It's the Only Thing I Have to My Name After 8 Years of Blogging ...

... and these folks want to give it away to that old scoundrel Cardinal Law:

... Reader Victor Lam moves that [Anderson's] Law be changed to the Bernard Francis Law. I emphatically second that. The motion is moved and seconded. If Mr. Anderson agrees, I think it should henceforth be called the Bernard Francis Law or, alternatively, the Cardinal Law. What say you?

So, what say you? Should Anderson's Law instead be known as "the Cardinal Law"?

Honestly, I don't think it fits. Apart from not wanting to have something that originated here associated with that reprobate, let's not forget that Cardinal Law ACTUALLY DID (or aided and abetted) what Anderson's Law predicts someone will mention in an ad hominem fashion to distract from a completely unrelated discussion.

When someone inevitably mentions the scandal in a discussion completely unrelated to the scandal, is throwing Cardinal Law's name into the mix actually likely to steer the discussion back on course?

Sixth Anniversary of "Anderson's Law"

"As a debate involving the Catholic Church (either a discussion about the Church specifically, or a discussion in which the Church is taking a position) grows longer, the probability of someone mentioning the sex scandal approaches one." 

~ Anderson's Law

Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:   
See Anderson's Law

Today is the 8th Anniversary of this Blog

Time flies.

Some Shameless Self-Promotion ...

... using a tool that I learned about from the Regular Guy:





UPDATE
By the way, I hope no one takes this seriously. I was just staying up too late last night having a little fun with the Google Search Stories tool and the comments from the "What They're Saying" portion of my sidebar.

2010 Cannonball Catholic Blog Awards

Voting starts today in the 2010 Cannonball Catholic Blog Awards.

Last year, Pro Ecclesia actually won a Canonball Award - my one and only Catholic blog award in my entire 5 years of blogging.

This year, not even a frickin' nomination.

Thanks. Bastards.

;-)

5 Years of Blogging ...

... as of today.

Is 5 years too long to be doing this? In some ways, it seems like only yesterday that I began this blog. In other ways, that seems ages ago.

Now THAT'S What I Call "Fair and Balanced"

A new blog to the religion and politics scene, Stained Glass Politics, has reviewed this blog.

What I find most interesting and compelling about this particular review (aside from the fact that the review of my blog is one of the very first posts on Stained Glass Politics) is that the blog's proprietor, while acknowledging a different worldview than my own, presents my point of view accurately, fairly, and without dismissing my views as illegitimate or backward:

Jay Anderson takes his faith seriously. The law school graduate and former small-town mayor is a convert to Roman Catholicism, and holds a staunchly conservative interpretation of his religion. His blog, described as “a Catholic blog covering matters related to Church, Family, and Politics,” highlights current events that deal primarily with the role of religion in public life.

[...]

Agree or disagree, Jay Anderson’s blog is informed and relevant, and demands consideration as we look into how religion figures into the way individuals participate in the national discourse. Moreover, it’s more productive to engage in dialogue with people who sincerely believe in their faith, and in Catholicism I find that converts often argue most persuasively and passionately than ambivalent ‘cradle Catholics’. I like hearing what hardliners like Anderson have to say and how they see political events like the Massachusetts election because it is often so different from (1) the way I see the world and (2) the way the American media portrays people of faith, namely those with strong and vocal opinions...

[More]

In the context of an overall balanced appraisal, I can even overlook the description of me as a "hardliner".

;-)

Thanks to Stained Glass Politics for its fair and balanced assessment of this blog, for expressing disagreement agreeably, and for setting an example to me to try to do a better job of being less rancorous toward those with whom I have religious and political differences.

Noted Loser Bob Shrum Crawls Out from Under Rock, Invokes Anderson's Law

Deal Hudson reports at InsideCatholic:

Bob Shrum, consultant to the losing presidential campaigns of Gore and Kerry, emerged from beneath his rock recently to post a tirade against Bart Stupak and the Catholic bishops.

A graduate of two Jesuit universities, Shrum deems himself qualified to pronounce the position of Stupak and the bishops on abortion in the health care bill to be "at odds with the social teachings I learned in Catholic school."

Even worse, the insistence of Stupak and the bishops to keep federal funding for abortion out of the bill "transgresses the line drawn by JFK in 1960."

Half a century later, the bishops are attempting to achieve by indirection what they cannot achieve outright—a partial ban on a woman’s right to choose. Having abetted thousands of priests in molesting children, they’re now set on abusing health reform.

[More]

"As a debate involving the Catholic Church (either a discussion about the Church specifically, or a discussion in which the Church is taking a position) grows longer, the probability of someone mentioning the sex scandal approaches one."

~ Anderson's Law


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
President Goes to War Against Marriage and the Catholic Church: How Will the Bishops Respond?

A Personal Message from Bishop Blair

Vaguely Familiar

"Godwin's Law" for Sex Scandal Revisited

A Version of Godwin's Law for the Sex Scandals

Frum Sees Writing on the Wall: Dreams of "New Majority" Created in His Image and Likeness Dashed

David Frum, self-appointed arbiter of who belongs in the "big tent" and who doesn't, has changed the name of his virtually-unread-except-by-liberals blog from the wishful thinking of "New Majority" to the alliterative (and self-promoting) but otherwise mundane "Frum Forum":

... We consulted at length with a brilliant friend of mine, one of the nation’s leading experts on branding. Her advice was direct and powerful: ”Nobody knows what the ‘next majority’ will look like. Maybe President Obama will be re-elected and your hopes of building a new modernized Republican majority will go unrealized for a long time to come.” In any event, she continued, whether Republicans return to majority or remain in minority status, the world of internet political commentary is a world built around individual personalities. Think DrudgeReport, HuffingtonPost, AndrewSullivan.com, Breitbart.TV. Her advice: Put my name on the thing...

Yeah, whatever. More likely no one is buying the load of crap you're selling. A "New Majority" made up of a bunch of people acting just like the same John McCain (i.e. Democrat-lite) who just last year lost the Presidency to a freshman Senator who had never accomplished anything of note? Gee, Frum, I wonder why more people aren't just all over your concept for "re-making" the GOP?

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Loser.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Bee-Yotch. Slapped.

The "Elizabeth Bennett Conservatives"

Pot ... Kettle

Another Elitist "Conservative" Likes the Cut of Obama's Jib

The Liberal Media's Elitist Conservative Rats Leave the Sinking Ship

What is "Conservatism"? [UPDATED]

42 Is The New 35

Really ... it is.

Results for the 2009 Cannonball Awards ...

... are in.

A belated thank you to our friend the Carolina Cannonball for hosting these awards, and to all of you who voted for this blog and helped carry the day for best blog in the category of Potpourri of Popery.

I'm not sure this blog quite fits the category, but thanks anyway.

Vaguely Familiar

This post today by Rich Leonardi seems vaguely familiar.

A Former Small-Town Mayor's Perspective: the Laughable Response from the "Religious Left" to Gov. Palin's "Community Organizer" Digs [UPDATED]

Well it looks like some group calling itself "Catholic Democrats" and others on the so-called "religious left" are going to try to make hay out of the GOP's decision to respond to the Obama Camp's derisive elitisim concerning Gov. Palin's experience as mayor of a town in Alaska by poking fun at Sen. Obama's work as a "community organizer":

Patrick Nielsen Hayden, of the blog Making Light has this entry, titled “Slime, and several answers to slime” on comments by Palin and Giuliani in their speeches on Wednesday. It, and I, and the bloggers quoted in the entry, especially found egregious, if not unChristian, Palin’s quip, “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.”

Joe Klein quotes in his blog at Time.com an e-mail he received from “from a group called Catholic Democrats.”

Catholic Democrats is expressing surprise and shock that Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech tonight mocked her opponent’s work in the 1980s for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. She belittled Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s experience as a community organizer in Catholic parishes on the South Side of Chicago, work he undertook instead of pursuing a lucrative career on Wall Street. In her acceptance speech, Ms. Palin said, “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.” Community organizing is at the heart of Catholic Social Teaching to end poverty and promote social justice.

Klein follows with this:

So here is what Giuliani and Palin didn’t know: Obama was working for a group of churches that were concerned about their parishioners, many of whom had been laid off when the steel mills closed on the south side of Chicago. They hired Obama to help those stunned people recover and get the services they needed—job training, help with housing and so forth—from the local government. It was, dare I say it, the Lord’s work—the sort of mission Jesus preached (as opposed to the war in Iraq, which Palin described as a “task from God.”)

This is what Palin and Giuliani were mocking. They were making fun of a young man’s decision “to serve a cause greater than himself,” in the words of John McCain. They were, therefore, mocking one of their candidate’s favorite messages. Obama served the poor for three years, then went to law school. To describe this service—the first thing he did out of college, the sort of service every college-educated American should perform, in some form or other—as anything other than noble is cheap and tawdry and cynical in the extreme.

Perhaps [Palin] didn’t know this when she read the words they gave her. But Giuliani—a profoundly lapsed Catholic, who must have met more than a few religious folk toiling in the inner cities—should have known. (“I don’t even know what that is,” he sneered.”) What a shameful performance.

Another blog quoted in the Making Light entry is this one from Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake, “GOP Thinks Organizing In Your Community Is Worthless”:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but without community organizers like Martin Luther King, Jr., we’d all still be dealing with separate water fountains for coloreds and Jim Crow Laws. And I mean the old ones, not the new poll tax crap that Hans Von Spakovsky keeps trying to sneak in through the sewers.

Oh, and ladies? No community organizers means that your voice doesn’t count for shit. No vote for you!

Lost your job and you need a hand with the utility bills or some food from the local church pantry? Suck it up, America, because the folks who used to extend a hand to those in need don’t count in Republican land. That “do unto others” crap has to stop, and Jesus was clearly just a rabble-rousing, do-gooder. Loaves, fishes, feeding the multitudes? Hogwash.

Your neighborhood watch program, to help supplement the police force whose budget keeps getting cut under the Bush Administration? Well, you don’t deserve a safe neighborhood and your efforts are useless anyway.

Cleaning up a local riverbed or a walking trail with your kid’s scout troop? Republicans think you are a loser.

Working with a job training or literacy program to help folks move from welfare to work? Republicans think your efforts deserve ridicule. Promoting a spay and neuter program at your local animal shelter? Republicans are laughing at you. Volunteer at your church pantry to help the least of these? Republicans are mocking you.

Country first? Only if you live in Republican country where they come first and the rest of us should take whatever they choose to trickle down on us.

But Palin is “pro-life” so she’s a good Christian, while people who try to help the already-born aren’t? That seems to be the message of too many on the “right” of our political spectrum. After all, it’s clear from reading the Gospels that preventing abortions was the only issue Jesus ever spoke about, while the poor and sick who were already adults just needed to get over it, right?

My Comments:
Ah, that’s rich. Obama’s team derides Gov. Palin's experience as merely that of a small-town hick mayor out in the boonies and, when she responds to their elitist snobbery by pointing out that her experience is actually greater than that of a “community organizer”, suddenly they’re going to feign offense? Suddenly it's Gov. Palin who is "mocking" the common man who is served by these "community organizers"? Suddenly it's Gov. Palin who is "dismissive" of the work of people of faith?

Pathetic. Predictable, but pathetic. And laughable.

Look, I don't think Gov. Palin disparages the work of community organizers. As Gov. Palin points out, she's been one herself. I've done it, too. And, believe me, it can be hard work.

But Sen. Obama has NO BUSINESS touting - as preparing him for the job of President - his experience as "community organizer" on the one hand, and then dismissing, disparaging, and denigrating the work of those of us who have served as mayors of small towns across this country (as if that were truly the extent of GOVERNOR Palin's experience, anyway) on the other. Don't slap us around and then expect us not to fire back.

Yes, Sen. Obama, your service as a community organizer is laudable. But then, so is Gov. Palin's service as a small-town mayor. And so was mine.

The difference, as Gov. Palin pointed out in her speech, is that your community service does not equip you with the executive experience to be President of the United States (and, yes, I will state for the record that I have more executive experience and just as much government experience as Sen. Obama).

Again, no one doubts the service to the common good that your work as a community organizer no doubt provided. As I mentioned, I've been there myself. Even the mayors of our Nation's smallest communities are "community organizers", as noted by Gov. Palin. For 7 years, I served as Mayor of the Town of Columbia, Virginia. Near the beginning of my first term, we embarked on a major effort to revitalize a town that had fallen on very hard times in the 30 or so years since it was nearly wiped out by Hurricanes Camille (1969) and Agnes (1972). I worked closely with our town's 5 churches to organize meetings, events, and people in order to promote local involvement in the efforts to create a revitalization plan. I worked hand-in-hand with county, state, and federal government officials (by the way, let me just tell you what a great guy and outstanding representative Congressman Virgil Goode is!) to bring much needed community-development block grants and transportation grants to Columbia (almost $1 million total). We provided decent housing for those who couldn't pay for improvements themselves. We fought against absentee landlords who care only about making a buck - housing poverty-stricken families in the most makeshift and pathetic of circumstances, caring little about making improvements to their properties and to the town. For our efforts, we got the Richmond Slimes-Dispatch doing an "investigative expose" (which came to NOTHING, by the way) on how the grant money we had received was being spent ... after the most egregious of the absentee landlords called in a favor with the paper to pay us back for our efforts against him. By the way, I and my fellow Town Council members got paid SQUAT for all the hard work we did to save our town.

While I'm sure Gov. Palin got paid for her work as mayor, I'm also fairly sure her experiences are similar to mine. As are, I would be willing to bet, the experiences of most of our Nation's small-town mayors.

So don't preach to me, Catholic lefties, all this crap about how Gov. Palin doesn't appreciate the work of "community organizers". Especially when she's been one herself, and more especially when her remarks came only in response to your guy's elitism and snobbery in continuing to dismiss the contributions and values of small-town America.


UPDATE
At National Review, Michelle Malkin also takes on the ginned-up umbrage of the "religious left" over the "community organizer" barbs:

... Team Obama was not amused. (Neither were the snarky left-wingers on cable TV who are now allergic to sarcasm.) They don’t get why we snicker when Obama dons his Community Organizer cape. Apparently, the jibes rendered Obama’s advisers sleepless.

In a crack-of-dawn e-mail to Obama’s followers hours after Giuliani and Palin spoke, campaign manager David Plouffe attempted to gin up faux outrage (and, more importantly, donations) by claiming grave offense on the part of community organizers everywhere. Fumed Plouffe:

Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack’s experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed. Let’s clarify something for them right now. Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies.

Let me clarify something. Nobody is mocking community organizers in church basements and community centers across the country working to improve their neighbors’ lives. What deserves ridicule is the notion that Obama’s brief stint as a South Side rabble-rouser for tax-subsidized, partisan nonprofits qualifies as executive experience you can believe in.

What deserves derision is “community organizing” that relies on a community of homeless people and ex-cons to organize for the purpose of registering dead people to vote, shaking down corporations, and using the race card as a bludgeon.

As I’ve reported previously, Obama’s community organizing days involved training grievance-mongers from the far-left ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). The ACORN mob is infamous for its bully tactics (which they dub “direct actions”); Obama supporters have recounted his role in organizing an ambush on a government planning meeting about a landfill project opposed by Chicago’s minority lobbies.

[More]

(emphasis added)

Ah yes. So, you see, Sen. Obama was doing "God's work" during those years he was rabble-rousing on behalf of ACORN (currently under investigation here in the Cleveland area for voter fraud) and working with an organization that is not above registering dead people to vote.

Now I see why certain left-leaning Catholic groups might be so upset. Perhaps they think that's what G.K. Chesterton was talking about in referring to "the democracy of the dead"?


UPDATE #2
Oh and have you heard this lame one?

"Jesus was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor."

Uhhhh, yeah. Jesus came to earth to be a "community organizer". Just like "The One". That's the ticket. And Gov. Palin is just like Pontius Pilate. Right.

(Test: Between Gov. Palin and Sen. Obama, which do you think would be more likely to utter the question "What is truth?")

"Jesus was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor." (Can't you just FEEL how smug and satisfied with themselves that they are for coming up with THAT one? Too bad its awful theology - see Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth.)


UPDATE #3
The New Republic on the "myth" of Sen. Obama's community organizing past.

Announcement: I'm Running for President

That way, when people question my executive experience (should I ever decide to run for office again in the future), not only can I point to my 7 years as Mayor of Columbia, Virginia, I can point to the fact that I ran for President in 2008 as "evidence" of my "executive experience".

Pride in My Work

I'm afraid this post isn't motivated by the best of intentions, being motivated as it is by my own pride and conceit. Nevertheless, here it is. I hope you'll forgive this exercise in indulging my own pride.

Every so often, some drive-by commenter will happen by this blog and disagree either with something I've written or with my overall perspective and, rather than address that with which he or she disagrees, will engage in ad hominem commentary. That commentary generally takes one of two forms. The first and most prevalent type of ad hominem attack comes in the form of personal and disparaging remarks about my family. The second type of ad hominem will hone in on this line from my "About Me" profile ...

"Having practiced law for a few years, I now work as a Senior Legal Analyst for a worldwide legal publisher."

... and will infer from this that I "couldn't cut it as a lawyer" or that I am a "failure".

My rule is to delete such ad hominems without comment. Attacks against my personal life are treated with the dismissal they deserve - my family is off limits to negative commentary, and I will not give satisfaction to the attacker by trying to defend those I love against such hate-filled personal nonsense. Attacks against my professional life are treated the same way.

Nevertheless, my own pride causes me to bristle at the notion that I am somehow a "failure" or that I "couldn't cut it" in the legal profession. I take great pride in my work and in doing a good job at whatever I do. I have had the fortune of being successful at almost everything that I've set my mind to, and I dismiss any notion that suggests that I did poorly at any job that I've held.

Yes, okay, it's pride. I DO take pride in my work and in being the best I can be. So, out of such pride, I'm going to provide some background on how I got to be where I am professionally.

When I graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law, I returned to Dallas and immediately went to work as an associate at one of the largest law firms in Texas. I was good at what I did, and got a lot of courtroom experience for being such a young attorney. The partners for whom I worked entrusted me with a great deal of responsibility and were laudatory of my efforts. I have no doubt that if I had chosen to continue practicing law, I would still be with that same firm and making a LOT of money as a successful partner.

But it just wasn't for me. Despite being good at what I did, I didn't enjoy it. Long hours and travel kept me away from home and family. The money was good. The fancy office was nice. The accolades of peers and the prestige of being an attorney at one of the most highly respected firms in Dallas was heady. But, for me, family comes first, and I was spending almost no time at home.

I had never intended on practicing law when I went to law school - I wanted to get involved in politics (high student loan debt helped push me in the direction of the large law firm, however). Furthermore, I was convinced that I needed to find a slower pace in a smaller locale so that I could spend more time at home with my family. My father's heart attack (which he survived) during my second year of practice, a family history of grandparents dying young from heart attacks, and a fellow attorney at the firm who had to retire in his early-to-mid-30s after having open-heart surgery, further convinced me to seek out a less stressful career and more leisure time at home with family.

I moved back to the Charlottesville, Virginia area, where I had spent 3 years while in law school, and found a job where I could continue to use my legal skills and background working for a legal publisher. It was at this time that I was elected Mayor of Columbia, a position in which I served for 7 years before leaving to move to Norwalk, Ohio. You can read the story of how we came to make that move shortly after our becoming Catholic here. Every move I've made personally and professionally has been to achieve what's in the best interest of my faith and family.

In conclusion, if wanting a slower-paced lifestyle in a smaller community for the sake of my family, my health, and my faith means I'm a "failure" who "couldn't cut it", then I'll take that sort of "failure" every time. I'm certainly much happier with the life I have now (struggling from paycheck to paycheck to make ends meet) than I ever was while practicing law and raking in the big bucks. I know my family is much happier with Daddy at home than they would've been with Daddy always at the office or on the road.


UPDATE (also posted in comments)
A real-life story, which also offers an interesting view into the mindset of "enlightened liberals":

One day several years ago, when we still lived in Virginia, I was walking down Charlottesville's "Downtown Mall" (a street that has been bricked over, closed to traffic, and turned into an artsy shopping and restaurant district), and I ran into one of my favorite professors from UVA law school - a world-renowned constitutional scholar (you can probably figure out who it is based on that info).

He asked me what I had been doing with my life since law school. I told him that I had practiced law with a large firm in Dallas for a number of years before chucking it all and moving back to Virginia for a slower-paced lifestyle. I told him that I was Mayor of Columbia and a legal analyst at the legal publisher in town. My professor's countenance dropped - going from smile to a look of puzzlement as, I'm sure, he wondered why anyone would "waste" such a "fine education" from a top-10 law school.

His response (with a laugh and a smile to soften the insult): "I guess it beats panhandling in the streets."

Okay, that's not the worst of it. His wife, who was with him, pointed out to him that we just so happened to be standing next to a guy sitting on the ground ... (wait for it) ... panhandling. The couple slunk off in embarassment.

I laughed out loud. They were more concerned that they may or may not have insulted a perfect stranger "panhandling in the streets" than they were about the fact that my now former favorite professor had just insulted his former student's career choice. Oh well, at least they exhibited a "preferential option for the poor".

The only thing that could have made it any funnier would have been if they had dropped a dollar in the guy's hat out of guilt as they slunk away.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
A Few Groundrules for Commenting at This Blog

Hiatus Interruptus

"I am heartily ashamed of myself... But don't despair; it'll pass, and no doubt more quickly than it should."

~ Mr. Bennett, Pride & Prejudice
(BBC/A&E, 1995)

I return after only 1 week from my self-imposed exile, "no doubt more quickly that [I] should", but hopefully duly chastened. I pray that I have learned from my mistakes, and that I will be a better person and therefore a better blogger. It is my hope that this blog will benefit from a dose of humility.

"But don't despair" - I do not plan to change the focus or the personality of this blog. Much to the chagrin, I'm sure, of some who think my blogging too heavy on "machismo" and "testosterone", I have no intention of watering down that aspect of this blog. I have no interest in a version of Catholicism that is limp-wristed, namby-pamby, and devoid of masculinity, and I will continue to blog in a vein that sees Catholic "manliness" as a virtue.

And, similarly, I see absolutely no use in a blog that is devoid of personality, and this one is going to reflect my own personality, for good or ill.

But there is a definite line between "blogging with personality" - in my case, in a somewhat lighthearted or satirical fashion that pokes fun at the world and the people in it - and engaging in uncharitable commentary ... wallowing in negativity ... questioning people's motives ... calling into question whether those with whom one disagrees are authentically "Catholic" or "Christian" ... engaging in mindless name-calling, etc. After spending some time reflecting on those areas where this blog has fallen short, I hope to do a better job of avoiding caustic, overbearing, arrogant, and uncharitable dialogue here at Pro Ecclesia.

Rick Lugari's admonition that it is "wise to test our commentary by determining if it would be something we would say to the person directly or at least presume the person would read it" is exactly right. Or, as my momma would say, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."

Again, that's a fine line when you're commenting on current events affecting the Church, the state, the family, and the culture. Sometimes one feels compelled to call a spade a spade in the interest of yelling "STOP!" to a world and a culture that seems to have gone mad. But charity should, nevertheless, ALWAYS govern those sorts of comments.

At other times, the inflated egos of the strong and powerful are just begging to be lampooned. Take, for example, my lighthearted appellation of Venezuelan strongman, Hugo Chavez, as a "Castro-Loving Commie Bastard™". Now, I suppose that could be considered "mindless name calling". But, on a gut level, CLCB™ doesn't seem to me to really cross that line of inappropriate commentary when used in reference to a communist thug dictator who takes Castro as his role model, replaces statues of the Blessed Virgin with monuments to a murderer like Che Guevara, and who seems determined to drag the hemisphere back to the bad old days of Marxist revolution in an effort to resuscitate a discredited socio-political system of governance/control. I could be completely wrong, but to me that seems to be fair game.

In contrast, however, when a 40-year-old man publicly comments on a young woman's virtue (or lack thereof), and heaps scornful epithets like "skank" and "ho" upon her,that clearly and most definitely crosses the line of what is appropriate for polite and decent commentary. Especially on a blog that labels itself as "Catholic". Such behavior is singularly lacking in Catholic chivalry, and is not the mark of a gentleman. And I am heartily ashamed for having crossed that line in my blogging.


NB: A special thanks to all of you who commented, and/or emailed, and/or logged blog posts (and, in one instance, telephoned) to give me your words of support for this blog and my efforts here. Your kind words are appreciated more than you know.

YUCK!

"Godwin's Law" for Sex Scandal Revisited

(Hat tip: Thanks, Victor!)

Last week, I wrote about a version of "Godwin's Law" that could apply to the Church's sex abuse scandal. Rich Leonardi of Ten Reasons linked to my post, but beyond that, it didn't receive much attention in St. Blog's - not that I really expected it to.

Now, a week later, the following item appears in John McCaslin's "Inside the Beltway" column in Thursday's edition of The Washington Times:

A Catholic priest who regularly prays outside an abortion clinic wrote of his positions in a newspaper column, to which two letter-writers responded.They dismissed the church's teaching against abortion on the grounds of the recent sex scandals -- in which church officials covered up accusations of sexual abuse, mostly by homosexual priests against teenage boys.

Catholic blogger Jay Anderson reacted by proposing a Catholic equivalent to the Internet rule known as Godwin's Law "for invocations of 'the Scandal' as a rhetorical device."

"It would go something like this: 'As a debate involving the Catholic Church (either a discussion about the Church specifically, or a discussion in which the Church is taking a position) grows longer, the probability of someone mentioning the sex scandal approaches one.'

"And then there's its corollary: 'Once such reference to the Scandal is made, whoever mentioned the Scandal has automatically "lost" whatever debate was in progress,' " writes Mr. Anderson, a former mayor of Columbia, Va.

"Perhaps the Scandal is still too recent," he concludes. "But surely, at some point in time, such ad hominem argumentation against the Church and its teachings needs to be consigned to similar status as inappropriate Nazi comparisons."

First, the National Catholic Register. And now, The Washington Times. I'm liable to get a big head if all the media attention continues. Sarah won't be able to live with me.

;-)


UPDATE
Thanks to Rich Leonardi, Dale Price, Amy Welborn, Dom Bettinelli, Julie D., Publius, Leticia, KaleJ, and The Curt Jester for their links.


UPDATE # 2 (2 April)
Dave Hartline also covered the Washington Times mention yesterday at Catholic Report. Thanks, Dave!


UPDATE # 3 (4 April)
Mark Shea has given the story new life by covering it at his blog. Thanks, Mark!