Howard Dean and Religion

 

“The religious community has to decide whether they want to be tax exempt or involved in politics.”

Those were the words of Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic Party at a recent CSMonitor breakfast.  Imagine the chairman of the party in which every candidate shows up at some Baptist church around election time to sing a few gospel hymns, stand at the pulpit with the minister and ask for the congregation’s support. Imagine that.  And how about this:

Dean’s statement is the latest in a series of comments directed toward conservative Christians. Just last year, Dean told the San Francisco Chronicle, “they are not very friendly….they all behave the same, and they all look the same.”

Image Howard Dean looking into the eyes of all those Southern Baptist ministers and uttering those words around election time. “…you all look the same…and not very friendly…”

This is a far cry from the Howard Dean of just a few years ago.  For example:

In response to a question from CT, Dean said, “We are definitely going to do religious outreach. Even in my campaign I was interested in reaching out to evangelicals.” Later, Dean tactfully expanded his remarks, noting “our religious outreach will not solely be to evangelical Christians but to Americans of all faiths.”

This is a wonderful example of religious outreach.  Tell people of faith that that faith should not inform their world view or their politics.  Howard Dean has a problem (actually quite a few) and the problem is this.  He wants us to think that religion is a Sunday only thing and that if we cannot keep our religious views limited to the church grounds, well then he and the Democrats will have to take away any tax exempt status that we enjoy.  He would like to see people of faith punished for doing just what true faith is supposed to do–inform our thinking about ALL things, political or not.  But he wants us also to believe that the Dems are a party of believers.

Let’s see how may Dems cozy up to Uncle Howard on this issue. 

 

Oh, Those Jesuits

 

Here’s an item on Catholic World News:

Vatican, Apr. 24 (CWNews.com) – Pope Benedict XVI reminded Jesuits of their vow of loyalty to the Roman Pontiff, and urged them to meet “the Church’s most urgent current needs” in the intellectual world, during an address to leaders of the Society of Jesus on April 22.

Pope Benedict spoke after a Mass celebrated in St. Peter’s basilica by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, marking the 500th anniversary of the birth of St. Francis Xavier. About 4,000 Jesuits were in attendance, led by Father Peter Hans Kolvenbach, who has led the Society of Jesus since 1983.

I love the Jesuits.  My sons have (and will be) educated by one of the finest Jesuit high schools in the US.  Our entire family have been blessed, enriched and sanctified because of our “Jesuit connection.”  These are a remarkable group of men, who since their founding in the 16th century have served the Church and mankind richly.  They have been involved in science and medicine.  They have established countries (Paraguay) and have been active in the Orient. They have been involved in the conversion of millions.  We support them with our words and prayers and trust our sons to their mission. 

However, the history of the Jesuits and the papacy is long and at times, difficult.  They have been called back to obedience on multiple occasions.  In recent times, JP II had to intervene in the governance of the Society in October 1981.  And even more recently, Rev. Thomas Reese resigned his post at “America,” a leading Jesuit magazine.  Among other items, the magazine published works including:

An essay exploring moral arguments for the approval of condoms in the context of HIV/AIDS;

Several critical analyses of the doctrinal congregation’s September 2000 document Dominus Iesus, on religious pluralism;

An editorial criticizing what America called a lack of due process in the congregation’s procedures for the investigation of theologians;

An essay about homosexual priests;

A guest essay from U.S. Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, challenging suggestions that the church should refuse Communion to Catholic politicians who do not vote as a number of bishops believe they should vote.

 

I’ve had to once lovingly “remind” one of our Jesuits that certain prayers during the Mass are reserved to the priest and cannot be, on his authority, “shared” with the faithful.

In many ways, they remind me of a group of wonderful, although sometimes naughty boys who, in the depth of their collective souls, love Jesus and His Church, but need to have their ears boxed every now and again to bring them back to back to their senses.

May God continue to bless the Society of Jesus.

More on “Tolerance”

 

There’s more on Penn State’s stance against an art exhibit which the university considers inappropriate.  PSU disallowed the exhibit because it was “sponsored” by the campus Hillel.

So we have two possibilities here: (1) Penn State’s art faculty has a rule against displaying any student work that has any sponsorship, including sponsorship of a student organization such as Hillel [near as I can tell, Penn State Hillel is an official PSU club, though I'm not 100% sure]. However, this rule is only applied when the faculty doesn’t like the message the art is sending or (2) there is no such rule, or at least it wouldn’t apply to a noncommercial, student organization such as Hillel, but pretending there is such a rule is a convenient excuse for what would otherwise look like pure heavy-handed enforcement of political correctness.

It gets better. The professor leading the charge against the exhibit has written about censorship of art.

YET ONE MORE UPDATE: This is precious. Professor Charles Garoian, who is apparently responsible for refusing to allow Stulman’s exhibit to be displayed, published (with a co-author) a series of three articles in 1996 in a journal called School Arts entitled “Censorship in the art classroom,” with the final article in the trilogy called “Fighting censorship in the art classroom.” The good professor wrote, prophetically:

Read the details here.Š

The Problem with Feminists

 

Abigail Trafford writes an interesting editorial entitled “The Problem with Men” in the Washington Post.

Something very wrong is happening with men, and that means something very wrong is happening in the relationship between the sexes. Men, it seems, are falling behind. They can’t keep up with women in school, in marriage or in retirement.

So men cannot keep up with men in school, marriage or retirement. Remember that.

They are less likely even to go to college; nationwide, more than 56 percent of undergraduates are female, and that percentage is expected to rise. If college applications were based solely on merit, women might take 80 percent of the places at selective schools, by one estimate.

Well now, a healthy majority on college campuses are women.  So is it time to close the Women’s Centers all over the country?   Better yet, shouldn’t we work for equality of gender on campus an begin building departments of “Men’s Studies”?  Let’s schedule the “Penis Monologues” on every campus to promote a healthy attitude among men for their private parts.

Men are not doing so well in the marriage marketplace, either. Too many men just don’t make the grade as husband material. In a provocative essay in The Post — “Marriage Is for White People” — writer Joy Jones, an African American, argues that black women want to get married, but a good man is hard to find. A lot of white women may feel the same way.(Emphasis mine)

Hard to believe after 40 years of radical feminization in society that these women cannot find their desired mate.  Of course it’s hard to find a man to marry when we’re all rapists and patriarchal oppressors.  Who could live with a beast like that?

To be sure, a significant number of men are not in crisis. They are in charge. Just look at the leaders in business and politics and the professions of law and medicine. They are largely men, and barriers remain against women at the higher echelons of power. That still leaves too many men in a funk. And we women want them to get out of it. But how? Maybe that’s the challenge for the new wave of feminism.(Emphasis mine)

Get it?  Although women now dominate on college campuses and men cannot compete in school, we’re not worthy of marriage and we’re disasters in retirement, the solution is more feminism.  Could it possibly be that this woman and others like here are so blind as to the destructive nature of their agenda?  How could anyone suggest that more of the same old crap could be helpful here.  Unless….