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"The reasons for the Democrats’ decline are, as we say in the business, overdetermined. That is, there are no lack of hypotheses to explain it…." Surely "there is no lack of hypotheses to explain it" or "hypotheses to explain it are not lacking"?

The force is strong with this one.

Consider this:

I just updated my will and trust and, with heavy heart, cut out what was a significant bequest to my alma mater, Brooklyn College.

What caused the disinheritance is that all incoming freshmen and transfer students are given a copy of a book to read, and no other, to create their “common experience.” This same book is one of the readings in their required English course. The author is a radical pro-Palestinian professor there.

When I attended in the 1960s, Brooklyn College – then rated one of the tops in the country -- was, like most campuses, quite liberal. But, there was no official policy to inculcate students with a political viewpoint. Now there is. That is unacceptable.

That is to say, it has ceased to be liberal. Read the rest.

HT: Althouse

"resisting the centralizing and expansionist tendency of democratic government. And that is a large part of the conservative mission. Progressives see nothing in this but hard-hearted indifference to inequality and misfortune, but that is a misreading. What conservatism does is ask the question avoided by progressive promises: at what expense?"

Steven Weiss, on the misunderstood relationship between Christian Zionists, and the Jews:

Christian Zionist theology aside, there's still the controversy over Hagee himself, appropriately summarized by the New Republic's Jonathan Chait. Hagee's said a lot to infuriate Jews: that the Holocaust was God's way of promoting Zionism and that Jews brought anti-Semitism upon themselves through their own faithless actions. I'm not going to defend Hagee's words here, because I don't agree with them and think he should never have said them. As a descendant of survivors of the Holocaust and pogroms—and, more importantly, of many nonsurvivors—I find them offensive.

But people say and believe a great many things I find offensive all the time, from pulpits Jewish and otherwise. What those people don't do, but Hagee does, is transform millions of people into lovers of the Jewish people. While watching Hagee speak live at the CUFI summit, inveighing against anti-Semitism and declaring, to the applause of thousands of Christians, "If a line has to be drawn, then draw it around both Christians and Jews, around Americans and Israelis," I got chills.

Read the whole thing.

ADDED: In a related story, it has been said that those who hate and destroy other groups of human beings they deem beneath them, hate and destroy themselves. I'm not sure how the quote really goes, but it's true. It really is true.

HT: Jaltcoh

In an interesting piece titled When compromise trumps apostolic tradition, George Weigel notes:

… in the Church of England’s debate over the ordination of women as bishops[, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York] … proposed a compromise in which the Church of England would ordain women to its episcopate, but parishes unable to accept this innovation would be allowed to invite a male bishop to preside over those rituals for which a bishop’s presence is required. This compromise was rejected by the General Synod of the Church of England….

While the synod doubtless thought that it was whipping a few troglodyte parishes into line, its action looks to me more like a declaration of the synod's irrelevance in resolving the issue. The concerns that prompted Williams and Sentamu—he of the comical chasuble and mitre—to offer a compromise, one which surely ran against their own views, arise from literally millennia of apostolic tradition. Since most people who don't care about apostolic tradition left the Church of England (if not Christianity as a whole) a long time ago, the concerns of those left for it are unlikely to evaporate just because a thoroughly modernist general synod looks down its nose at them. (Cf. the remarks of Canon Celia Thompson1 reported here.) Those "parishes unable to accept this innovation" can, and may, resolve the issue by seizing the other "compromise" available to them: Anglicanorum Coetibus.

I'm told that the Tiber is comfortably warm in this season!

This via Fr. Finigan, who also links to a splendid documentary on Vatican City and the Pope's "normal" day. Who knew that there is an all-Vatican football tournament?!

1. 1. A canon is, roughly-speaking, the CoE equivalent of a Monsignor.

CNN reports that "[i]f Republican incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski is defeated in the GOP primary, her only option is to run as a write-in candidate" (emphasis added). Really? I should think that a defeated candidate always has the option of taking their defeat like a grown-up and letting the matter lie. Indeed, one might think that accepting the result of the primary instead of egotistically looking for a way around the judgment should be the default position for a defeated primary candidate.

Being an optimist, I suspect that Murkowski will be a grown up and accept defeat graciously. If she does not, cases like hers and Charlie Crist's make a compelling case for more states to enact "sore loser" statutes. South Carolina's code § 7-11-10, recently upheld by the Fourth Circuit in South Carolina Green Party v. Election Comm'n, will serve as an instructive model:

Nominations for candidates for the offices to be voted on in a general or special election may be by political party primary, by political party convention or by petition; provided, no person who was defeated as a candidate for nomination to an office in a party primary or party convention shall have his name placed on the ballot for the ensuing general or special election, except that this proviso shall not prevent a defeated candidate from later becoming his party's nominee for that office in that election if the candidate first selected as the party's nominee dies, resigns, is disqualified, or otherwise ceases to become the party's nominee for such office before the election is held.

This is one reform that all critics of self-important politicians should be able to get behind.

Related:
Sore loser (4/29/10)
Nationalizing election mechanics? (11/12/08)

It's so hilarous, it's almost tragic:

TIME Announces New Version Of Magazine Aimed At Adults

HT: The Daily Dish

yet, there are those who love her.

We evidently need a new category here, "mischief."

when a political enemy is cleared, it's only because we haven't yet criminalized what they did wrong. It takes the New York Fishwrap to make me feel sorry for Tom DeLay. Keep circling the drain...

THE YEAR WAS 2011, and everybody was finally equal.

Here's an admissions policy just crazy enough to work: "let in the people who make the grade."

Francis Cardinal George made the announcement yesterday. My most recent post on this subject is here, and includes links to previous posts; I also have a guide to the more prominent changes here.

This clip of Sen. Harry Reid from 1993 has been circulating around the blogosphere, of him railing against birthright citizenship. The apparent intent of the clip, judging by the tagline, is his alleged hypocrisy on the issue. Now, my assumptions could be wrong here, but I'm assuming this is being used by opponents of birthright citizenship to bolster their case, but if that's true, I fail to see how this advances their argument an inch. At the very least, Reid has changed his mind, or seen the light, if you want my two cents. At worst, all this shows is that he's a hypocrite, which is plausible, considering his recent behavior, but says nothing about the merits of changing the 14th Amendment. Just sayin' is all.

HT: Althouse

Politico runs a headline: "Condemning mosque, Gingrich echoed Mussolini." And the two quotes sure look alike. But as you read on, you notice a telltale sign: They say that the quote "is frequently attributed to Il Duce," which is a euphemism for "we don't have a source for that."

I call fabrication. The quote gets five ghits, none of them books. To put that into context, earlier this evening, I googled a quote attributed to St. Sixtus I, a second-century Pope. How many hits, do you suppose? 128. Of course, that doesn't prove that Sixtus said it, and a more credible number of Ghits wouldn't prove Mussolini said it. But that isn't the point. The lack of hits casts a pall over Ben's claim that it's widely attributed to Mussolini, and leaves as dubious any claim that it's real. Google is not the oracle of all knowledge, but if it can find 128 hits for a quote that's nearly two millennia old and in latin, what are the odds it can't find even six hits for a legitimate quote from a major historical figure, in a widely-spoken language, that can't be more than a century old, and is supposedly "frequently attributed"?

The story shouldn't have been filed in the first place, but if it was going to be, the headline should have read: "Gingrich attack vaguely resembles quote attributed to Mussolini." Or, if they were to be honest about it—"We hope you'll swallow this."

Howard Wasserman has some helpful thoughts.

"I am first of all a white man, and only then a socialist," he said, and he meant it. His socialism followed a strict apartheid: It was for his pigmentary group alone. Every other ethnic group, he said, should be subjugated—or exterminated. "The history of civilization is a history of wandering—a wandering, sword in hand, of strong breeds, clearing away and hewing down the weak and less fit," he said coolly. "The dominant races are robbing and slaying in every corner of the globe." This was a good thing, because "they were unable to stand the concentration and sustained effort which pre-eminently mark the races best fitted to live in this world."

The blood-curdling words, of Jack London. Read the whole thing.

HT: Althouse

Anything on your mind?

Via Fr. Z, Annysa Johnson of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has this (my emphases and comments added):

Catholic clergy and lay leaders from around the region will gather in Milwaukee Thursday for a two-day conference that will be, for some, their first in-depth look [the text has been available for some time now.] at the controversial changes ahead in the Catholic liturgy. The Vatican is issuing its most significant and extensive revision of the [English translation of the] Roman Missal - the prayers and texts used in Catholic worship - since the 1960s in an effort said to better reflect the original [read "authoritative"] Latin texts.

But some see the changes, due to be implemented late next year, as unwieldy and unnecessary. [Two sentences in, with nary a pause to explain what the changes actually are, and already a pivot to the critics. It's not difficult to see which side this "journalist" is pinch-hitting for. Blatant Lamppost journalism.] And they fear they could further alienate the faithful [or they could attract reverts and converts] at a time when the church is already struggling financially and failing to retain members.

"For some people this will be very unsettling," said Father Ken Smits, a Capuchin priest and liturgical scholar who is troubled by the move away from the vernacular to a more stilted, "sacralizing" language. [You tell 'em, Father! How dare they! Liturgy is no place for the sacred and language well-adapted to it!] "The real concern is among the parish priests, who will have to explain something many of them are not in favor of," said Smits. "They'd much rather spend their time in ministry than have to go through this linguistic exercise." [This "linguistic exercise"—necessary primarily because of ICEL's failure to do an acceptable job the first time—can be seen as "ministerial" in the sense it's used here. There are several parts of the liturgy whose scriptural roots are obscured by the existing translation, a translation which (regular readers of Fr. Z's literal translations of the collect prayers will know) approaches paraphrase in places. I wrote about the Sanctus here, but you could also consider the 3d Eucharistic Prayer's obscured roots in Psalm 113, or the Lukan root of the Domine non sum dignus prayer before communion. Examples could be multiplied.]

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee workshop is one of 22 around the country aimed at educating clergy and lay leaders on the revisions.

Dean Daniels, director of the archdiocese's Office for Worship, called critics' concerns valid, [alienating the faithful is a "valid" concern. The theory that Catholics are too stupid to either know or look up the meaning of "consubstantial," and will therefore be alienated, is not a valid theory.] but said the revision will bring English-speaking Catholics in line with the global church. "Anytime there are changes, people go through the process of being angry and sad," he said. "But the church has been changing forever. It's a dynamic, living organism."

The Vatican approved the U.S. version of the Missal revision in March. An international petition drive asking English-speaking bishops to slow the implementation using a pilot program has drawn more than 21,000 signatures, including many from Wisconsin. ["Wow, 21,000, that's impressive," said the 65,180,000 American Catholics who didn't sign it.]

The new translation, nine years in the making, is the work of the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments and a committee of English-speaking bishops and consultants known as Vox Clara, or "Clear Voice."

That alone is troubling to some who see the revisions as part of a systematic dismantling of provisions of the Second Vatican Council, which, among other things, endorsed the celebration of the Mass in the vernacular of the people and gave national bishops conferences authority over translations. [Alright. First, Vatican II did not "endorse[] the celebration of the Mass in the vernacular." It said exactly the opposite: "the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites." What the council "endorsed" was the limited use of the vernacular in some parts of the liturgy: "In Masses which are celebrated with the people, a suitable place may be allotted to" the vernacular; "in the first place … the readings and directives, and [ ] some of the prayers and chants." This might extend to vernacular responses in appropriate situations, but only so long as the faithful are still taught how "to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them." A "more extended use of the mother tongue within the Mass" would require authorization from the Holy See. (All the foregoing quotes are from Sacrosanctum Concilium, nos. 36 and 54; emphases are mine.) So taught the council. Whatever else one can call those things subsequently done in the council's name by the consilium, Paul VI, and myriad zealous trendies in parishes around the world, "part of Vatican II" isn't one of them.

Second, saying that Vatican II gave authority over translations to national bishops' conferences is true to a point, but a little misleading. Translations must be approved by the bishops. (Which has happened in this case, by the way.) Within the bounds of norms mentioned above, it is for bishops' conferences "to decide whether, and to what extent, the vernacular language is to be used," subject to Vatican approval. See SC 36.3-4.

Lastly, anyone who thinks this translation furthers the "systematic dismantling of provisions of the Second Vatican Council" either (1) is off his meds, (2)has failed to read or comprehend the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, (3) are unable or unwilling to distinguish what the council said from the many changes made after the council, about which the council said nothing—communion in the hand, removal of alter rails, etc—, (4) subscribes to the National Catholic Dissenter, or (5) all of the above.]

"The fathers of Vatican II said overwhelmingly that we know how to adapt the prayers to our own needs," [?] said Father David Cooper of St. Matthias Parish in Milwaukee and chairman of the Milwaukee Archdiocese Priest Alliance. [We can only fumble in the dark about what is meant here. It should be noted that the fathers of Vatican II taught that if regional and linguistic adaptations are to be drawn up, "the substantial unity of the Roman rite [must be] preserved," adaptations must be within the limits of the editio typica whence this translation is drawn, and some adaptations must be approved by the Vatican. SC 38-40. This is a long way short of carte blanche to an undefined "we"—parish priests? Ordinaries? USCCB?—to "adapt the prayers to our own needs." Also: "needs"?]

The new translation introduces more formal, rarefied[, precise, accurate, universal, sacral] language into the liturgy. [It doesn't "introduce" it—it is already there. The new translation simply translates it properly.] But Cooper and others who have studied drafts say it ignores English grammar and syntax and introduces terms - "consubstantial," [ooh!] "oblation," [ah!] "ignominy," [eee!] to mention a few - unfamiliar to many American Catholics. And some worry it will sow division in the pews. [You know what's really good for avoiding division? Not talking to the media about how much you don't like a done deal and hope worry that it will be divisive.]

"You can call it whatever you like, but it's not English," said Cooper. [It's English, Jim, just not quite as we know it.] "The language of prayer is supposed to be evocative, graceful, uplifting," he said. "This reads like clunk-clunk-clunk-bang-boom." [So you say. I, too, have read much of the new translation, and with some exceptions—part of the revised confiteor is lamentable—it is far more evocative, graceful, and uplifting. What Cooper is really objecting to is simply this: the language of the Mass will not be the everyday English you might use to write a life insurance policy. But who says that an encounter with the sacred should have no more poetry than an encounter with the drive-through window? Don't we use special language for special occaisions in a secular context? I wonder what Cooper, Bp. Trautman, and other critics of the new translation would make of the following language:

"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God."

And that, folks, is how special and high-falutin' we get just to render unto Ceasar!]

Some pastors have already begun preparing their parishioners for the changes, which will ultimately require an investment in new missals [every parish I've ever been to uses missalettes that are replaced every season. The priests will need a new Sacramentary.] and hymnals. [?]

[Another boon:] "Much of the music that has come up over the last 30 years will no longer be useable," said Father Alan Jurkus of St. Alphonsus Parish in Greendale, who sent out a letter this month notifying members of the coming changes. [As Fr. Z notes, that is an absolutely splendid argument in favor of the new translation. Some of that music is pretty good; so sue me, I like the Mass of Creation. I'm not saying that it's Palestrina or anything. At any rate, most of the rest ranges from the mediocre to the atrocious (without naming names, let's just say that, for example, people are searchin' for the kind of love that we possess). Some of it—I'm looking at you, Haas—is outright profane.]

Jurkus is encouraging parishioners to accept the revision as an opportunity to grow in their faith. [Right attitude.] But he harbors his own concerns. "The bottom line for me is why. Why, with everything else that's going on in the church, do we have to rub salt in the wounds?" [????????]

Previously:
The new translation II (04/29/2010)
The new translation I (1/15/10)
Hodiernus lectio principalis (2/7/10)
Poor Faulker (10/27/09)

The gag about John Cardinal O'Connor is a screech, but there's some wisdom in among the many laughs:

James Martin, SJ from The Leadership Roundtable on Vimeo.

That's Fr. James Martin—I know, I thought it was Mythbusters' Adam Savage for a moment, too—via The Anchoress

It seems she has abandoned the faith (HT: Sully):

I quit being a Christian. I'm out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of ...Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

Dear God, there aren't sufficient words in the English language to describe how ridiculous this is. I'm not sure how firm her commitment was before this, but I think we ought to pray for her--to treat such critical matters of the soul with such weak reasoning, it's distressing. She is or was Catholic, and I'm Protestant, but that shouldn't be an issue. Abandoning one's commitment to the faith is not something to toy with.

Rod Dreher makes this point:

I'm sorry, but this is weak, and makes me wonder what really happened. Surely a woman of her age and experience cannot possibly believe that the entirety of Christianity, current and past, can be reduced to the cultural politics of the United States of America in the 21st century. Does she really know no liberal Christians? Has she never picked up a copy of Commonweal? Does she really think that if she asked a Christian on the streets of Nairobi or Tegucigalpa what they, as Christians, thought of Nancy Pelosi, they would have the slightest idea what she was talking about? And Christianity, anti-science? Good grief. Has she not noticed that Catholic Church, to which she did belong until yesterday, has affirmed evolution, and embraces science? How can a woman of her putative sophistication really think that Christianity is nothing more than a section of the Republican Party at prayer?

Indeed. More to the point, I think when one has a genuine, Spirit-led encounter with Christ, these sorts of political distractions shouldn't affect you. Besides, it's all bunk. Anti-science? Anti-feminist? Give me a break.

Pray for her.