Month: November 2007

Common sense

It’s been this kind of talk from Giuliani that has had me on his side from the start, tentatively of course, and tentatively still, but less and less so.  It’s the Islamo-fascist threat, stupid.  That and Democrat tax-and-spend-ism:

Giuliani said [Thursday in Las Vegas] the “threat of Islamic terrorism” was “something that we just have to face and be realistic about, and the reality is that many of the Democrats are not being realistic.”

He accused Democratic candidates of not being able to utter the phrase “Islamic terrorism” for fear of appearing politically incorrect.

“I’m not suggesting that any religion is bad,” he said. “We’re intelligent enough to understand that. We’re intelligent enough to make that distinction and not turn it into some kind of prejudice.”

Giuliani said it was better to err on the side of caution. “This country has never, ever, I believe, gotten in trouble by exaggerating a threat,” he said. “We’ve gotten ourselves more into trouble when we underestimate a threat.”

The Democrats, he said, are exhibiting an “almost embarrassing” eagerness to negotiate with America’s enemies.

From Reader D:

I’m open to Giuliani — for the reasons you are, plus he will not be afraid to be in Hilary’s face. I do not want a “Gentle-man” to pussy-foot around her.

I wish Mrs. Romney was married to Rudy! I heard her the other night, and she deserves to be first lady. I hope Rudy’s Mrs. is not a bimbo. I haven’t heard her say a word so it’s all subjective.

The bishops are coming out with some voting blah blah that makes me think they will again twist gullible Catholics into staying home. I want to hear that [Pope] Benedict quote from a couple years ago about — if there are 2 pro-choice candidates, you have to vote for the one that has the better platform aside from abortion.

My bumper sticker will be: “It’s pragmatism, stupid!”

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How dare they?

Peggy Noonan on Hillary playing the female card after her recent lambasting at a candidates’ debate:

The point is the big ones, the real ones, the Thatchers and Indira Gandhis and Golda Meirs and Angela Merkels, never play the boo-hoo game. They are what they are, but they don’t use what they are. They don’t hold up their sex as a feint: Why, he’s not criticizing me, he’s criticizing all women! Let us rise and fight the sexist cur.

 

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About the Jesuit who came out of the closet at mass . . .

From the pro-life trenches:

“First of all,” Father Euteneuer said, “Holy Mass is not a forum for your self-expression. You chose the sacred liturgy and the pulpit reserved for preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the launching pad for your personal testament to homosexuality … You’ve read the same documents I’ve read about the liturgy, and none of them say the liturgy is your personal stage.”

He’s Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, president of Human Life International.  Furthermore:

“When even a celibate priest chooses to go public about his homosexual identity as an expression of ‘diversity’ or ‘pride’, the faithful are rightfully confused and scandalized. Not only do you owe them an apology, you owe them a better example of priesthood. They deserve a priest who is clear about the Church’s doctrine about homosexual acts and who teaches it unambiguously. … If you do not clearly witness the Church’s teaching about your own vocation, how can you teach others to be faithful to theirs?”

He has two good points.  His entire comment is here, introduced with this:

On Sunday, November 4th, Rev. Thomas Brennan, S.J., revealed publicly to a parish at St. Joseph University in Philadelphia that he was a homosexual. The priest chose to “come out” during a so-called “Diversity Week” allegedly dedicated to honoring Jesuit founder, St. Ignatius Loyola.

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Papa Rich

Picture Daley saying this in Bridgeport about political hiring and other corrupt practices:

Standing in an intersection in the Back of the Yards neighborhood Wednesday, Mayor Richard Daley reprimanded the community for not identifying the shooters who killed a pregnant woman in front of her three young children on Halloween.

“You know who did it,” he said. “Don’t be blaming the police. Look in the mirror and say, ‘I can do better.'”

I can’t.

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He’s a real gone guy and I’m gonna love him till I die . . .

Chi Trib’s Colleen Mastony, a girl, delivers girl talk:

Today, Robert Redford’s strawberry blond hair is graying at the temples, his face is weathered and he wears a pair of thick, round-framed glasses. But with his slight build, sun-kissed skin and light freckles along his forearms, he retains the graceful ease and rugged good looks that once made him the golden boy of Hollywood. And — if you’re wondering — this septuagenarian can still make a heart flutter by flashing a smile and dropping a small compliment. (“That’s a beautiful name,” he says to me, mid-interview, as I swoon.)

She got this past copy editors who saw nothing amiss.  Nor will higher-ups, I bet.

On the other hand, Chi Trib’s op-ed page, an oasis of sense in that publication, has another view of Redford’s and other anti-war movies:

By confusing the public’s war-weariness with their own carefully cultivated rage they’ve badly over-reached. Rage may be a good box office draw; exhaustion isn’t. The late film critic Pauline Kael is reported to have said that Richard Nixon couldn’t have won because she didn’t know anybody who voted for him. Similarly, maybe everyone [director] Paul Haggis knows shares his hatred for the war, but he just doesn’t know enough people to make a hit.

The “exhaustion” reference intended for the general public (by columnist Jonah Goldberg) could refer to Redford’s portrayal by Mastony as “pessimistic activist,” with angst in his veins.  Question is, how many people want to sit through an hour and a half of Redford’s angst?

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A year’s work

The Jesuit provincial apparently had his hands tied in discussing the Donald McGuire case in recent weeks:

On Tuesday, Rev. Edward Schmidt, head of the Chicago Jesuits, revealed that he petitioned Jesuit headquarters in Rome more than a year ago seeking McGuire’s dismissal from the religious order. Before his court appearance Tuesday, McGuire received a notice of his termination pending Vatican approval. It is up to the Vatican to remove him from the priesthood, a logical next step after his ouster from the order. [Italics added]

It was in the works, that is, and Schmidt didn’t want to jump the gun, apparently.

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McGuire out

It’s final:

A Chicago priest appealing his conviction for molesting two high school boys in Wisconsin in the 1960s has been dismissed from the Society of Jesus, according to a statement from the religious order released Tuesday.

Father Donald J. McGuire was handed the dismissal decree Tuesday morning, according to the statement from the Chicago Province of the Jesuit order.

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River Forest Dominicans’ troubles

The pastor at St. Vincent Ferrer, River Forest, in the years when a Dominican brother was reportedly abusing kids at St. Vincent Ferrer in the 70s, himself was reportedly an admitted abuser in two Michigan parishes in the 90s, Wednesday Journal reports.

As part of a long and immensely informative article, writer Bill Dwyer interviewed Rev. Thomas Doyle, O.P., a canon lawyer and critic of abusive clergy in a warning against blaming religious order members for the crimes of their fellows:

Though he has been an unstinting critic of what he sees as the Catholic Church’s failures to deal openly and effectively with the issue of pedophile priests, Doyle said he believes the current Dominican vicar provincial, Rev. Michael Mascari, has reacted to the allegations against Hensley and Bryce “in a responsible and competent manner.”

“Fr. Mascari has done his best,” Doyle said by phone from his home in Virginia. “If he hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t hesitate to smear him all over the sidewalk.”

And while Doyle has not hesitated to blast the church’s top leadership for a litany of failures, he said people mistakenly assume that the criminal behavior of many priests must have been known to those who served with them.

People say, “They all had to know,” said Doyle. “Oh no, they didn’t.”

“It’s very possible in a [religious] community to become almost transparent,” he said. Priests are largely free to come and go as they please, he said.

“You can do all sorts of stuff [without people knowing].”

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McGuire on way out of priesthood?

Rev. Donald McGuire is being “terminated as a priest,” according to Magistrate Judge Arlander Keys in federal court today in Chicago.

Keys had been given a copy of a letter from the Jesuits to that effect, he told prosecutor and defense attorney.

McGuire will be free on $50,000 bond while awaiting federal trial on charges of abusing minors overseas.

He will stay in the Oak Lawn apartment where he has been staying.  It is owned by a lifelong friend who has been named one of two monitors who are to keep him away from minors and them away from him, this over objections by U.S. prosecutor Julie Ruder, who said he can’t be monitored, having “historically and repeatedly ignored whatever restrictions . . . have [been] placed upon him,”


McGuire will apparently have to return first to Wisconsin because of “a detainer that a court there had placed on him,” authorities said, per Chi Trib.

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