Must America Die?

Chances are pretty good that you’ve already seen some mention of today’s Los Angeles Times story about the proud abortionist (in Arkansas–why is the LAT reporting on that?–but anyway…). Amy Wellborn has a thread going on it. Pretty sickening individual, I’m sure we can all agree, and not much to say that hasn’t already been said, once you’ve remarked on the novelty of his owning up to what he does.

But I’m intrigued by a comment on the Open Book thread from someone who signs himself as "GFvonB": "Sadly, he /is/ an American Hero.  This is why America must die if the pro-life cause is to be victorious."

I certainly don’t want America to die, and as I’ve said more than once here I think the struggle for our national soul is far from settled. But I do have the nagging fear that the combination of our wealth, our pride, and a misguided conception of freedom may mean that only some kind of catastrophe will change our direction.

By the way, GFvonB has a blog called RadTrad, which in turn is part of a blog ring called The League of Evil Traditionalists.

—Maclin Horton

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Sunday Night Journal 11/27/2005

Thanksgiving Morning

—Maclin Horton

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Sunday Night Journal 11/20/2005

Is Evolutionism Science?

I don’t think so.

—Maclin Horton

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Dear Abby, Oh Dear

Tom Storck had a great article in CetT in which he used the advice handed out by either the Dear Abby or Ann Landers column as a source of insight into American culture. I admit to being a compulsive and frequently appalled reader of Dear Abby. Today’s column connects with the ongoing discussion of annulments we’ve been having here.

"Unhappy in Nebraska" describes her sad situation: she’s thirty, married to a guy in his mid-50s with whom she has an 8-year-old daughter; she wants to have more children, he’s had a vasectomy; she wants to go back to college, he doesn’t want her to. Etc. She has tried to ignore her feelings, been to counseling, taken anti-depressants, and now wants out. She concludes: "At what point is it OK to make a decision you know will hurt someone else just for yourself?"

Sez Abby (now the original Abby’s daughter, as you may know): "Because counseling and medication haven’t helped, the time is now, while your husband can still find a woman whose values are more similar to his own than yours are."

There is a whole, whole lot of what’s gone and going wrong with marriage and for that matter with our culture in general in this exchange.

—Maclin Horton

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Two Horsepersons of the Apocalypse

Surely the end is near. I just read that last night’s Country Music Association awards broadcast closed with Dolly Parton and Elton John singing "Imagine."

Granted, the CMA is just a trade association pushing "product," but still–if the CMA no longer sees any difference between country music and a soft-core totalitarian daydream, and if its audience doesn’t care, the American fiber is farther gone in decay than I thought. Somebody please tell me this song was booed.

—Maclin Horton

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A Sight to See

The proximity of Mars to the full moon last night was strikingly beautiful. At about 11pm Central time the moon was up around maybe 75 degrees, with Mars very bright a few degrees almost directly below it, in position and proportion like a very bright jewel on a pendant below a very bright white face. I’m sure more or less the same view will be available tonight, so if it’s clear where you are don’t miss it. (Hat tip to Mark Shea for the reminder).

—Maclin Horton

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Sunday Night Journal 11/13/2005

Ending Up

It ain’t over till it’s over. All the way over.

—Maclin Horton

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Our Person

I have a habit of collecting examples of language, particularly biblical and liturgical texts, mangled by a misguided effort to make them gender-neutral. It’s not particularly healthy, a bit like the compulsion to pick at a scab, but for the similarly afflicted, here are a few recent instances:

My wife, for whom it would be very out of character to create a slanderous lie, claims that a written history of a parish in this area contained a reference to "Our Person of Lourdes."

But at least that wasn’t an official translation of an important text. Last week’s Gospel (I think it was last week’s) was the passage traditionally translated as "Call no man father." I’ve forgotten the exact phrasing now, but what we heard at Mass substituted "no one" or "no person" or something like that. Fairly harmless, really, but funny: a scrupulousness as to whether it might be offensive to assume that fathers are male. Although I suppose the impetus was not so much that as to try to reduce the overall number of references to maleness.

And this one, from the Sept. 11 Gospel: "No one lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself." I’ve been puzzling over whether this is actually ungrammatical or just very weird. Perhaps someone with more technical command of grammar can tell me. I think it’s grammatically wrong. "One lives for oneself" is
perfectly fine. But the negation of the first "one" seems to wreck the
reference of the second "one." At any rate I’m a bit hyper-sensitive to this sort of thing, and my reception of that reading couldn’t have been more disrupted if the reader had pulled out a chalkboard and dragged his fingernails over it.

Oops, sorry, "his or her fingernails." "One’s fingernails"? Whatever.

—Maclin Horton

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An Open Wound

Recently we received news that a couple we know, a couple we were once
close to, had received an annulment.

They had been married for twenty-odd years, had brought nine children into the world, and had homeschooled them. They were an NFP teaching couple and had taught marriage preparation classes in their diocese. The husband for years earned his living working for a Catholic prolife apostolate. In other words, this was the archetypal Catholic countercultural family, deeply committed to their faith: well-read, articulate Catholics. Then a few years ago the wife, in what her friends can only suppose was a fit of menopausal madness, left her husband and children (remember when midlife crises were only a male
phenomenon?). After some time she applied first for a civil divorce, then for an annulment. To everyone’s dismay but hers, the annulment was granted.

I understand that the annulment process is highly personal. Perhaps some deep dark secret lurked in their past. If so it must have been deep indeed: to all appearances the husband is a fine fellow, even-tempered and loving. The wife, while unduly intense, struck everyone who knew her as bright and
devout.

This annulment seems to those of us who knew them as a hypocritical outrage. My reaction was if they can get an annulment anyone can.

While I recognize that there are valid grounds for annulments, and know many cases where this is true, when I see this sort of apparent abuse, I think that in such cases, where clear grounds for annulment do not exist, it would be better to adopt the Orthodox approach: remarriage is allowed as a concession to human weakness, but it is not a sacramental union([and remarriage to the partner
in adultery is not allowed). The service is penitential, and the couple is expected to abstain from Holy Communion for a fixed time afterwards.

At least with this praxis the offending party cannot pretend all is well. As it is, my friend, who initiated the breakup of her marriage and inflicted untold harm on her family, can marry her new man in a big Catholic wedding if she wishes, walking down the aisle with a conscience assauged by the Church itself.

That the Church has come to this–providing excuses for sins against God and man–is a scandal, an open wound in the Body of Christ.

Lord have mercy.

—Daniel Nichols

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The French “Riots”

I can’t decide which commentators are more frustrating: the ones who see this as a Muslim insurrection, pure and simple, or the ones who see no element of that at all, and can’t bring themselves to describe the perpetrators of the violence as anything more than "youths" (or maybe "unemployed youths"). The ones who pronounce France as effectively conquered, or the ones who think social programs are the answer.

As best I can tell, though, one outcome that seems possible or even probable is the recognition of areas of France as being self-governing by Muslim councils, and that’s disturbing. Opinions?

By the way, I put "riots" in quotes because that doesn’t really seem to be the right word after–what? twelve days?–even if "insurrection" or "intifada" may be overstatements.

—Maclin Horton

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