With wit, humor, and a salutary sense of what’s what and what’s not.

In the mid-1980s, I [economist Richard M. Ebeling] had the good fortune to be teaching at the University of Dallas with Professor William H. Hutt as a colleague. By that time he was already in his mid-80s and held the title of “emeritus.” Though stricken with an increasingly debilitating case of arthritis, Professor Hutt would be in his office most days of the week working on some article or reading the latest literature on economic theory and policy.

I would ask him to deliver one or two guest lectures in some of my classes each semester, and he almost always graciously consented. In one class I recall Hutt’s starting his remarks, in a slightly stammering voice, “Most economists have their works forgotten after they’re dead. I’ve the unique distinction in having had all my works forgotten while I’m still alive.”

Bingo.

In the same vein, the “angelic doctor” Thomas Aquinas:

All that I have written seems like straw compared to what has now been revealed to me.

• Remarks on being requested to resume writing, after a mystical experience while saying mass on or around 6 December 1273, as quoted in A Taste of Water : Christianity through Taoist-Buddhist Eyes (1990) by Chwen Jiuan Agnes Lee and Thomas G. Hand
• Variant translations:
• All that I have written seems like straw to me.
  • As quoted in The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (1993), by Brian Davies, p. 9
• Everything I have written seems like straw by comparison with what I have seen and what has been revealed to me.
  • As quoted in Sacred Games : A History of Christian Worship (1997) by Bernhard Lang, p. 323

The wise man has nothing to add to that.

See: William H. Hutt: A Centenary Appreciation – Foundation for Economic Education

Let it never be said that a lib couldn’t make a pearl into a pig’s ear.

Or find the cloud enclosed in a silver lining.

Look, if there weren’t chinks in a capitalist armor, where would they be with their plans for controlling things, now sadly parading as the solution in these years of the Donald.

Oh to get rid of that uncouth New Yorker and put the professors back in control. You know, the ones who explain things so beautifully. Anything but uncouth, you know.

via Commonweal Magazine

The indefatigable Cafe (Francis) Hayek engages here in a bit of amazing moral equivalence.

To treat foreign-governments’ trade restrictions as illegitimate is to assume that foreign governments do not carry out the will of their citizens. This assumption is surely valid. But given this fact, we cannot then, with any legitimacy, casually assume that the U.S.  government carries out the will of the American people.

The wise people who read this blog have spotted it immediately. For the others it’s a matter of China’s ignoring citizens’ wishes = U.S. doing the same to its citizens, as if China’s ruling class can be voted out of office.

Then Cafe H. insists on U.S. tariff imposition — a risky business, granted — as a simple question of tit-for-tat (which historically was probably never true of tariffs by whomever), ignoring the decades-long issue of patent infringement and intellectual property theft.

Thus:

I thus see no good reason to excuse Uncle Sam’s use of force to prevent us Americans from trading as we choose just because other governments use force to prevent non-Americans from trading as they choose.

Just because? Really?

via Cafe Hayek

Quite good story/interview by NBC 5 on subject blogged here yesterday.

Complete with details of the cutting and burning and picture:

Not to mention gay-opposition group position on the matter:

Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA, a Catholic organization that advocates for LGBTQ equality, called the Resurrection Parish’s flag burning “disrespectful and destructive.”

“Those involved in this desecration are violating the core values of the Catholic faith,” she told NBC News. “They are hijacking the parish to further an extremist agenda, and damaging the community in doing so.”

Uncompromising, to say the least, stunning in fact. “Core values — note the term — of the Catholic faith”? Evidence, please, for that?

More:

Duddy-Burke added that rainbow flags have come to symbolize a “sense of [blanket, unquestioning?] welcome” to LGBTQ people of faith and their families.

“When we see this symbol flying at our churches, we know this will be a place of welcome and affirmation and a place where God’s creativity is truly celebrated,” she said. “As Catholics, we work for the day when all of us feel fully welcomed in our church, and are able to participate in the sacramental life of our church as equals.”

As for her “where God’s creativity is truly celebrated,” she clearly wants more than welcome, rather than a rejuvenation and correcting of the standard masses, where God’s creativity is not truly celebrated.

Just the life and sacrificial death of the Savior. That’s all.

via NBC-5 Chicago

Resurrection is the parish, dedicated in 1991 as a new parish coming of a  merger of two others, at 3043 North Francisco, has become a focal point of support for Catholic teaching on same-sex morality.

The pastor, aged 57, himself a survivor of homosexual rape as a boy of 11 and again when he was 19, has no use whatever for gay pride symbolism, especially in the church’s sanctuary.

It was there, “unfortunately,” when Cardinal Joseph Bernardin preached at the dedication mass, as were pride-decorated candles, shown in this picture — “no regular rainbow flag, but a banner merging the Cross with the rainbow. . . .  not innocent” but  “a signal that this parish would become the new ‘gay’ parish,” according to a parishioner.

Cdl. Joseph Bernardin standing beneath the rainbow flag

at 1991 inaugural Mass at Resurrection Parish.

Fr. Paul Kalchuk, now 57, took it down when he arrived as pastor 11 years ago. He announced a ceremonial burning of the recently rediscovered flag for Sept. 29 but was forestalled by the chancery at the urging of gay activists, New Ways Ministry reported.

Chris Pett, who is both a member of Dignity/Chicago and President of DignityUSA, expressed gratitude for the Archdiocese’s intervention that “quickly and firmly rejects the words of this pastor and his intended ‘ritual’ which are inconsistent with Catholic values and beliefs.”

Windy City Times — “Local priest’s planned Rainbow flag burning shut down by Chicago Archdiocese” — checked with the chancery:

In a statement to Windy City Times, Archdiocese of Chicago Communications and Marketing Director Anne Mascelli said on behalf of the Archdiocese, “We can confirm that the pastor has agreed not to move forward with these activities.”

The Times further quoted Chris Pett:

 “It appears that this pastor was hijacking the parish to promote an extreme, ultra-conservative agenda . . . which is not officially recognized by the Church and is rejected by most Catholics. National polling over the past number of years consistently shows that a majority of Catholics support LBGTQ people and our issues. While we continue to challenge the institutional Church to reject its harmful and incorrect teachings about homosexuality, we are glad to see this decisive action on behalf of all LGBTQ Catholics.”

New Ways Ministry’s Robert Shine carried the argument further:

Thankfully, church officials stopped the flag burning, as should every diocese nationwide when it comes to such intolerable acts. As the present reckoning with clergy sexual abuse makes clear, it is vital that church officials supervise and restrain pastoral ministers who cause harm to the faithful through actions and symbols of violence. Moving forward, officials in Chicago would do well to consider not only sexual abuse, but other forms of pastoral harm when determining someone’s fitness for ministry.

One of Fr. Kalchuk’s parisioners voiced a fear about the fitness issue, alleging a threat, apparently from the chancery:

It is a shame that he’s been told his faculties as a priest might be taken away. It’s a shame that we have taken calls from foul-mouthed people who wish him harm. It’s a shame he has to start sentences, “If something happens to me … .”

In any case, a few parishioners went ahead and burned the flag, privately, on their own. And the Sept. 29 ceremony will be held without burning anything but

will be centered on offering our pledges of prayer, fasting and abstinence to the Lord in reparation for the sexual abuse that has gone on and been covered up for so long.

via Church Militant

The way things have been in the nation’s capital:

The Archdiocese of Washington has, for several years, been a center-left jurisdiction controlled by a tightly connected mafia.  Cross the middle to go to the left, like Jesuits in Georgetown, and you are tolerated until Rome speaks.  Cross the middle to go to the right as a priest and you are suspended, transferred, removed, retired or even sent out of the country.

Many of the pastors of large parishes have been priest-secretaries to the archbishops or otherwise extremely loyal to whichever cardinal is in charge, despite the open-secret atrocities committed we now know about.  This will continue, even under a new archbishop in Washington, unless a massive housecleaning is accomplished, from the chancery on down.

The priest writer:

As one who was denied a job several years ago in the Archdiocese of Washington chancery (Deo gratias!), after successful interviews and high-level recommendations, explicitly as a result of a code of mafia-like trust that could not be counted on, this writer guarantees nothing will change until all levels of staff — priests and laymen — are, at best, re-examined or, at worst, removed.  Otherwise the mafia, with its secrecy and cover-ups, will simply continue under new leadership.

via RORATE CÆLI

Tight ship, closed shop. Join the union of All Things Go, or forget about it.