Jobless claims rise, but not to worry

They may have gone up, but at least they're still below 400,000 (which, last I heard, was still far above what we need to recover).  But this being an election year, and a liberal Democrat being in the presidency, expect the economic news to be bright and sunny in Philadelphia, and everywhere else.  No matter how big the cloud, the news reports will always find the silver lining.  Just like from the point in which Bush was named president, the news reports insisted we were on the brink of economic catastrophe, now we can know that no matter how dire the news, we will be pointed to the bright spot.  That things might actually be as bad, or worse, than most people think is something that the propaganda ministry news media must work feverishly to overcome.  And that is what they will do.  Who knows, at least it might make folks who get their notions of the world from the media feel better.  The rest of us, who get our notions of the world from the world around us, will probably not feel the love.

Looks like Hendrix is still number one

Nice to see.  Rolling Stone has once again named Jimi Hendrix the greatest guitar player of all time.  That's what folks said when I was in high school.  That was when Eddie Van Halen reigned supreme.  Funny how important all that was.  I wonder if it still is.  I wonder if kids today still rotate their lives around who the greatest this or that is in the music world, or sports, or film.

Scott Dibble educates us about the Left

Scott Dibble, a senator from Minnesota, explains what the real threat to religious freedom is in our society. You see, when the Catholic Church says the government shouldn't be able to force religious institutions to compromise their religious beliefs regarding health care, they are a threat to religious liberty.  Why?   Because, liberalism is Truth, and therefore in Truth is freedom.  So when the government demands conformity to Truth, it leads to freedom.  When people think they have a right to reject Truth, that leads to servitude and bondage.  For freedom is only found in obedience to the gospel of Truth.  Therefore, it makes perfect sense that Mr. Dibble would see the Church's concerns over government mandated morality as a threat to truth.  It works a little better, it's a little easier, if folks don't use the moniker of 'liberal' or 'liberalism'.  That way you can understand folks like Mr. Dibble are merely doing what people have always done.  They are saying there is one exclusive Truth in this world, and moral and just societies must demand conformity and obedience to that Truth, they must legislate morality that is focused on that Truth.  For once you are bound to the Truth, only then can you have freedom.  It's a very traditional stance.

US News helps us reclaim Thanksgiving without the religion

In light of the growing number of retailers tired of all this giving thanks crap, and seeking new ways to worship at the altar of Mammon, and in light of the number of fellow Americans willing to say, "Screw the employees and their families, as long as I can get a flat screen TV for a bargain!", US News and World Report posted a column on how to reclaim the Spirit of Thanksgiving.  Eh.  Read it if you want.  For the most part it tells us to give a little.  Fine.

What I found amusing?  The entire piece, written by Kimberly Palmer, is devoid of any mention about anything to do with the roots of the Holiday.  No pilgrims, no God, no religion, no faith, heck, no Indians.  It's as if the whole thing has some vague roots in some vague harvest celebration from some noncommittal time in the past.  For some reason, sharing must have been important at some point, and that's why it's the advice given.  Again, I have no problem with that particular suggestion.

It just strikes me at how easy it's become, how we're all so used to it.  It's as if we expect it now.  We have no problem with certain things not being mentioned.  With certain names never being spoken.  With certain themes and events simply wiped off the slate.  We've come to expect it.  It's in our blood, it's the ocean in which we swim, to paraphrase Peggy Noonan.  That which offends must not be said, and we all know that in our post-modern age, nothing offends like religion, like our Anglo-European past. 

I wonder if Ms. Palmer consciously avoided any and all references to anything historical or religious, or if it has become for her as natural as it has no doubt become for many of her readers.  Just a thought on this, the night we watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

Shocked that the Supercommittee failed?

As of this time, it looks like the fabled Super Committee has failed to reach an agreement.  In other news, the Ohio State Buckeyes football team lost to Penn State last Saturday.  What do these two things have in common?  While they didn't have to turn out the way they did, nobody is shocked that they did.  A broken country can only whine so long about its representative government being broken. A country where narcissism and hedonism are the greatest commandments, and the only real religious conflict is between Mammon worship on one side and the veneration of Moloch on the other, you shouldn't expect much.  In a nation where the 'Left' and the 'Right' are looking more and more alike, what should we think?  Since most folks have a morality that is akin to 'screw unto others, as long as you don't screw unto me', followed by 'I'll scratch his immoral back if he'll scratch mine later', we actually think our representative government will be what?  Noble?  Virtuous?  Pure?  Honest?  Humble?  Heck, even effective?

In an Internet age where we criticise first, last, and as a general rule; in an age after which we have spent fifty years trashing our culture, our heritage, our nation's past, our religious roots, our societal foundations, we expect our leaders to put country first?  Really?  Are we that stupid, that naive, that arrogant, or a is it a combination thereof?

Nope.  Our government is everything we've earned.  Our impotent and incompetent leader is nowhere to be seen, hiding out as far away from the mess as possible.  Of course, fair minded and realistic observers can tell he hasn't clue one how to lead, and much of our mess is firmly in his hands, the hands of a completely inept commander in chief.  Not that all of the problems are his.  They weren't all Bush's.  Or Clinton's.  Or the Republicans.  Or the Democrats.  It's a testimony to our monumental stupidity that we believe such partisan rubbish.  Or a testimony to our willingness to advance obvious lies as long as we get what we want.

In any event, this is barely news.  Americans have laughed at their congress for being incompetent for ages.  The problem is, compared to the rest of the nation, if we are honest, our government is one of the best things left we have to offer.  And that should make us do more than occupy Wall Street.  It should make us stand up and yell 'the time has come to say, Enough!'

Well done Cardinal O'Malley

Looks like the awesome cardinal is standing behind the editor of the archdiocesan newspaper who dared blaspheme the homosexual gospel.  Some priests are, naturally, calling for the Glorious Censorship through the oppression of religious freedom, freedom of speech, and of course that pesky freedom of the press garbage.  Those things are only for celebrating unfettered sex, drugs, and bathroom humor.  All that annoying stuff about people freely expressing their religious convictions has got to go.  Nice to see there are still plenty of Catholics prepared to do the Dumb Thing, and throw their lots in with the latest, hippest force for intolerance and oppression.  Kudos to Cardinal O'Malley for seeing the rot for what it is.

You know with atheism meaning is an illusion

So why don't you ditch the illusion this holiday season and believe in the One who gives real meaning to the season. 

Ask an atheist next time what their atheism does for the starving mother of dying children in Sudan.  Ask them what hope they have to offer other than oblivion.  See if you can catch the next celebrity atheist on his way to the next round of Champagne and caviar buffets.  Then ask yourself, if in a thousand years humanity agrees that selective genocide is the only way to control overpopulation, what the modern atheist could appeal to in order to say those looking to curb the population through genocide are wrong. 

Once you've done so, you'll see why the only myth and illusion this holiday season are those who insist their universe of 'is' contains any objective 'oughts'.  Then you might decide it's time to find that objective source of meaning.  A source the could lead all the way back to a babe in a manger. 

Even so, I still love the Pilgrims

A famous painting of the pilgrims.  I always liked this one, perhaps owing to
it being used in my first grade class when we studied Thanksgiving.

History is a tough nut to crack.  Ultimately, we only have a few facts here and there with gaping holes in between.  Into those holes goes a multitude of opinions, agendas, biases, prejudices, and ideals.  Sometimes we are aware of these ad libs, sometimes we aren't.  But it's always a difficult thing to get right unless you are really trying, and you are really honest with yourself. 

The pilgrims, the ones from Thanksgiving that is, are a perfect case in point.  As I've blogged about here, and here, and here, the holiday soon to be formerly known as Thanksgiving is already fading from its once lofty perch.  This perch actually increased in popularity for a time as PC sensitivities and censorship eliminated the last vestiges of that holiday based on the birth of He-whose-name-we-cannot-mention, leaving a void in the family and friends and special memories category of American culture.

But alas, as liberalism has faded into the post-Western, post-American secular Left, even it has begun to be pushed aside.  We still have this day, which can still be mentioned as important for family, for days off of work (when non-unionized companies still allow it), and especially as the spring board for the first Holy Day of Wall Street: Black Friday.  Soon it will be Black Thursday as the only real reason left for it to exist will be to buttress the profit margins of our annual frenzy of consumerism and commercialism. 

As for the original story?  Well that's gone the same way as that other story about some baby in a manger so long ago.  For the most part, it's ignored.  If we're lucky it's ignored.  In keeping with the dictates of multi-cultural education, we often hear about the evil legacy, the racism, the imperialism, the fanaticism, the zealotry and intolerance, the sheer corruption of heart and mind that infected every man, woman, and child that came from the ship of death, the Mayflower.  The American Indians, are, of course, portrayed as pure, caring, loving, perfect, sinless, flawless, and living at one with one another, all visitors, and Mother Earth. 

This is the unbalanced answer to a problem that never really existed in the first place.  Under the auspices that Americans never admitted to their own sins of the past, and always portrayed everyone else as the bad guys, MCPC propaganda has felt the need to overemphasise the opposite.  Of course Americans did admit to their past, did give credit at times where it was due, and often have been able to balance between going overboard with nation worship on one side, with nation abuse on the other.  Admitting that, as Chesterton once said, love of country shouldn't be like saying 'my mother, drunk or sober', there was a time when they also realized it shouldn't be the same as 'my mother, drunken bitch, let her die.' 

Unfortunately, we've been focused on the sins, the bad, the failings, the flaws and shortcomings of our history over the last sixty years to such a degree, that many now see nothing of value in our past.  Any old celebrations are by default a celebration of evil.  Therefore there is nothing old worth keeping, nothing traditional worth saving.  When the old America has burned to ashes, what will arise will be a superior nation living up to the true ideals of our country's founding, living at peace with a world that has only awaited the advent of the generation that will set it right.

Because of this rather silly and asinine approach to our country and its heritage, there is little hope that the story of a band of religious practitioners so passionate about their faith they were willing to risk life and limb to set up a new life in a forbidding wilderness, will be remembered in another decade or so.  What is remembered now is mostly the bad.  That these followers made friends with the native population, established a treaty that lasted almost fifty years, and managed to endure hardships beyond our wildest dreams, is already lost on most young people today, and not a few older folks.

And it's not just those rascally post-moderns.  I've certainly been saddened by the number of Catholic apologists who enjoy taking potshots at the folks of Plymouth Rock.  I know, I know.  There actually was a strong Catholic presence in the New World long before the Mayflower came to town.  It wouldn't hurt if more Americans knew this.  Most only know the Catholic Church was here to support the Conquistadors.  Realizing that the Catholic Mass was already practiced when the Separatists were only beginning to feel unwelcome in England would do all Americans some good. 

But that doesn't mean we should toss out the pilgrims with the bathwater.  First, there is an incredible legacy of sacrifice and passion for the Gospel that wouldn't exactly hurt your average Christian in America, c. 2010 to emulate.  And that includes Catholics.  There is also that tradition of rebellion, of revolution, that the pilgrims brought with them and planted in the ground along with the rows of corn.  That seed would grow and grow and lay the groundwork for a mentality that bore fruit in the late 18th century in the form of the United States of America.  For all its flaws, a country founded on trying to do the best it can.  There's a reason the revolution began in the part of the colonies descended from the Pilgrims, and not in the South, or in other parts of the colonies of other countries.

And of course there is a little lesson I learned as a Protestant.  One of the developments that aided me in my pilgrimage back to Catholicism was the realization on the part of some Protestant scholars and apologists that we are living in an anti-Christian world.  Even if folk don't want to kill us, it doesn't mean they want our Faith around.  And as non-Christian morphed into post-Christian and then into anti-Christian, it became increasingly difficult to separate between Protestant this and Catholic that.  So they realized that each time a Protestant apologist lambasted the Catholic Church because of the Inquisition, or the Witch Burnings, or the Crusades, or any one of a thousand things Protestants have blamed the Church for over the years, the rest of the world merely heard 'Followeres of Jesus burned witches, tortured heretics, slaughtered infidels.'  There was no longer a separation between Protestants and Catholics.  To slam the Catholic Faith was to slam the Christian Faith.  And therefore, they began backing off, defending the Church, reexamining some  of the old tales about Catholic horrors, and generally trying to portray a more positive history of the Faith.

Hello Catholics.  That goes the other way.  As fun as it might be to point out the flaws of the Pilgrims, to focus on the general terrors of America and link them to those rascally English Protestants, to attempt to diminish the story or the contributions of those seeking religious freedom, just remember this: each time a finger is pointed at Protestant Christianity, the rest of the world steps in and bends the other three right back to the Church.  I think of this when I remember articles I've read over the last few years.  Sometimes former Protestant converts are the worst.  As if trashing and dismissing the contribution and the role of the Pilgrims is some rite of passage, they can do the Pilgrims worse than any post-American God hating secularist.

So for me, Catholic though I am, I still love the Pilgrims.  They lived their faith.  Were they perfect?  No.  Neither were the Indians.  Neither were the Catholics.  Neither are they today.  And that includes any atheists who might be reading.  I needn't ignore the bad in order to appreciate the good.  If I demand perfection before I admire someone, then I had best provide perfection myself.  And I'm afraid I can't do that.  Therefore, I can look back and see the tangled mess and complex story that was the Pilgrims, the Mayflower, Plymouth Rock, and the first Thanksgiving, and give thanks that Christians such as those actually stepped forth and lived their faith.  They put it all on the line.  They did what far too few today could ever boast - they risked their lives for what they believed.  And they brought a spiritual emphasis and revolutionary spirit to a land that, for all it's flaws, became a beacon of light for humanity that has helped bring the promise of what can be to people around the world. 

So thank you Pilgrims, and thank you God, that through your blessings and grace, they were able to survive those first years and leave the seeds of a witness that the Church today so desperately needs to pick up and run with.  May we all stop pointing fingers at those who have gone before, and instead live in such a way that will inspire others four hundred years from now.  After all, despite all attempts to diminish their legacy, it still lives on.  Happy Thanksgiving pilgrims, American Indians, and all who look to learn the best from our past so that we can contribute the best to our future.

(this is a repost originally posted last year I thought was worth repeating)

The Crystal Cathedral could now become an actual Cathedral

Turns out the Crystal Cathedral, which has been dying a slow, agonizing financial death, is selling out to the Catholic Diocese of Orange County.  Yep, it's true.  Hard to believe, almost.  Rev. Schuller was the epitome of 'Jesus meets super-duper big and successful religion' that dominated much of the last half of 20th century Protestantism.  The movement had roots going back to the evangelism and missions movements in the 19th century.  It received its biggest boost from its most famous and beloved adherent, Billy Graham. 

By the 70s and 80s, when 'Church Growth' studies began to be taught in seminaries, it was clear that a growing number of Protestant leaders, and subsequently Protestant believers, were equating Large with Successful ministries.

By the time I was in ministry in the 1990s, it was clear that the most important thing a pastor could do was 'grow his church'.  And that didn't mean spiritually.  It meant more baptisms, more memberships, bigger congregations.  This attitude came out of the closet with Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Church (the precursor to his more famous and successful The Purpose Driven Life).  In this book, concerns over doctrine, theology, and worship styles take a back seat to marketing strategies, sales techniques, and business practices for building that ideal mega-church.  With such a prominent pastor giving the green light, it was now possible for church leaders and ministers to admit what had been percolating under the surface for some time. 

That is, we wanted to get rid of all these pesky doctrinal divisions and differences that splintered Protestantism into hundreds, if not thousands, of competing sects.  The idea wasn't too come up with one single agreed upon ecumenical dogma.  No.  We simply began letting folks know it wasn't that big a deal.  Just as Mark Lowry, of Bill Gaither fame, would assure his denominationally mixed audiences that 'someone is going to be wrong', now we simply let folks know it didn't matter, it was more like opinions really. 

Baptism saves?  Baptism is merely symbolic?  Doesn't matter.  God preordains those to be saved or damned?  God allows free will for everyone to accept or reject His Grace?  Doesn't matter.  Pop music or classical hymnody?  Doesn't matter.  What matters is getting enough fannies in those pews to make it necessary to build bigger buildings and bigger gymnasiums family life centers.  I once quipped, with a not-too-subtle Freudian reference, that too many Protestants today judge a pastor by the size of his gymnasium.

But I was a kazoo in an orchestra of tubas.  Most wanted, and would work for, that Crystal Cathedral sized ministry, late 20th century style.  And in many ways, it all went back to a church started in a drive in theatre.  Now, it's done.  When Dr. Schuller fired his own son because his son wanted to, you know, preach more from the Bible, you figured it had jumped the shark.  Schuller's own fluffy, cotton candy 'just be excellent to one another, and believe in yourselves' gospel (years before Smilin' Joel Osteen), was never going to survive a population of seekers who, uninformed though they might be, still had the idea that God's first priority wasn't helping us live a wealthy, American lifestyle above all things; a population growing increasingly cynical of the idea that materialism and narcissism were the answers to the Divine question. And now, the tree has born its final fruits.

Modern atheists continue to demonstrate

That modern atheism is more a personality disorder than an intellectual movement.  Adopting evangelistic strategies more in line with kindergarten maturity, they will be putting up signs this Christmas Holiday Pagan non-committal winter holiday season in the hope that people are uninformed and ill educated when it comes to religion.  I find it amusing that a movement based on the primacy of reason rests so much hope on its adherents and potential converts knowing nothing about the subject at hand.

If people did know about religion, they would see through the ludicrous and laughable assumptions on which so much modern atheistic thinking is based.  Of course, most modern atheism is just good old bigotry and hatred wrapped in cloth so dense that our secular friends in the secular media and secular education systems can't see it for what it is (or don't want to).  It's a master race philosophy, where 'brights' declare themselves genetically programmed to be intellectually superior to the bulk of humanity that lacks the gene to be smart enough not to need religion.  This assumption is followed by some facts, half-facts, and outright untruths mixed together to prove that it's time we call for the extermination of all this evil religious stuff.

You'd think after the 20th century, such attitudes and tactics would be verboten.  And yet, it's amazing how much the mantra of 'hatred is good as long as you hate the right people' has risen in popularity.  Of course putting up signs that most religious people will blow eggnog out their noses laughing at won't do much harm.  But it is a sign that small, radical sects of religious fanaticism and zealotry wisshing to hurt, insult, or do anything to eradicate beliefs they hate, exist in many forms.  And one form, ironically, covers itself with a shroud called reason.

My heart goes out to atheists and secularists of good faith and good hearts, who appeal to reasoned arguments.  It must be as embarrassing for them as Fred Phelps and his ilk are for most Christians. 


A poster from an atheist's blog.  If you know a little history, it speaks for itself.

Looks like Prop 8 is back in the news

Apparently a decision made by the California Supreme Court has brought the entire debate over Prop 8 back into the spotlight. I'm not a legal scholar, lawyer, or law professor.  As a general rule, my eyes glaze over when folk begin discussing the fine details of this or that legal issue.  I know we like the courts to say what we want them to say, but I'll guess most people aren't able to understand it any better than I can.  And many who do, such as legal 'contributors' on various news outlets, are perhaps a bit slanted in how they report this or that decision or case.  

So I don't know what all of this is about.  Since folks opposed to legalizing gay marriage are throwing confetti and celebrating, I'll guess it's something that reaffirms the voter based ban on gay marriage in California.  This take is further cemented by the assurances that gay marriage will nonetheless prevail against flagrant homophobic bigotry that I hear coming out of the pro-non-heterosexual normality crowd.

We'll have to see.  I doubt it will be too many years before gay marriage is the law of the land.  You can't have one state letting couples (or any particular number) get married, and others not recognizing it.  I'm sure gay normality proponents are aware of this.  And since the overall trajectory of America is to follow our post-Christian, secular, progressive, socialist friends over in Europe, I figure it's a matter of time. 

Still, it's worth noting that a California Court did something that, from what I can tell, wasn't expected.  So you never know.

Don't send your fresh idea to Hollywood

Or it will die of loneliness.  Looks like the 1960s TV show The Munsters is going to be redone with the usual modern brooding and cynical 'everything sucks' spin.  I realize that television has long been known for being formulaic.  One need only watch sitcoms through the ages and see how often the same storyline comes through different shows.  I mean, remember the anti-gun mold?  Authority figure - usually a man, father, something - decides he wants to buy gun.  Everyone else who is always smarter than the male authority figure begs him not to, since owning guns is dangerous.  Something is delaying him doing so, and in the meantime, it comes about that the man gets up in the middle of the night for something.  While out and about, he hears a noise.  Since he doesn't have the gun yet, he improvises (frying pan, baseball bat, something), and waits to pounce on the unsuspecting burglar.  Turns out that, just in the nick of time, he realizes the noise was from one of the regular cast members.  It wasn't a burglar or home invader after all!  He heaves a great sigh of relief, everyone is thankful he didn't have the gun instead, he realizes the error of his ways, and comes back to the Purer Faith of 70s and 80s style progressive values.

So yeah, television shows aren't always the most original.  Usually one comes up and then everyone else copies until a new idea comes along.  But theres' something about Hollywood constantly turning toward old shows, old movies, old new movies, anything that's already there, especially in proportion to the lack of original ideas, that suggests the old machine is beginning to wear out its creative bearings.  Who knows?  Maybe there will be some Desi and Lucy to think outside the box and revitalize things.  It sure can't come too soon.

Nothing to worry about

Nope.  It's just Russia saying they're starting to scratch that old nuclear war itch.  You know, nuclear saber rattling.  Hey, if it was Americans, American pols, then I'd worry.  Turns out, it's just some non-American country, so I'm sure it will all be fine.

Why I love St. Mary Parish

Because of things like this:

I took this picture last night during the RCIA tour of the sanctuary.  I'm part of the team, but we didn't have much to do since that was handled by a professional tour giver - our youth director.  Some folks made their way up the winding stairs:

Stairs cool enough to deserve their own picture

To see what the choir loft looked like.  It didn't disappoint.  Even though I was informed there are major renovations on the horizon, everyone seemed to think it will be to preserve the wonderful architectural and traditional feel of the place.  I hope Catholics know that it's the link to the past, to the ancient, that gives Catholicism one of its biggest trump cards.  Churches like this one are a small part in keeping that feel alive, and go a long way toward avoiding the tendency to build parishes that appear to say 'pssst, maybe they won't think we're Catholic.'  Take a look at this parish.  It says 'we're Catholic' loud and clear.

Remember when?

By now we would have had the good books, kid style that is.  I couldn't wait until the old Wishbooks came to the door. Despite all attempts by my parents to the contrary, I still grew up with the notion that Christmas was a magical time where I got tons and tons of presents.  I know, it was superficial, shallow, materialistic.  I know now the meaning of Christmas, what it's all about, where the department stores end and the real traditions begin.  Still, I have to admit, it was a magical time in its own way.  Even by the release of this catalogue, at which time I was on may way toward turning ten years old, I still felt some magic in the air, even if it was due to my anticipation of coming down the stairs and seeing our tree surrounded by a stack of gifts.  Magic is magic to a kid after all, and maybe it's because of the innocence and culture in which those memories are located, but I still miss it. 

The religion of PETA continues to make a joke of itself

The Church of PETA has, once again, demanded conversion to its gospel of animal worship, and called for outrage against those who refuse to be proselytized.  Of course the bulk of humanity laughs.  But we laugh because we don't see it for what it is, a replacement faith for a faithless society.

You see, we Christians believe God exists.  And with that comes certain natural ramifications, such as the human tendency to be drawn toward worshipping the Creator.  When folks refuse to worship the creator, as often as not they will end up worshipping the created, one way or another.  Even atheists can turn their own atheism into a religion to be worshipped, or so say modern atheists who explain away the atrocities committed by atheists by stating that those atheists treated atheism like a religion.     

So in our post-modern, post-Christian society, did we really think religion would go away?  No, it's still here.  People will worship something: sex, football, money, themselves, animals, the environment, Mother Earth, whatever.  They will cleave unto ancient heathen gods, make up their own religions, something.  People will worship. 

Since most of our legal definitions of religion were formed back when the Judeo-Christian faith was the default religious setting, we tend to imagine religion looking like a church with a Bible and people praying and singing hymns.  And because we tend to see 'religion' in such a narrow way, proud, enlightened post-moderns are blind to the rise of religious alternative religions that are rising up.  And they are rising up with a zeal and a fanaticism that could shame a medieval inquisitor. 

And that's the funny thing.  The reason why most Westerners tossed out the Christian heritage of our civilization was, let's face it, for a good lay, a good romp in the sack, a few drugs, some bathroom humor, parties, greed, and narcissism galore.  The idea was that if we could just get rid of 'religion', we would be free, free, free!  And yet, new religions are rising that should make it clear to thinking people what the Bible always taught, that we are never free.  We simply trade servitude from one thing (the Creator of Heaven and Earth) for something else (animals, the state, government, baseball, you name it)*.  And those neo-faiths appear to leap over any evangelistic zeal yet seen when it comes to converting society, or demanding conformity to their dogmas if conversion eludes them.  Laugh all we want at PETA and their ilk, but be warned.

*See Paul's letter to the Romans for an excellent unpacking of worshipping created things, and being slaves to God as opposed to slaves to sinful ways.

I miss Thanksgiving for my boys, thank goodness for Martin Luther King

Today, it's not easy thinking Thanksgiving thoughts.  Like most traditional holidays, it has a certain inertia, carried on by the tradition that we should all get together and hang out with family, eat, watch football games, and plan on traveling.  Other than that, much of the traditional Thanksgiving paraphernalia is more or less just consumer goods with no real concern about its background.  In the public schools, I see little brought home that commemorates any historic connections to the event.  In my time, hand drawn turkeys that traced my fingers for the feathers, in-class pumpkin pie making, pictures of the Pilgrims trekking through the winter woods, lessons and stories and plays and even old projector movies relating the events of those early days of the Plymouth settlement all reminded us of what the holiday was about.

It wasn't unusual for us to have a band concert or similar production the day before our Thanksgiving break.  Sure, for most of us kids, Thanksgiving break was that tiding over, that pregame festivity that heralded the mack daddy of all holidays, Christmas.  Today, that's called Winter Break.  Then, Christian or no, it was Christmas.  And even for those of us not in church, we loved every minute of it.  Thanksgiving, even more than Halloween, meant the most wonderful day of the year was coming soon.

Today, of course, due to multi-cultural education and PC sensitivities and censorship, we no longer have such easy recounting of the events of that first Thanksgiving so long ago.  Instead, as is usual today, we are reminded of the meaner things, the 'genocide' that arguably didn't really happen but we learn it that way anyway, the imperialism, the racism, the ill treatment of the Native populations - all of these become the focus.  In deference to any potentially offensive presentation, little to no focus on any traditional Thanksgiving trappings is done.  There might be a turkey picture here, or a lesson if the student happens to be in a grade that teaches history there.  But nothing major.  There are certainly no big celebrations, pumpkin pie feasts, band concerts on Wednesday (or Tuesday), or any such thing.  At best - and I admit I've become happy with the break-even point - we just stop hearing about the awful legacy of America's horrendous past for a couple days.

In fact, with our modern sensitivities, most schools have little to do with this or that holiday formerly known as Christmas.  There will be some winter decorations, and of course the break that happens to fall over the last couple weeks of December.  But our schools have become wastelands of doldrums and yawns, daring not to celebrate anything traditional lest someone be offended by the references. 

But come January, they will begin winding up for America's new Holy Day: The Feast of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  They will spend weeks watching films, reading books, drawing pictures, attending assemblies.  The hallways will be adorned with his pictures, with quotes, with references to the moments of his life.  They will see clips from his March on Washington.  They will be told to make the day special, to take in its meaning, to apply themselves to making our world a better place.  It will be all the things that the holiday formerly known as Christmas and that other one that is still somewhat special because of family but not because of the horrible legacy it represents, used to be.

Which goes to show you.  Every culture, every generation, every ideological revolution, every nation has its heroes, its holy days, it absolute values that it demands everyone conform to absolutely.  Ours today is no different.  Having dispensed with the old guard under the auspices of tolerance and sensitivity toward all people, beliefs and demographic groups, we now fill the void with new absolute value systems with their teachings and heroes, and bid a gradual farewell to the celebrations of yore that no longer have a place in the post-modern, post American nation in which we live.  Happy Thanksgiving.

You know the GOP has done something screwy

When their stance on torture has made the fact that President Obama calls water boarding 'torture' news.  Twenty years ago, would anyone have said differently? I can't figure out why, why, why so many in the conservative/GOP movement have hitched their wagons to defending torture.  No, strike that.  Not just defending, but proudly advocating and celebrating it.  I mean, geeesh.  If I was going to condone it, defend it, say it was needed since terrorists basically throw the rules of war out the window and base their entire grand strategic overviews on things condemned by every modern civilized state, I would like to think I'd hang my head in shame.  I'd do it in behind closed doors, in whispered tones and hushed voices.  In candlelight.  Behind the crates in the corner. 

But no.  Hell no.  The only party with a chance for stopping Obama's disastrously inept presidency has decided it will grab the pompoms and give a shout of joy for what we used to associate with the Vietcong, the Gestapo, the KGB, the Chinese Communists.  This is stuff that American Indians did that used to be a blight on their claim to the moral high ground (at least for non-multiculturalists).  So why do they have to cheer?  Why do Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Bachmann, Cain and others have to act as if it's a badge of honor that they want this to be our policy?  It does make voting for a third party candidate seem more appealing by the hour.

Thank goodness for the Russians

Where would America's space program be without them?  Of course we could always go to the Chinese.  It's not easy being in a second rate has-been society, but I think we Americans are beginning to warm up to the idea.

The award for best assessment of the Penn State scandal goes to

Mark Shea, over at Catholic and Enjoying It.  I won't add anything.  Just go there and read it, take it in, and think of how it applies to so many areas of modern life.  Well said Mark.