Catholic Priest Urges European Christians to Fight Off Islam by Having Babies

"A prominent Catholic priest wants European Christians to fight off Islam with a unique weapon: babies."

What if Roman Polanski Were a Catholic Priest?

Al Kresta notes an interesting bit of hypocrisy in the left's (and that includes the media) attitudes toward two events involving sexual misconduct with children - the priest sex-abuse scandal and Roman Polanski's drugging and then forcibly sodomizing a 13-year-old girl:

Here’s a maxim for Left-wing luvvies: let’s treat the Pope like a rapist, and treat a rapist like the Pope.

[...]

But in the eyes of Lefty luvvies from Hollywood to Hampstead, the only real difference between the Pope and Polanski is that the latter is an artist. That, you see, erases a multitude of sins – yes, even the rape of a 13-year-old girl. The same people who are viciously denouncing Benedict even though he has not been convicted of any crime defend Polanski despite his conviction because he’s “one of us”. In their eyes, directing The Pianist and Rosemary’s Baby has somehow cleansed the stain of shame from this repulsive little man.

Here is the bad news: the luvvies have won. Their man has been let off – to cries of relief from the arty set, the Swiss authorities have refused the America its request for extradition. The Pope, meanwhile, continues to be publicly reviled by bohemians who think he should be arrested for crimes he neither committed nor concealed. And they dare attack the Church for hypocrisy!

Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Movie Producer Weinstein: "Hollywood Has the Best Moral Compass"

"Age and ability in the arts or anything else, in my opinion, does not excuse a crime"

Reminder: Roman Polanski Raped a Child [UPDATED]

Helen Thomas Tells Jews to "Get the Hell Out of Palestine" and "Go Back to Poland and Germany" ... [UPDATED]

... presumably, where the unfinished business of 1933-45 can commence. (See, e.g., Auschwitz, Treblinka, etc.)

Here's proof that Yassir Arafat isn't dead; he's just dressed in drag and disguised as a 109-year-old White House press correspondent:



Bless her heart. She's just waiting around on Willard Scott to call out her name one morning.


UPDATE
If the words of the Grand Dame sound eerily familiar, that's because they echo something we've heard before:

Iran's Ahmadinejad says Israel should be moved to Europe

Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that if Germany and Austria feel responsible for massacring Jews during World War II, a state of Israel should be established on their soil.

Ahmadinejad, who sparked an international outcry in October when he said Israel "must be wiped off the map", also repeated his view Thursday that the Jewish state was a "tumour".

"Now that you believe the Jews were oppressed, why should the Palestinian Muslims have to pay the price?" the hardline president asked in an interview with Iran's Arabic-language satellite channel, Al-Alam.

"Why did you come to give a piece of Islamic land and the territory of the Palestinian people to them?

"You oppressed them, so give a part of Europe to the Zionist regime so they can establish any government they want. We would support it," he said, according to a transcript of his original Farsi-language comments given to AFP.

"So, Germany and Austria, come and give one, two or any number of your provinces to the Zionist regime so they can create a country there which all of Europe will support and the problem will be solved at its root," he said.

Helen, too, wants the "tumor" excised.

Was the American Founding Inherently "Anti-Catholic"?

At The American Catholic, Joe Hargrave explores the subject of the Catholic experience in America from the founding in "God Bless America?":

... But the rate at which Catholicism grew and spread in the United States, at least in my view, undermines any notion that there is something inherent in the American experiment that is hostile to Catholicism.

The Papacy has always shared this view. Though I don’t have many encyclicals written by Popes prior to Leo XIII on hand, his Pontificate is as good as any a place to begin. In Longinqua, written in 1895, Leo writes,

Precisely at the epoch when the American colonies, having, with Catholic aid, achieved liberty and independence, coalesced into a constitutional Republic the ecclesiastical hierarchy was happily established amongst you; and at the very time when the popular suffrage placed the great Washington at the helm of the Republic, the first bishop was set by apostolic authority over the American Church. The well-known friendship and familiar intercourse which subsisted between these two men seems to be an evidence that the United States ought to be conjoined in concord and amity with the Catholic Church. (4)

What do today’s trads know that Leo XIII didn’t know? I’ll wait for them to tell me. Expounding on the subsequent development of the American Church, Leo writes,

That your Republic is progressing and developing by giant strides is patent to all; and this holds good in religious matters also. For even as your cities, in the course of one century, have made a marvellous increase in wealth and power, so do we behold the Church, from scant and slender beginnings, grown with rapidity to be great and exceedingly flourishing. (5)

What was he smoking when he wrote that?

[...]

But the Papal story doesn’t end with Leo. I’ll turn next to Pius XII, perhaps the greatest pontiff of the 20th century. After mentioning some of the difficulties faced by the fledgling American republic in Sertum Laetitiae, he goes on to write:

This ruinous and critical state of affairs was put aright by the celebrated George Washington, famed for his courage and keen intelligence. He was a close friend of the Bishop of Baltimore. Thus the Father of His Country and the pioneer pastor of the Church in that land so dear to Us, bound together by the ties of friendship and clasping, so to speak, each the other’s hand, form a picture for their descendants, a lesson to all future generations, and a proof that reverence for the Faith of Christ is a holy and established principle of the American people, seeing that it is the foundation of morality and decency, consequently the source of prosperity and progress. (3)

Evidently Pius XII bought into that same old patriotic hokum that Leo XIII was fond of. Maybe he was just being diplomatic. Or maybe in a world in which the supposedly more encultured, enlightened, socially-conscious Europeans had turned their continent and the world upside down with inhuman totalitarian ideologies, and threatened the Church with total destruction, the American experiment and the Church’s place in it look liked a new Promised Land, at least in comparison.

[Read the whole thing]

"Terminally Ill" Lockerbie Bomber, Freed on "Compassionate" Grounds, Still Alive and Living in Luxury Villa 6 Months After Being at "Death's Door"

Big frickin' surprise (NOT!):

The man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing is living with his family in a luxury villa in Libya six months after he was released from jail on compassionate grounds because he had less than three months to live.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who is suffering from terminal prostate cancer, no longer receives hospital treatment after ending the course of chemotherapy that he had been given after returning to his homeland last August.

Professor Karol Sikora, the London-based doctor who examined Megrahi and predicted he would be dead by last October, admitted this weekend that the fact the bomber is still alive might be "difficult" for the families of the 270 victims of the attack.

Most did not want Megrahi released and they suspected he would live longer than the predicted three months.

The Sunday Telegraph revealed last September that the Libyan government had paid for the medical evidence which helped Megrahi, 57, to be released. The Libyans had encouraged doctors to say he had only three months to live.

The life expectancy of Megrahi was crucial because, under Scottish rules, prisoners can be freed on compassionate grounds only if they are considered to have this amount of time, or less, to live.

Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Secretary, ruled last August that Megrahi should be freed. Megrahi's release came after Libyan leaders warned that lucrative oil and trade deals with Britain would be cancelled if the bomber died in jail ...

My Comments:
I suppose Tony A will be along at some point to explain how all us vengeful "Calvinists" are sick, morbid monsters for holding it against the guy that he's still alive. No, the problem is that the guy is still alive and NOT IN JAIL, while his victims and their families have, once again, been denied justice.

For, now we know that, not only was so-called "compassion" NOT the motivating factor behind the terrorist's release (the real motivating factor would be greed, as the UK was more interested in saving its lucrative oil deals with Libya than it was in being "compassionate"), but the terrorist himself was NEVER EVEN ON the threshold of "death's door" as claimed.

Suckers.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
New York Archbishop: Mistake to Release Lockerbie Bomber

Pope Critical of Labour’s "Unjust" Equality Laws Ahead of UK Visit

From The Telegraph:

Benedict XVI claimed that legislation introduced by Labour to end discrimination “actually violates natural law” as it stops worshippers remaining true to their beliefs.

He said that rather than making society more equal, the Government's new rules limit religious freedom.

His strongly-worded intervention in British politics comes after leaders of both the Roman Catholic Church and Church of England clashed with Labour over its flagship Equality Bill, which they fear will make them admit homosexuals to the priesthood or face prosecution for discriminating against them.

In an address delivered on Monday to 35 Catholic bishops from England and Wales, the pope attacked the implications of Labour’s equality laws.

He said: “Your country is well known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society. Yet... the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs."

He went on: "In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed."

[More]

The dictatorship of relativism was quick to go on the offensive in attacking the Holy Father:

... Speaking at a meeting of the European Parliament's Socialists and Democrats in Rome, Stephen Hughes criticised Pope Benedict's concern that the Equality Bill would restrict religious groups from acting in accordance with their faith.

'As a Catholic, I am appalled by the attitude of the Pope. Religious leaders should be trying to eradicate inequality, not perpetuate it,' Hughes said in a statement reproduced on his website. 'Instead of criticising the UK's plans to improve its legislation, the Pope should ensure that existing EU legislation is properly applied in the Vatican,' Hughes said.

The Pope, who announced the first papal visit to Britain since 1982 on Monday, urged Bishops from England and Wales to make a convincing case against legislation that could force churches to hire homosexuals or transsexuals. He said the legislation violates natural law and told the visiting bishops they should fight it with 'missionary zeal.' Human Rights groups have hit back at the Pope's comments...

Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Same-Sex "Marriage" and Religious Liberty

Bork Predicts “Terrible Conflict” Will Endanger U.S. Catholics’ Religious Freedom

Same-Sex "Marriage" and the Persecution of Civil Society

InsideCatholic on "The Unintended Consequences of Gay Marriage"

Secularist Attacks on the Catholic Church in Britain

Regular Guy Paul on What's Next for Same-Sex "Marriage"

Catholic Provocation?

Federal Judge: Catholic Church’s Position Against Homosexual Adoptions Justifies Government Hostility Towards Church

San Francisco's Hateful Anti-Catholic Resolution Prompts Lawsuit by Thomas More Center

Catholic League Says Gay Adoption Issue Spurring Anti-Catholic Bigotry

9th Circuit Rules Okay to Censor Terms "Marriage" and "Family Values" as Hate Speech

UK Catholic Schools Endangered by Sexual Orientation Regulations

Official Anti-Catholic Bigotry Returns to British Parliament

"A Charter for Suing Christians"

A Catholic Londoner on "The Last Acceptable Prejudice"

British Bishops: U.K. Sex Equality Law "Threatens Catholic Adoption Agencies"

UK: Churches "Could be Forced to Bless Gay Weddings"

The Coming Persecution of Churches Over "Gay Marriage"

The Coming Conflict Between Same-Sex "Marriage" and Religious Liberty

Nostalgic for the Crusades?

As Brad Miner notes at The Catholic Thing, Baylor University historian Rodney Starks has a new book that makes the case in favor of the Crusades:

Pray for me, folks, because I’m nostalgic for the Crusades.

Of course a twenty-first-century fellow can’t really be nostalgic for the eleventh or twelfth centuries, since nostalgia properly means severe homesickness, a yearning for familiar conditions from a prior period in our own lives. But there’s a secondary meaning: a wistful longing for a lost dominion. I’m idealistically attracted – as perhaps I should be – to the qualities of the knight, such as honor and bravery, and incautiously suppose – as no doubt I shouldn’t – that these qualities arose in a time and in places congenial to virtue. Chivalry! The Crusades! Something to fight for! Where the heck are my sword and my steed?

If the Crusades ever evoked appreciation – and they did – that particular lost dominion took a pretty serious blow on September 16, 2001 when in an Oval Office speech George W. Bush said: “This crusade, this war on terrorism is gonna take awhile.” The press swooned and Muslim sensibilities were outraged, encouraged perhaps by the media swarf. That’s a mere eight years ago, but the Crusades – their reputation already foundering in the multicultural chop – have all but sunk into the black hole of politically correct disdain. Even “Kingdom of Heaven,” Ridley Scott’s 2005 film about the Third Crusade, failed to make the great expedition very interesting. Many saw the film as a scolding commentary on Crusader Bush.

Enter historian Rodney Stark, riding my missing horse. His new book, God’s Battalions, is actually subtitled: The Case for the Crusades. And he makes the case! With admirable frankness and flair. He writes that the prevailing wisdom about the Crusades may indeed be that “an expansionist, imperialistic Christendom brutalized, looted, and colonized a tolerant and peaceful Islam,” but Stark’s next words are telling:

“Not so.”

Professor Stark (Baylor University) emphasizes that the onset of hostilities between Christians and Muslims long pre-dated the Crusades. We too often forget that for six centuries after the Resurrection there was no Islam and much of northern Africa and what we now call the Middle East were Christian or pagan. But from the beginning of Muhammad’s public life – and especially after his death in 632 – his followers began making war on just about everybody, and within a century Islam had swallowed up most of that eastern territory and by 1095 – when the First Crusade left Europe for the Holy Land – the Byzantine Empire, Christendom’s eastern bastion, was in grave peril of conquest, which is why the emperor, Alexius Comnenus, wrote to Pope Urban II telling horror stories about Muslim atrocities against Christians and begging for military aid from Europe.

Islam, according to the historical record as Stark presents it, is a “religion of peace” mostly in the sense that it seeks to subdue and unify the people it conquers. True, the Qur’an forbids forced conversions, but in practice this has meant that “subject peoples were ‘free to choose’ conversion as an alternative to death or enslavement.” And to be fair, in some places – Spain (Al-Andalus) is a good example – Christians and Jews might live in relative peace, since the Muslim ruling class sequestered itself, paying little attention to subject people (dhimmis) except at tax time. To many in southern and eastern Europe, Muslim expansion began to seem all but unstoppable . . . until it stopped. Christians fought back. Constantinople was able to hold off its invaders in several successful sea battles. Charles Martel defeated a Muslim force in what would become France. The Reconquista began in Spain, and in 1094 the legendary El Cid defeated an Islamic army at Valencia. Islam was in retreat.

With the letter from Alexius in hand, Urban II exhorted Christians to come to the aid of their besieged and battered co-religionists in the east, and 35,000 answered the call.

[More]

Pope Rejects Moral Equivalency

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, fellow travelers are still playing the moral equivalency game between the free West and the Soviet-bloc East.

However, the Holy Father said something recently that appears to reject that moral equivalency. Here's the Pope's statement concerning the 60th anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany's Basic Law and the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall:

... Under the communist dictatorship there was no action that would have been regarded as evil and always immoral in itself. Whatever served the objectives of the party was good -- however inhuman it might be. Today someone has asked whether the Western social order is much better and more humanitarian. In fact, the history of the Federal Republic of Germany is a proof of this...

(emphasis added by James H at Opinionated Catholic)

Reminder: Roman Polanski Raped a Child [UPDATED]

(Hat tip: Joe Carter at First Thoughts)

At Slate, Kate Harding writes the definitive rebuttal to all the Roman Polanski apologists:

Roman Polanski raped a child. Let's just start right there, because that's the detail that tends to get neglected when we start discussing whether it was fair for the bail-jumping director to be arrested at age 76, after 32 years in "exile" (which in this case means owning multiple homes in Europe, continuing to work as a director, marrying and fathering two children, even winning an Oscar, but never -- poor baby -- being able to return to the U.S.). Let's keep in mind that Roman Polanski gave a 13-year-old girl a Quaalude and champagne, then raped her, before we start discussing whether the victim looked older than her 13 years, or that she now says she'd rather not see him prosecuted because she can't stand the media attention. Before we discuss how awesome his movies are or what the now-deceased judge did wrong at his trial, let's take a moment to recall that according to the victim's grand jury testimony, Roman Polanski instructed her to get into a jacuzzi naked, refused to take her home when she begged to go, began kissing her even though she said no and asked him to stop; performed cunnilingus on her as she said no and asked him to stop; put his penis in her vagina as she said no and asked him to stop; asked if he could penetrate her anally, to which she replied, "No," then went ahead and did it anyway, until he had an orgasm.

[...]

Polanski was "demonized by the press" because he raped a child, and was convicted because he pled guilty. He "feared heavy sentencing" because drugging and raping a child is generally frowned upon by the legal system. Shore really wants us to pity him because of these things? (And, I am not making this up, boycott the entire country of Switzerland for arresting him.)

As ludicrous as Shore's post is, I have to agree with Fecke that my favorite Polanski apologist is the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum, who finds it "bizarre" that anyone is still pursuing this case. And who also, by the by, failed to disclose the tiny, inconsequential detail that her husband, Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski, is actively pressuring U.S. authorities to drop the case.

There is evidence of judicial misconduct in the original trial. There is evidence that Polanski did not know her real age. Polanski, who panicked and fled the U.S. during that trial, has been pursued by this case for 30 years, during which time he has never returned to America, has never returned to the United Kingdom., has avoided many other countries, and has never been convicted of anything else. He did commit a crime, but he has paid for the crime in many, many ways: In notoriety, in lawyers' fees, in professional stigma. He could not return to Los Angeles to receive his recent Oscar. He cannot visit Hollywood to direct or cast a film.

There is also evidence that Polanski raped a child. There is evidence that the victim did not consent, regardless of her age. There is evidence -- albeit purely anecdotal, in this case -- that only the most debased crapweasel thinks "I didn't know she was 13!" is a reasonable excuse for raping a child, much less continuing to rape her after she's said no repeatedly. There is evidence that the California justice system does not hold that "notoriety, lawyers' fees and professional stigma" are an appropriate sentence for child rape.

But hey, he wasn't allowed to pick up his Oscar in person! For the love of all that's holy, hasn't the man suffered enough?

[Read the whole thing]

UPDATE
Additional commentary that highlights the blatant hypocrisy at play here.

HotAir asks just how liberal do you have to be in order to be excused for raping a 13-year-old:

Needless to say, this reminds me of the left’s umbrage at conservatives daring to bring up Chappaquiddick after Teddy died. Yeah, he left a woman to drown and then made jokes about it afterwards; he was for universal health care, though, wasn’t he? Same with Polanski: Dare we deny the man who made “Chinatown” an occasional drugging and raping of a child? Sure, a kid gets traumatized for life, but on the other side of the scale: “Rosemary’s Baby.” It’d be sweet if the left could come up with some sort of mathematical formula by which we could tell whether an artist or liberal politician has exceeded his quotient of moral indulgence. I’m assuming “Chinatown” wasn’t so awesome that Polanski would be excused for shooting a kid in the head at point-blank range, so evidently the film’s “worth” less than that but more than a child-rape. Let’s figure out just how much of a liberal hero you have to be to get away with certain crimes.

(emphasis added)

And Creative Minority Report asks us to "Imagine He Were a Priest":

Just for a moment I want you to imagine that Roman Polanski was a priest. Frightening, yes? But for the sake of my point imagine that he's a priest who drugged and raped a thirteen year old.

Imagine he's a priest who fled to France so as to avoid punishment for his crime. Imagine that he flaunted his freedom in America's face for decades.

Now imagine that Roman Polanski as a priest was apprehended by the police after all those years. Now, imagine what the media would be saying...

[More]

And writing at Politics Daily, David Gibson has similar thoughts:

... There is the obvious parallel to the cases in the Catholic Church, which have rightly scandalized the public and the media. Prosecutors and plaintiffs' attorneys have been dogged in pursuing these cases -- whether out of concern for their careers or for justice -- and the outrage was so widespread that the State of California created a one-year window in 2003 during which the statute of limitations on abuse crimes by Catholic priests (and others) was lifted. That meant the victims of men who were often long dead could finally get their day in court, or find some sense of justice and closure -- and for cases that were no more egregious than Polanski's abuse of Geimer. Polanski is alive, at least.

Comparisons are by their nature invidious. But what if Roman Polanksi were wearing a Roman collar? Would "Monsignor Polanksi" receive the same considerations? As Father Thomas Reese, a Jesuit, writes at the Post's "On Faith" site, "Imagine if the Knights of Columbus decided to give an award to a pedophile priest who had fled the country to avoid prison. The outcry would be universal." And rightly so, as Reese says. But Polanski gets an Oscar in absentia in 2003 and earns sympathy because he can't receive it in person...

UPDATE #2
I always did like singer-songwriter Jewel. This just confirms me in my high regard for her.


UPDATE #3 (30 September)
More from HotAir on the "how liberal do you have to be to get a get of jail free card" question:

... Polanski’s defenders cite his brilliance as an Important Director of Important Films as a reason it’s not only wrong, but outrageous, to punish him for his past crimes. This is similar to the arguments made in favor of releasing convicted cop-killer Mumia abu Jamal from prison, a point of view enthusiastically held by at least one high-ranking member of the Obama Administration: that fabled Rohrschach inkblot of liberal stupidity, Van Jones. Mumia’s delicate writing hand is much more important than the one he used to shoot Officer Daniel Faulkner in the back.

The Left also issues Get Out of Jail Free cards to people other than artists. The Polanski defense is a nostalgic karaoke rendition of the 1998 anthem “Perjury About Sex Is Not A Crime,” sung on Bill Clinton’s behalf. Perjury, infidelity, and what the antique feminist movement used to call “sexual harassment” were small prices to pay for Clinton’s inspirational leadership.

You can’t say the Left is entirely soft on crime, however. There are some scofflaws they’ll never stop trying to put behind bars. CIA agents who kept America safe from terrorists, for example. None of the terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay was innocent, or thirteen years old, and none of them were drugged, raped, and sodomized, but the Obama Administration is keen on prosecuting the people who interrogated them. If Roman Polanski had covered his victim’s face with a wet towel, maybe his defense would be a bit less energetic.

Another individual the Left wants brought to justice is Karl Rove, for the crime of being Karl Rove. The other charges against him range from being nebulous to absurd, but rest assured, it would be a great day for America if we could frog-march that villain into the vacant cell left behind by a liberated Mumia abu Jamal. Best of all would be the trial and imprisonment of George W. Bush, a fantasy the Left holds with the intensity of a small child shivering through a sleepless Christmas Eve. Bush actually did the stuff Clinton just talked about - liberating the people of Iraq from monstrous tyranny, fighting AIDS in Africa - but it earns him no slack from liberal vigilantes. He did more for women’s rights than anyone alive today - you can ask the women of Afghanistan about it, now that their faces aren’t wrapped in upholstery - but he didn’t do anything really important, like make a movie about the sexual oppression of suburban America.

[...]

George Bush’s first offense was denying America the brilliant, socially aware, technocratic leadership of Al Gore. The statue of limitations will never run out on something like that. Meanwhile, forcing a beloved Hollywood director to end his life in the slammer for a little error in judgment, like rape, would be unthinkably crass… as long as his Party credentials are in order. That is why the same people who turned their backs on Elia Kazan weep for Roman Polanski today, and will weep again at his career retrospective, on some future Oscar night. The Party may have changed its name, and adjusted its methods, but it still remembers what Kazan did to it, and his sentence extends far beyond the end of his life.

I'll never forget that bunch of leftist communist sympathizers in Hollywood - lefties like Nick Nolte and Ed Harris - sitting on their hands when Elia Kazan was awarded an Oscar for lifetime achievement. And when it comes to irony, it's hard to beat this quote from the late Rod Steiger regarding Kazan's Oscar award:

"Age and ability in the arts or anything else, in my opinion, does not excuse a crime,'' says Rod Steiger, star of "On the Waterfront."

Funny thing is, Kazan's informing on a bunch of commies wasn't a crime. Drugging and raping a little girl, however, is.

May all the Hollywood lefties and pervert apologists see Polanski do hard time in a California prison.

Malicious? Or Incompetent?

Those are the only choices that could explain the insensitivity of the timing of this decision by the Obama Administration:

LISBON — “How could Obama choose such a day?”

That was the anguished outburst of a senior Polish officer attending a meeting of NATO chiefs of defense here when asked what he thought of the U.S. president’s cancellation last week of plans to place missile interceptors in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic.

The officer was referring to the fact that the announcement came on Sept. 17, the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland. A gesture to Russia on this date — a “brave” decision said Vladimir Putin — was the rough equivalent for the Poles of their announcing concessions to a U.S. foe on 9/11. [ED.: It's actually MUCH, MUCH worse.]

Poland is now one of the very few places in Europe that prefers former President Bush to Obama.

Now I’m sure Obama had no desire to insult Poland [ED.: Either he intended offense, or he's completely ignorant. Those are the choices.], even if the announcement also came as Russia conducted large-scale military maneuvers with Belarus, an exercise on its western flank that summons the darkest specters of post-Soviet Polish and Baltic-state angst. As U.S. timing goes, this was pitiful.

[More]

(editorial commentary added)

Jerks or idiots? Take your pick.

New York Archbishop: Mistake to Release Lockerbie Bomber

Archbishop Dolan reveals that he is a dualist Americanist Calvinist with a "dodgy theology" that doesn't encompass the fullness of Christ's compassion as it is embraced by our European betters:

Echoing sentiments expressed by other local religious leaders, Archbishop Timothy Dolan called the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi “a sad and perplexing mistake.” The terrorist, who received a hero’s welcome in his native Libya, had been released because he is suffering from terminal cancer.

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

NYC clergy condemns Scotland freeing bomber (AP)

(emphasis added)

Human Rights Court Case Could be Europe's Roe v. Wade

(Hat tip: PewSitter.com)

Keep an eye on this one:

STRASBOURG, July 14, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The importance of the case of three women challenging the Irish constitutional protections for the unborn has "grown exponentially" says a pro-life attorney that is involved in the case. Not only is the Republic of Ireland's ability to have legal protections for the unborn now at stake in the high profile case currently before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), but potentially the entire continent's.

"This case could be the Roe v. Wade of Europe, so its importance should not be underestimated," said Roger Kiska of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), the public-interest legal alliance that is acting to protect the existing law.

The significance of the ABC v. Ireland case has increased sharply since Wednesday when the court allowed the case to go to the Grand Chamber reserved for those cases of international significance. Decisions of the Grand Chamber are binding on all lower courts and all member states. Attorneys say that the decision in the case will now affect policy for all of the European Union.

In 2007, three abortion activists filed a complaint with the ECHR claiming that the protections for unborn children in the Irish constitution jeopardized their "health and wellbeing" when they had to travel abroad for abortions. This, they said, placed "enormous physical, emotional and financial burdens" upon them. They are claiming that the law created "delays and hardships" resulting in each of them having a later abortion.

***
"Ireland's constitutional amendment defending innocent life is under attack, and now the stakes have just gotten higher," said ADF Legal Counsel Roger Kiska.

"The case is not only pivotal to Europe; it is pivotal to America as well," Kiska added. "With ever-greater frequency, American courts have considered what other countries are doing when deciding their own cases."

My Comments:
That last paragraph in the quoted excerpt raises an important point. Should abortion become a "human right" across the entire European Union, given "swing vote" Justice Kennedy's penchant for relying on foreign precedence when it comes to giving jurisprudential content to such vacuous concepts as "[the] mysteries of the universe" and "the meaning of human existence", it would make overturning Roe v. Wade and its progeny that much more difficult.

UK Government Official Says Having More Than 2 Children "Irresponsible"; Catholics Respond

Soon to be a meme heard round the world:

Couples who have more than two children are putting an 'irresponsible' burden on the environment, the Government's leading green advisor has warned.

Jonathon Porritt called on ministers to divert money away from curing illnesses towards contraception and abortion services to limit the country's population and help in the fight against global warming.

And he criticised fellow green campaigners for dodging the issue of population growth and its effect on the environment because it is too 'controversial'.

It came as Catholic bishops in England and Wales lambasted environmentalism as an ideology every bit as dangerous as communism. [ED.: Yep.]

In a booklet, they say worshippers should be deeply sceptical of claims the green movement makes on global warming. [ED.: Yep.]

***
Mr Porritt, who has two children himself, added: 'I am unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate and how many children they think are appropriate.

'I think we will work our way towards a position that says having more than two children is irresponsible. It is the ghost at the table. We have all these big issues that everybody is looking at and then you don't really hear anyone say the P-word.

***
A spokeswoman for the Pro-life Alliance said: 'Yet again we hear an expert calling for more contraception and abortion: but our high abortion figures are the fruit of that kind of approach.

'The unpleasant aspect of this statement is the idea that how many children you have should be down to the state. Wherever we have seen such policies being imposed, such as in China, we have seen a preference for male children and a rise in infanticide.' [ED.: Yep.]

The views expressed by Mr Porritt came under attack from the Catholic Church, which views contraception as 'intrinsically evil'.

A booklet by the London-based Catholic Truth Society, a charity under the patronage of Peter Smith, the Archbishop of Cardiff, said there was a proven tendency among the environmental lobby to exaggerate the threat of global warming to vindicate their calls for radical Government measures to 'forcibly' move the world down a 'sustainable' path. [ED.: Yep.]

The book, Global Warming: How Should we Respond, says: 'Just as Marxism advocated Communism as the only solution to the world's ills, so Greens warn us of major catastrophe if we do not adopt their calls for radical change.'

It says the ideology of the Green movement ran counter to Christian beliefs, because it saw 'mankind as just one species among many'. [ED.: Yep.]

The book says that population programmes targeting the 'supposedly feckless breeding' of the poor, especially in developing countries, were the result of racist and unfounded prejudices. [ED.: Yep.]

'Environmental campaigns which demand that the natural world should be treated with greater respect imply that this is the only issue that matters, ignoring the plight of humanity or any spiritual values,' it said. [ED.: Yep.]

[More]

(emphasis and editorial commentary added)


UPDATE (3 February)
Fr. Finigan notes that large families are greener:

The Sunday Times last weekend reported on a GP who discourages families from having more than two children. (See: Green GP refuses to help women have large families.) Dr Pippa Hayes is a member of the Optimum Population Trust whose motto is "stop at two". Essentially, the OPT believes that having more children is not eco friendly. This is an old idea dressed up in green language; human beings are seen as a kind of pollution.

The article does give space to an alternative assessment - that in fact large families often lead more environmentally friendly lives. To take one example, they certainly don't use air travel to the same degree because with a large family, package holidays in the sun are prohibitively expensive. The active outdoor alternatives are not only very beneficial for children but also, in fact, tend to waste fewer natural resources. The photo shows one family making the most of our current weather.

The large families I know also tend to make economies of scale at home, passing on clothes and other things, cooking with fresh ingredients, growing stuff in the garden, keeping chickens, enjoying games with things that have been made, not bought, and generally getting out into the environment rather than just talking about it.

Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Rich Leonardi on the "Obnoxiousness" of the Concept of "Carbon Footprints"

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "Save the Planet — Have Fewer Kids"

Deacon Fournier Reviews Population Controllers

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: Babies a Drag on the Economy, Report Says

Darwin Catholic: "Want Sustainable? Try a Family"

Malthusian Nonsense in the Extreme: "When Should You Die?"

Population Control Movement is "Number One Violator of Human Rights," Author Claims

USAToday Columnist: Religion is Killing the Planet

The Pitter-Patter of Carbon Footprints ...

Cardinal Pell Criticizes Australian Medical Ass'n for Publishing Letter Advocating Carbon Tax on Children

Professor Solves Global Warming: Let’s Tax Reproduction

Global Alarming Update: Focus on So-Called "Carbon Footprint" Anti-Family

Malthusian Nonsense from "Global Warming" Alarmists

Cardinal Pell on Global Warming Alarmists: "Scaremongers" and "Zealots"

Is This REALLY the Image Sen. Obama Wants to Portray Right After the Dem Convention?

Ed Morrisey reports:

... On the second day of the Republican Convention, Obama will do some low-key fundraising … among Hollywood heavyweights … in Geneva, Switzerland. George Clooney will arrange for a $1,000 a plate reception, but that’s just the appetizer:

Academy award winning actor George Clooney is set to host a fundraiser for Barack Obama in Switzerland next month.

The event, taking place on the evening of September 2 in Geneva, Switzerland will be split into two parts: a reception and a dinner. According to Obama’s National Finance Committee, tickets for the reception where Clooney will speak are going for $1,000, followed by a dinner at the home of NFC member Charles Adams for $10,000 a plate. Space for the dinner is limited to 75 guests.

***
Maybe during the convention, the Republicans can dedicate a large-screen monitor at the Xcel Center to keep track of Obama’s second European jaunt of the campaign. They could call it, “Where In The World Is Barack Obama?” The show could track him through the summer houses of the rich and famous Americans who can afford to own villas overseas, and put dollar signs up on a map wherever he stops off for some foie gras.

Shouldn’t Obama be campaigning in, say, America after the [Democrat] convention? ...

[More]

(emphasis added)

My Comments:
Holy crap! Talk about handing your political opponents some prime material that plays right into the perception they want to create of you in the minds of the voters.

How about - immediately after the Democrat convention and without stopping until Election Day - going out and meeting and spending time with some REAL-LIFE everyday Americans in some of those swing states you'll need to win in order to get elected?

Dave Hartline on "Sen. Obama's European Victory Lap"

Dave Hartline writes at The Catholic Report that Sen. Obama's basking in the adulation of our more enlightened European betters is "a turnoff for heartland voters".

Times of London Columnist: "Eventually, We Will All Hate Obama Too"

David Aaronovitch writes in The Times of London:

It amuses me that some of those who criticise the present US Administration for its Manichaeism - its division of the world into good and evil - themselves allocate all past badness to Bush and all prospective goodness to Obama. As the ever-improving myth has it, on the morning of September 12, 2001, George W. and America enjoyed the sympathy of the world. This comradeship was destroyed, in a uniquely cavalier (or should we say cowboyish) fashion, through the belligerence, the carelessness, the ideological fixity and the rapacity of that amorphous and useful category of American flawed thinker, the neoconservative. They just threw it away.

***
This week you could hear the author Andrew O'Hagan on Radio 4, reading from his collection of self-conscious essays, The Atlantic Ocean, in which - despite his own claims - every impact of American life on Britain is somehow configured negatively. He writes of an exported popular culture “born in the suburbs of America” and defined as “Spite as entertainment. Shouting as argument. Dysfunction as normality. Desires as rights. Shopping as democracy.” This in the country that has sent Big Brother, Pop Idol, Wife Swap and Location, Location, Location over the Atlantic in the other direction, while taking delivery of Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Wire.

I should admit that I am irked by O'Hagan's dismissal of the “idiots who supported that bad and stupid war (ie, Iraq)” and am willing to match my idiocy against his intelligence in any debating forum that he cares to name. More interesting, though, is the desire to blame America. For all that O'Hagan claims that the US has lost its purchase on the world's affections, it remains the chosen destination for the most ambitious of the planet's migrants. For all that he claims that this change in sentiment is recent, I can't help recalling those - the most honest - who commented, in journals he writes for and on the very day after September 11, that the Americans had had it coming.

In part I think that anti-Americanism is linked to a view of change as decline. The imagination is that dynamic capitalism, associated with the US, is destroying our authentic lives, with our own partly willing connivance. It is a continuing and - at the moment - constant narrative, uniting left and right conservatives, which will usually take in the 19th- century radical journalist William Cobbett (conveniently shorn of his anti-Semitism), and end with an expression of disgust over the Dome, the Olympics or Tesco. Just as bird flu is a disease from out of the East, runaway modernity is a scourge originating to the West.

So Barack Obama, en fête around the world, will one day learn that there is no magical cure for the envy of others. What makes America the indispensable power (and even more indispensable in the era of the new China), is precisely what makes anti-Americanism inevitable.

(emphasis added)

My Comments:
Of course, with a name like "David Aaronovitch", he MUST be a "neocon" himself.
/sarcasm

Times of London: "Pope Rejects Invitation by ‘Apostate’ Strasbourg"

(Hat tip: Christopher Blosser via email)

From The Times of London:

The Pope has rejected an invitation to address the European Parliament, amid Vatican alarm at what is seen as a drift towards militant secularism.

A letter from the Vatican said that he was declining the request to speak to MEPs owing to other commitments and his age, The Times has learnt. The rejection came soon after the Pope agreed to spend his 81st birthday visiting President Bush and as his tour of Australia was ending...

***
The Vatican has favoured the White House as a reward for Mr Bush’s acclamation of faith in God and help for antiabortion causes.

***
The breakdown in confidence between the Pope and the European Parliament is a sensitive area and observers close to the dispute are unwilling to be identified publicly. One spoke of the church hierarchy’s “great disillusionment” with the European project. Its founding fathers, Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schuman, were deeply Catholic. However, a well-informed observer said that the EU “has become more and more secularist”.

***
... Mr Bush is regarded by the Vatican as far more sympathetic to its priorities than Europe. When he withdrew $34 million from the UN family planning programme in 2002, claiming that some money went to abortions, the European Union made up the shortfall.

My Comments:
First Ireland, and now the Pope. Morning's Minion will be deeply saddened.

Obama on Multi-Lingualism

I happen to agree with Obama that Americans should learn an additional language besides English, preferably Spanish. But this comment is just nonsense:

It’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is merci beaucoup ...

Embarrassing? To whom? To the elites who are just now, for the first time, proud of their country? The lack of people speaking multiple languages in our country is in no way a badge of dishonor that we should be held up by way of negative comparison to Europeans.

I mean, the geographic and demographic reality is that the majority of Americans have not, until now, needed to learn a second language. We live on a vast continent, separated on both sides by vast oceans. Most traveling that Americans do is within the confines of their own country. The expense, alone, of traveling overseas to foreign locales has meant that those growing up on farms in Nebraska and Iowa have not needed to become multi-lingual in the same way that an Italian person might need to learn French. Europeans, on the other hand, live on a multi-lingual continent in which traveling from France to England is a bit like going from New York to New Jersey. Most Europeans have become multi-lingual out of necessity - a necessity that most Americans haven't faced until very recently.

Demographics - i.e. an influx of Spanish-speaking folks that will likely continue for the indefinite future - will ultimately cause that to change in the U.S. Future generations of Americans will become fluent in Spanish because they will need to. My oldest son, for example, has already learned a great deal of Spanish vocalulary in the past year because his school is teaching Spanish to children as young as Kindergarten age.

That's a good thing. I, too, have tried to become fluent in Spanish, although I'm a long way from accomplishing that goal. It's definitely a laudable thing to want our children to learn a second language. But it is most definitely NOT "embarassing" that most Americans have not at this point in our history become as fluent in other languages as our European counterparts.


UPDATE
For what it's worth, I also agree that "English Only" laws are crap. The absolute chutzpah of "English Only" advocates, especially in Southwestern states, trying to give second-class status to a language that was spoken there for 200 years (and in some cases for 300 years) before the first English-speaking person ever set foot in those places is untenable.


UPDATE # 2
As a side note, the "English Only" debate has exposed ignorance among even Progressive Era Democrats dating back to the 1920s when the first female governor of a Southern state, Texas Governor Miriam "Ma" Ferguson, responded to efforts to introduce bi-lingual education thusly:

If the English language was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for the school children of Texas.

Ireland Sticks a Fork in Plans for EU Power Grab; Tells Elitists in Brussels to Pound Sand [UPDATED]

Erin go bragh!

DUBLIN, Ireland - Ireland's voters have rejected the European Union reform treaty, a blueprint for modernizing the 27-nation bloc that cannot become law without Irish approval, electoral officials said Friday.

In a major blow to the EU, 53.4 percent of Irish voters said no to the treaty. Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen now will join other EU leaders at a summit next week to try to negotiate a new way forward.

Anti-treaty groups from the far left and right mobilized "no" voters by claiming that the treaty would empower EU chiefs in Brussels, Belgium, to force Ireland to change core policies — including its low business tax rates, its military neutrality and its ban on abortion.

***
Rural and working-class areas were almost universally anti-treaty. Better-off parts of Dublin registered stronger support for the EU. In suburban south Dublin, a largely wealthy and highly educated district, the "yes" camp triumphed with 63 percent of the vote. But a neighboring, scruffier district voted 65 percent "no."

***
Anti-treaty pressure groups warned that the EU would use treaty powers to reduce Ireland's ability to control its own tax rates and maintain a ban on abortion...

(emphasis added)

My Comments:
We'll soon be seeing stories about the "ungrateful" Irish who have "taken advantage" of EU economic development projects in order to fuel their "Celtic Tiger" economy, but who have now "betrayed" that investment in their well-being by turning their backs on the rest of Europe.

But it's not like the rest of Europe haven't benefited from Ireland's development into an economic power.


UPDATE (15 June)
What other blogs are saying about the Irish vote:

Prolife Victory in Ireland at The Truth About Margaret Sanger (with lots of links to the responses at several other blogs, which I therefore will not list here)

Did the Irish save civilization again? at From Burke to Kirk and Beyond ...

How The Irish Saved Civilization - AGAIN! at Island Breezes

All Hail the Irish! at What's Wrong with the World

Treaty of Lisbon: "The Irish Save Civilization", Part II? at Against the Grain

The general reaction to the Irish vote seems to be overwhelmingly positive, with many alluding to Thomas Cahill's best-selling book from over a decade ago titled How the Irish Saved Civilization.

But then there's this reaction, which responds to my post (as the blogger in question is wont to do) with labeling and questioning of motives.

Hey, Tony, KISS MY ROYAL IRISH ARSE, YOU FECKIN' FECK!

I'll be sure and call up my cousins in Ennis, Co. Clare (with whom I've had the pleasure of staying on a couple of my visits to Ireland, and with whom I correspond fairly regularly), and chastise them for their "Americanism" in voting down this latest effort at re-colonizing their country and re-imposing foreign rule.

And just to stir the blood a bit, here's my post from last year on the anniversary of the death of Ireland's greatest modern-day hero (and devotee of G.K. Chesterton), Michael Collins. By the way, the blogger above who took issue with this post also took issue with that one, as well.

Seems Tony has a problem whenever the Irish get too "uppity".