As Charles Schumer (D, NY) said of another judge’s nomination, “His beliefs are so well known, so deeply held, that it’s very hard to believe — very hard to believe — that they’re not going to deeply influence the way he comes about saying, ‘I will follow the law.’”

Except that when Schumer was saying it, the “beliefs” in question were religious beliefs. Now that doesn’t seem to matter. Evidentally, we’re supposed to empathize with the beliefs of the candidate.

Willian McGurn has a piece in the Wall Street Journal about The Catholic Double Standard. Read it, if only to get great insights like the explanation of judging without personal prejudice:

What matters is the law, not the personal feelings. When judges follow this path, they take some of the heat out of culture wars. That’s because those who want to change the law — pro-life or pro-choice — have to do it the way our Founders intended: through their elected representatives.

Wealth. …(W)e all know the Vatican has gigantic vats full of it, so much that if the Church only opened her greedy coffers, she could instantly solve all the world’s problems with her enormous monetary assets and still have enough left over to fund an ill-fated space program involving flying cathedrals and confused nuns.

I spit Coke Zero when I got to #7, just to warn you.

I am as interested in reversing global climate change as anyone, but I fail to see how increasing taxes and random machete attacks on Ohio coal producers alone will solve the problem,” said Marcy Kaptur (D-OH). “Come on, people, there are plenty of other industries who deserve machete attacks, too.”

IowaHawk reveals opposition to the Cap-And-Trade’s Blood Sacrifice Amendment.

“The prayer station helps people see, whether it’s 9/11 or Chrysler or GM about to go into bankruptcy, we always share a need for God…. The station becomes a vehicle toward life change, not just offering a prayer.”  - Tom Grassano,  member of Urban Harvest Ministries

Christine Ferretti, a Detroit News reporter, wrote an interesting and well-balanced story. A nonprofit set up a prayer booth in Warren City Hall as a place for unemployed or financially-distressed people who might want prayers or spiritual comfort.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) has raised a hue and cry, but it sounds like Mayor Fouts isn’t giving in.    

As a former resident of Warren, where I had my first apartment, I opine that FFRF isn’t going to win the hearts and minds of residents.  The FFRF is based in Wisconsin, so perhaps their members are unaware that Michigan has been in a one-state recession for several years before the current economic downturn. As an added bonus, the GM Tech Center is in Warren.

Not that I’m trying to support FFRF’s agenda, but strictly as a practical and rational matter, its leadership should take a different tact. They could set up an atheistic alternative support booth for the unemployed and financially-teetering. Heck, they wouldn’t even have to rent it from City Hall – there are plenty of vacant buildings for rent!

Instead, the FFRF is providing a valuable advertisement for Christianity.  The Christians are letting people come to the booth of their own volition. They offer prayer, but they don’t force it on anyone.

In contrast, the FFRF isn’t concerning itself with the needs of the unemployed, let alone those most pathetic losers - those who seek spiritual comfort (aka “superstition”).  They’re more concerned with people who believe as they do, people who might be “uncomfortable” by public displays of (religious) affection.  They have a different take on the Establishment Clause** :

This is ridiculous. Prayer should be private. -  Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president

(Note to my non-Americentric readers: In the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, there is a clause that forbids Congress from establishing a state religion.)

In a similar way, Contrarians don’t just disagree with other people’s opinions. They seldom create anything of their own, yet when viewing the results of another person’s labor, they state (loudly) how it could have been done better. They throw no fabulous parties, but they somehow manage to attend the most popular (and disappointing) affairs.

To Contrarians, everything has been done and everything is jejune – and yet they have the ability to emote boredom or apathy without appearing to strain themselves. Highly-skilled Contrarians can quash inventions and innovations without ever losing their blasé mien.  Such are their skills that nonContrarians can’t hear the whoosh as the joy is sucked from the room.

Contrarians can be found in every stage of life, from callow teenagers to retirees. They have a myriad of occupations, from guidance counselor to movie director. And they thrive in a variety of habitats, from intimate family gatherings to classes with “Critical Theory” in the title.

The reverend John Zuhlsdorf, aka Fr. Z, has dissected a theological specimen.

Nicole Sotelo wrote a column in the National Catholic Reporter in which she criticizes the Pope’s declaration of the Year of the Priest (a call to prayer for priestly vocations). She says he should be declaring a Year of the Laity. In between, she declares that priests didn’t exist in the ancient church and that Christ Himself wasn’t a priest, which is why all people should emulate Him in a common priesthood.

Sound confusing?  

As I note in the combox, her manner is familiar to anyone who’s taken a class in “Critical Theory” (Deconstructionism’s eviler Marxist twin). She blatently cherry-picks the Bible because she’s on a sexism/classicism hunt. Thus, truth is no defense.

I’m slightly amused by her implication Pope Benedict is not as great a theologian as she is. She expresses (sardonically) her reluctance to inform him of his errors. If she were any more condescending, she’d be a (male) character in a Dan Brown book.

at 6am
the gun first pressed to her brow
ten years ago
by the editor of cosmopolitan magazine
all spandex and day glo
and by the creative consultants of sundry advertising companies
like grinning puppets in a row
and by the programme planners of itv rte and the bbc
no no no
went off
and the body she had starved for so long
to attain their image
to obey their decree
made tangled
made desolate
made broken
ceased to be

at 6am
jesus woke her from her sleep
that’s enough suffering for one lifetime
come with me
walking down d’olier street
they chatted like old friends
and she realised at last
that the rain is diamonds

The Heelers Diary is one of my favorite sites because it author, James Healy, is always surprising. I never know if he’s going to wax eloquent or embark on a flight of fancy. And then there’s the poetry…

Check it out. But don’t be fooled. His grandeous claim to the title of “Ireland’s Greatest Living Poet” is to obscure the fact that he really is a poet.

Of course, it’s merely coincidental that I tracked back to his site. In no way do I fear him or his trailer park cohorts. Plus his firepower doesn’t equal the vintage cherrybombs that our neighbor Mr. Wilson gave my brothers and I.  And we still have a secret weapon – our Dad, who in his misspent youth discovered that quartered sticks of dynamite made AWESOME firecrackers.

Tarnowski, an alumnus of California Lutheran University, explained that he meant it to be positive. The article paraphrases that he wanted to show that “God loves people so much that even if we all were cartoon characters, he would have come to us.”

Mr. Parks is skeptical, but  I don’t think it’s an insult to Christ. No, it’s just a plea for help. This is proof positive that the good folks in Washington must pass a media/arts bailout soon.

Getting a devout Christian to do outrageous pre-Holy Week art is just scraping the bottom of the barrel. Christians always chicken out or insert lame apologetics in doing satire of religion (e.g. ”Dogma” and any Stephen Colbert Show with a priest guest).

Bugs Bunny as a Christ-figure seems rather ho-hum. Bugs has been portrayed as everything from a b-baller to a contemporary Brer Rabbit. Maybe the viewer could work up some outrage  by thinking, “Bugs dressed in women’s clothes and tricked Elmer Fudd into falling in love with him!” But it’s pretty hard to see it as a scathing commentary on St. Peter’s IQ. 

Last year’s gallery controversy was a larger-than-life naked Jesus sculpted from chocolate. It not only mocked the Crucifixion but also the Eucharist, since the public was invited to break off and eat pieces of the art. Tarnowski didn’t even depict Petunia Pig in the role of St. John as a slanderous reference to Mary Magdalene, a la the CoVinci Dad.

Sadly, the economic downturn has affected more than art. A recent trip to the bookstore revealed that very few magazines had covers spouting Christophobic blather. Clearly, the publishers can’t afford the quality of researchers that go to the local college’s library and look up Gnostic writings that theologians refuted centuries ag0.

That’s why a bail-out is so crucial. Without taxpayer support, how will the arts and other media bring us the controversial Lenten subjects we’ve come to expect and loathe?

END IRONY

I do suggest you take a look at Bob Parks’ site. In addition to bringing in a variety of news from around the blogosphere, he is a founder of NMATV, which features online news and commentary.

People sense something slipping away, a world receding, not only an economic one but a world of old structures, old ways and assumptions. …I suspect more than a few see themselves, deep down, as “the designated mourner,” from the title of the Wallace Shawn play. – from ”There’s No Pill for This Kind of Depression”

Peggy Noonan has discovered that people are anxious about the economic crisis. More people are going to church; city folks are looking for farms. Gun sales are up; some deep-pocketed persons are pulling large sums of cash from their banks. (Or perhaps, being of Irish descent, Noonan is merely on a mortality rant.)

She thinks that anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication contributed to the financial crisis. I jest not. She writes: “In New York their use became common after 9/11. It continued through and, I hypothesize, may have contributed to, the high-flying, wildly imprudent Wall Street of the ’00s.”

Perhaps she should do a little informal study of how many users of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication work on Wall Street. Then, to compare, see how many users of anti-depressants, etc. voted for politicians who had their hands in the pot of various bailed-out institutions.  It ought to be downright interesting, to say the least.

Instead, she talked to a writer, a psychiatrist, etc. to take the pulse of the nation. And the patient isn’t well.

I know what she means. An aquaintance of mine (I’ll just call him “Max”) ignored the signs of the times: environmental change, the devastating cost of gas, man’s inhumanity to man.

He lived as he pleased, a loner speeding around in his gas-guzzling car and having conflicts with nearly everyone he met. But he reconsidered his ways and really thought what kind of world the younger generation would inherit. And that’s why he’s known far beyond Thunderdome.

Yes, I totally dropped Mad Max into this post. If Ms. Noonan can pseudo-namedrop, so can I. Plus, if you’re going to envision the destruction of society, you might as well go whole-hog.

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Dyin’  Time’s here.” – the Collector, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome 

Noonan’s column reminds me of Atticus Finch telling Scout and Jem, “It’s not time to worry yet. I’ll tell you when it’s time to worry.” (I admit to making fun of Ms. Noonan’s friend who wants to move to Atticus’s town. Fictional Maycomb, Alabama, was smack in the heart of a county so entrenched in its caste system that a white man had to pretend to be perpetually drunk in order to “explain” why he married a black woman. I dunno; I’d prefer tough economic times to entrenched classicism and racism. But perhaps I’m being harsh. Perhaps Noonan’s  friend isn’t much of a reader and merely watched the Gregory Peck movie.)

On a more serious note, Patrick Archbold at Creative Minority Report and his readers are also a bit worried that something is coming - they know not what.  Then again, they’ve primed the pump a bit by having a tongue-in-cheek running series about signs of the Apocalypse. If you worry about it, you’ll see it.

We’re always closer to the End than we care to think, both as a world and as individuals. We may be heading into an awful time when our country seems to be dying and our economy falters. But it’s not like it hasn’t happened before.

We’ve tended to romanticize such times: the oft-referenced Fall of the Roman Empire, the last cowboy as civilization closed in, the Greatest Generation, etc.  However, we live in a post-romantic world, and it would be fitting if our cultural descendants don’t bother to eulogize us. Maybe they can give us a fitting name, though: The Laziest Generation, the Navel-Gazers, the Self-Pitying Wasters of Everything.

I like to think that this is a chastizement only. I pray that the younger generations will find beauty and peace in the world they inherit.  I hope that they see beyond materialism and meet Jesus without fear acting as a goad.

“God sees you out of the corner of His Eye.” - from screenwriter Jay Wolpert’s version of The Count of Monte Cristo 

Besides The Road Warrior and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, I also suggest a few other entertainments to tide your over to the approaching Apocalypse:

The Count of Monte Cristo  ~ This is Dumas’ classic tale of a man whose world is destroyed: his career, his name, his relationships. It remains a favorite of mine. The English translation  runs more than 1,400 pages in the Modern Library edition, so it will certainly keep your mind occupied. You may enjoy the movie version with Jim Caviezel, especially the (gasp!) happier ending. 

Last Exile ~ This anime series is set in an hourglass-shaped world upon which environmental extremes have created a near-constant war between the struggling nations. As in most anime, there is a brooding man with a dark past, a lost love, a fey boy, a small cute girl – but the main characters are childhood friends who work as couriers using their deceased fathers’ ”vanship” – like a tractor crossed with a World War I biplane (sans wings). The attention to detail is stunning; e.g. a princess is locked in a bedroom that evidentally once was a chapel, complete with a mural of the Crucifixion. Enjoy it while you still have electricity.

The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. ~ You thought I was going to recommend that knock-off homage Good Omens by Gaiman and Pratchett, didn’t you? Sure, it’s about the end of the world, but it lacks the subtlety and dreamlike quality.

Stranger at Killknock by Leonard Wibberly. ~ What if the Second Coming happened very quietly in an Irish village?  This is out of print, but perhaps you can look for it as you rummage through the abandoned libraries and used bookstores of a decaying city. Just remember: The kindling is filed under Brown, Dan.

UPDATE: The inimitable Bob Parks is sickened by Noonan’s love of the new President.