July 2016

Here & There

In response to the previous posting, a witty correspondent writes me this:
Catholics should be quite at home in a Trump administration. We’ve been living under the same style of communication during this entire pontificate — absurd unscripted remark, inevitable walk back by the press office hacks, and a contradiction by the public figure the following week.
Not to mention antagonism toward one’s opponents. Though Francis’ hostility to traditionalists in his own Church is nothing compared to the frenzy of vindictiveness toward Ted Cruz that is still driving Trump, even now after winning his party’s nomination. Continue Reading
A Catholic Case for Donald Trump

In my mail box this morning came a link to a new website: Catholics4Trump. At first I thought it was one of those online petitions that I dislike signing. But no. It is an initiative by Remnant columnist Chris Jackson to encourage Catholics to set aside personal distaste for Donald Trump and go vote for the man. The site appears to have sprung up two days ago. It is provisional; its reason for existing will end on Election Day. As of now it contains two brief essays, both posted on July 17th: “No Place to Escape To,” and “A Time for Choosing.” Continue Reading
Speak Nice to Power

  Jeb Bush, on MSNBC last night, spoke about Donald Trump’s rise as a presidential candidate. He laid it partly at the pope’s feet, as reported on Breitbart:
Bush also went on to blame the Catholic Church, saying, “the Pope intervening in American politics didn’t help.” “[The Pope] was talking about basically open borders at a time when the whole Trump phenomenon was to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. [The Pope] literally goes to the border for a massive mass,” Bush said. 
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Misuse of Orlando

On the day after the Orlando bloodbath, I read in Crux Edward Beck’s scripted recollection of the homily he delivered in church the previous morning. The two did not quite square. Between the spoken address and the published account, something crucial was omitted and something ugly added. As can happen with Fr. Beck’s homilies, the gospel becomes a vehicle of persuasion in favor of his personal preoccupations. Edward Beck is a visiting Passionist priest who offers the noon Mass at my parish every Sunday. Continue Reading
A Nation, If We Can Keep It

Just six weeks ago, a Louisiana bill [H.B. 1035] that would require public school children to recite a passage from the Declaration of Independence could not pass. It had to be shelved amid multiple objections from African-Americans, women’s groups, and bureaucrats fearful that the bill would spark lawsuits from aggrieved factions in the race, class, and gender bazaar. The tabling illustrates how imperiled history—the truth of things that serves no current identity group agenda—has become.   The offending passage, intended to be read by 4th, 5th, and 6th graders, is this:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
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