitators, and admirers, could have told you that in 1977.

Jeffrey Bell, a visiting fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, was national campaign coordinator of Kemp for President in 1988.

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

It's Not Theft, It's Pastiche

Christine Rosen

College students plagiarize routinely, especially from the Internet

When a plagiarism scandal erupts in the world of journalism, the accused often trots out an excuse (confusing notes and original words, toggling between computer screens) whose plausibility would shame a toddler, and the gatekeepers of the profession engage in a pro forma bout of soul-searching that somehow leaves journalism looking more ethically enfeebled than empowered. Perhaps the problem is the way we have chosen to define the transgression itself. In My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture, anthropologist Susan D. Blum argues: "The concept of plagiarism -- 'improperly' taking someone else's words -- is changing because higher education, the meaning of a 'text,' and notions of the self are changing around it."

In surveys, nearly 70% of college students admit to having taken material from the Internet without properly crediting its source. Ms. Blum comes not to scold these miscreants but to understand their motives. "If more than half of all students plagiarize," she reasons, "then there is clearly some cultural influence urging them to do so." Universities have tried everything from detective software to the threat of expulsion to combat the problem, with little success. After pursuing three years of ethnographic research at Notre Dame, where she teaches, and conducting hundreds of interviews with students, Ms. Blum points to a culture of achievement among students that has, counter-intuitively, encouraged them to plagiarize to get ahead. Before college, families "have nurtured, praised, and encouraged" these students, Ms. Blum writes, keeping them busy with enriching (and résumé-enhancing) activities. But such "social conditioning" has also cultivated a chronic anxiety about success.

Like Margaret Mead among the Samoans, Ms. Blum views her subjects -- "digital natives" -- as an exotic species. She notes their constant use of email, text messaging and the Internet. She declares them to be "the wordiest and most writerly generation in a long while" and anoints their conversational tendency to quote TV shows and films an admirable form of "intertextuality." They are "storming the barricades" of a new digital future, she claims, using the Internet to engage in collaborative work and to expand their knowledge base. She finds the hapless faculty members charged with teaching such students "embattled and bewildered." In other words: Get Twittering, grandma.

Ms. Blum also embraces various postmodern theories of plagiarism. Internet-savvy, intertextual ingénues don't steal words; they engage in "patchwriting" and "pastiche," constructing essays the way they create eclectic music playlists for their iPods. This practice, she argues, can be viewed as a form of homage or reverence as much as theft. In fact, as Ms. Blum's research demonstrates, students today view writing -- however we might define such a thing in a "pastiche" culture -- as a purely instrumental activity: a means to an end.

Thus the laborious effort of ordering one's own thoughts and composing one's own prose -- or giving credit by way of citation -- is a source of great frustration for today's students. They find "slowness and deliberateness . . . at odds with their customary focus on speed and efficiency, on completing one task as fast as possible so they can get on with the next one that is inevitably hanging over their head." But isn't this aversion to careful practices all the more reason that students should be made to learn them? Even Ms. Blum admits that students are not oblivious of traditional standards: "Rather than being entirely ignorant of the principles of citation, students are often aware of them but do not entirely accept them."

More persuasive is Ms. Blum's analysis of the new kind of self that she sees emerging among these students. Rejecting the old notion of an "authentic self," they become "performance selves." They "say and write whatever works for their practical purposes; it need not belong to them alone." If the authentic self "wishes to find the place in which to feel at home," Ms. Blum writes, "the performance self wishes to feel at home in all places, as long as there is a way to connect to everyone else."

To her credit, Ms. Blum is not an apologist for plagiarism, and she argues persuasively that it is counterproductive to treat as cheaters students who merely fail to grasp academia's often Byzantine standards of citation. Her larger goal -- to question the high-achieving, results-oriented culture of higher education -- is a good one, too. But she too often recasts a student's choice to pass off someone else's work as his own as a failure of culture rather than a failure of character. "We can only partly blame the individuals who cheat," she says. "They have absorbed the cultural messages about competition, success, multitasking, and the bottom line." This is an artful dodge: It is possible to compete and succeed, even to "multitask," without bending the rules. People manage to do so every day. Professors may prefer to view plagiarism as an act of postmodern textual liberation, but they are failing their students if they don't teach respect for the ideas and words of others.

In the end, a generation that has few qualms about perpetrating a kind of mass intellectual mugging will face challenges in a post-college culture that, especially now, values transparency above all else. Judging by Ms. Blum's research, it is not a proper understanding of success and achievement that today's students lack. It is discipline of the mind and a willingness to delay gratification -- traits that perhaps only real-world experience can teach them. Steal someone else's words and they shrug. Steal their iPods? Now you have their attention.

Acknowledgement
Christine Rosen. "It's Not Theft, It's Pastiche." The Wall Street Journal (April 16, 2009). Reprinted by CatholicEducation.org with permission of the author and The Wall Street Journal © 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
Christine Rosen is involved in the Project on Biotechnology and writes about the history of genetics, the social impact of technology, the fertility industry, and bioethics. She is a senior editor of The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society. Mrs. Rosen is the author of Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement, a history of the ethical and religious debates surrounding the eugenics movement in the United States, published by Oxford University Press in 2004. Since 1999, she has also been an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, where she has written about women and the economy, feminism, and women's studies. Mrs. Rosen’s most recent book, My Fundamentalist Education, the story of a Christian fundamentalist school in Florida, was published by Public Affairs in December 2005. The Washington Post Book World named My Fundamentalist Education one of the best nonfiction books of 2006. Mrs. Rosen has been the recipient of fellowships from Emory University and from the American Philosophical Society. She earned a B.A. in History from the University of South Florida in 1993, and a Ph.D. in History from Emory University in 1999. Mrs. Rosen lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, Jeffrey and their two sons. Copyright © 2009 Wall Street Journal