Is This Really a Bad Idea?

The city of Topeka, Kansas is coming under fire because it has announced that, due to lack of resources, it will no longer prosecute misdemeanor domestic violence cases.  This follows the Shawnee County District Attorney's announcement that that agency will no longer prosecute misdemeanors.

Naturally, this is being made to look like a regression back to the Neanderthal era, when a caveman could get away with clunking a woman over the head with a club and dragging her off by her hair.  "When an abusive partner is arrested, the victim's danger level increases," says Becky Dickinson, interim director of the YWCA Center for Safety and Empowerment. "The abuser will often become more violent in an attempt to regain control. Letting abusive partners out of jail with no consequences puts victims in incredibly dangerous positions."

What doesn't get mentioned is the fact that domestic violence has been politicized to such an extent that it is almost impossible to deal with it in a common-sense, reasonable manner.  Section 21-5414(a) of the Kansas Statutes defines domestic battery as follows (emphasis added):

(a) Domestic battery is:

(1) Knowingly or recklessly causing bodily harm by a family or household member against a family or household member; or

(2) knowingly causing physical contact with a family or household member by a family or household member when done in a rude, insulting or angry manner.

Section 21-5414(c)(1) defines a "family or household member and provides in relevant part:

"Family or household member" means persons 18 years of age or older who are spouses, former spouses, parents or stepparents and children or stepchildren, and persons who are presently residing together or who have resided together in the past, and persons who have a child in common regardless of whether they have been married or who have lived together at any time. "Family or household member" also includes a man and woman if the woman is pregnant and the man is alleged to be the father, regardless of whether they have been married or have lived together at any time.... 

A couple of things become immediately apparent.  First, in an age when the status of "victim" is prized so highly, any person aggrieved by someone living under the same roof has an inordinate amount of leverage to invoke draconian penalties against the other party, including the near-total and irretrievable loss of his Second Amendment rights under the federal Violence Against Women Act, whose sanctions are triggered by a misdemeanor conviction related to domestic violence -- even if the conviction is for a lesser offense.  Thus is a further wedge driven between family members in the shape of a hair-trigger "right" to invoke the coercive police powers of the state, instead of resorting to the charitable resolution of domestic disputes.

Secondly, it is clear that the law ranks a trivial, non-harmful incident during a fight -- say, a push -- with a bloody beat-down that lands a woman in the hospital with bruises and broken bones.  As a denizen of the criminal justice system, I can attest that a good many domestic violence cases are of the push variety, where no one was actually physically injured.  Thus is authentic domestic violence trivialized.   

So before we start condemning the city of Topeka for setting the clock back to the Neolithic Age, perhaps we ought to take stock of the consequences of political correctness on the law of domestic violence, before we all end up in the same fiscal bind.

The Real Discrimination

Jesus, Parent 1, and Parent 2 most kind,
Bless us now and in death's agony.

It has been announced that henceforth applicants for British passports will not give the names of their mothers and fathers, but instead will be asked about "Parent 1" and "Parent 2."  This is in response to pressure from the homosexual lobby, which complains of "discrimination" against the children of same-sex "parents."

I think the best response to this so far comes from Fr. John Boyle of Caritas in Veritate, who says:

When you enter the world of political correctness you end up discriminating against those who have natural rights, the right of a father and a mother to be recognised as such, not simply as a parent. "Parent" is a term that includes both father and mother but does not distinguish between them. Each has a right to be recognised. Feminists should protest about the lack of recognition of the woman as mother. In this sense, all distinction between the sexes is denied, which is of course one of the fruits of the denial of the purpose of sex: the generation of offspring. This denial begins at contraception.

In our rush to acquire "rights" to things we have no business pursuing, we chuck our legitimate rights out the window.  Then one fine day we will wake up and find ourselves chained up from head to toe, and wonder why.

So Much for "Choice"

What was the comment attributed to Henry Ford about the Model-T: you can have it in any color you like, as long as it's black.  Under the current leftist regime, health care is to be the new Model-T: we can have it in any color we like, as long as it clashes with natural law and Church doctrine.  Archbishop John C. Nienstedt of the Archdiocese of Minneapolis & St. Paul is drawing our attention to how the new Model-T threatens to run over our freedom to practice our Catholic faith.  An excerpt:

Under HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (a[n alleged] Catholic), the department is imposing a "preventative services" mandate requiring all private health plans — including ones administered by the church and its agents — to provide coverage for surgical sterilizations, prescription contraceptives approved by the FDA, and "education and counseling" for "all women of reproductive capacity."

...

Unfortunately, this is the logical result of a seismic change in this administration's approach to religious groups involved in providing social services to, among others, the poor, the homeless, the sick, the immigrant.

It began when President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton started using the term "freedom of worship" as distinct from what we have always known as "freedom of religion."

Under the concept of "freedom of worship," church agencies are restricted to hiring employees only from their own denomination and providing services for clients only from their own denomination.

Such a concept restricts Christian believers in their charitable outreach to society and, in effect, encloses them within their own sanctuaries.

This is radical secularism at its epitome. It is an affront to the centuries of Christian service offered by churches to clients of all backgrounds, color or creed. And, it is the slippery slope to a completely secularized state wherein people of religious conviction will be required to privatize their beliefs and in doing so, at least for Catholics, render their faith meaningless.

The archbishop urges Catholics to make their voices heard on this issue and write letters of opposition to Kathleen Sibelius and our elected representatives, and also to write to our representatives in Congress to support the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act (H.R. 1179, S. 1467).  

Catholics have been lying down on the job for decades, ever since we stopped listening to the Magisterium and started listening to the world.  The acceptance of contraceptives led to the acceptance of abortion on demand, as surely as night follows sundown; and more and greater evils continue to flow from this capitulation.  Time for us to clean up our own acts, and take back the lost ground.

H/T Fr. Z.

A Better Way to Commemorate 9/11

Against all odds: the Battle of Lepanto, 1571

A few weeks ago, I commented in this space about how America's quest for law, order and security has ceased to reflect a civilized order.  Now, ten years after the Islamist outrage that has provided Big Government with a convenient excuse to balloon out to ever vaster proportions, one woman is fighting back.

On March 31, 2011, a blogger named Amy Alkon refused to go through the naked scanner at the airport.  She decided not to submit quietly to the obligatory body grope that was her only alternative to the scanner, but instead to protest by sobbing loudly at being searched and bereft of her dignity without probable cause or even reasonable, articulable suspicion.  When the searching fingers of the TSA goon-ette got rather too searching and too rough -- repeatedly -- Amy took her name down and consulted a lawyer.  And also blogged about it.  Enter attorney Vicki Roberts, who sent Amy a letter on behalf of the goon-ette demanding half a million dollars for slander, libel and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Amy's own lawyer, Marc Randazza, fired off a response that ought to be required reading for anyone about to board a plane in the post-9/11 era.  A choice excerpt:

After the 9/11 attacks, America wallowed in fear, and ignoble politicians took advantage of that national temporary psychosis. In doing so, they foisted an intrusive security apparatus upon us, but one that was never effective at making us safer. It was, however, effective at rolling back our rights under the Fourth Amendment. We may have killed Osama Bin Laden this year, but he actually defeated the American way of life ten years ago.  On September. 11, 2001, America went from "the land of the free and the home of the brave" to a nation of mewling cowards, eager to give up their liberties for perceived "safety." One of the worst symptoms of this transformation is the TSA and its minions of blue-shirted "officers." As numerous investigations of these checkpoints' efficacy reveal, anyone with a marginal IQ and the desire to evade them can and will do so. 

While the TSA fails miserably in providing security, it excels in undermining our protections under the Bill of Rights. This petty army has done its best not only to grind the Fourth Amendment into dust, but to strip us of our dignity as human beings. The Internet is replete with videos of travelers being groped by the TSA in a way that would result in sexual assault prosecutions for people other than TSA agents, all while the victims cry, protest, and express their horror. Your client may feel that she is in no way culpable for these wrongs, but her continued employment by the TSA and her actions against Ms. Alkon are an integral and inseparable part of the TSA’s abuse of all Americans. Fortunately for all of us, people like my client take the position that TSA agents cannot simply do whatever they want – not without dissent.

Kudos to Amy Alkon for not just bending over for the enemies of liberty.  While Mayor Bloomberg purges the official 9/11 commemorations of clergy and first responders, others have found a more appropriate way to cherish the memories of those who died on that bright September morning ten years ago because our enemies hate freedom.

Throwing Your Heart in the Trash

He who is sated loathes honey, but to one who is hungry everything bitter is sweet.  

Proverbs 27:7

Now that the feminists have made the world safe for neanderthals by clearing away all the rules and taboos and social norms that once kept boorish behavior in check, and put the kibosh on the sexual exploitation of women, all sorts of things are acceptable that should not be.  And now that the unacceptable is not only acceptable but respectable, many women seem unable any longer to distinguish between a good catch and a loser.  It is at once amazing, frustrating and heartbreaking to see what members of my sex are prepared to put up with in the name of Not Being Alone.  In our oversexed world, full of promiscuity, fatherless families and irreligion, we have been trained to view ourselves as nothing.

This is a depressing tide that I cannot stem alone.  But I still want to do my poor bit to shed some light into this overwhelming darkness.  So, for all the ladies out there who are in a bad situation or teetering on the brink of one:

Your Boyfriend Is Probably a Loser If:

...He Is Violent and/or Emotionally Abusive.  Yes, this should be obvious, but sadly, for many, it is not.  Where there is true love, there is peace and trust.  Real love wants nothing but the best for the beloved; in fact, the ultimate goal of real love is the salvation of the other person as well as oneself.  No one who truly loves you is going to use physical force on you.  Period.  No one who truly loves you is going to terrorize you, or keep you in a constant state of frenzy, or belittle you or manipulate you.  Such behavior is repugnant to true love.  True love would rather die than treat the beloved that way.  If that is the treatment you are getting, run, and don't look back. 

...He Is Chronically Unemployed.  Bad times hit us all.  I have been out of work in my life, and I know exactly how harrowing it is to have bills mounting and no money coming in.  But if your boyfriend is out of work, what's he doing about it?  Is he out pounding the pavement?  Is he at the unemployment office coming the classifieds, sending out resumes, making phone calls, visiting potential jobsites, signing up with temp agencies?  Is he taking anything and everything that comes along, no matter how grueling or humiliating, until he finds a good job?  Sending out an application a day is not looking for work.  Devoting ten minutes a day to job hunting and spending the remaining 23 hours and 50 minutes to sleeping and playing video games is not looking for work.  Waiting to be named ambassador to the Court of St. James is not looking for work.  Is your boyfriend capable of holding a job for more than two weeks at a stretch, or has he had six jobs in the last six weeks?  Does he show up on time to work, and do his job diligently?  Or does he party all night and then sleep until 3:00 p.m.?  Is his mother paying his bills?  Are you?  If a guy is not serious about work, how can he be serious about a relationship?

...You Are Taking Care of His Financial Obligations to the Criminal Justice System.  First off, if your boyfriend has constant entanglements with the criminal justice system, don't walk, but run for the nearest exit.  He's not in all that trouble because the cops are out to get him: the common denominator in all his woes is him.  Secondly, if you are constantly bonding his ass out of jail, or paying his fines, or paying for his court-ordered domestic violence treatment that he has to do because he beat you up, that should tell you everything you need to know about what he thinks is your mission in life.

...You Are Constantly Accompanying Him to Court.  This might be your turkey's idea of a date, but it should not be that of any woman in her senses.  Add another three strikes if the reason you're accompanying him is because his driver's license is suspended and you are his ride.

...He Does Drugs or Abuses Alcohol.  A guy who does drugs is not taking care of business.  He is, however, wasting a lot of time and money on his habit.  Habitual drug use does impair your mental faculties over time, and it does stunt your emotional growth -- and yes, this includes marijuana.  Also, if the guy does illegal drugs in your home, or uses your car for his illegal drug activity, you could end up having your property forfeited out from under you.  Plus, people do steal in order to nourish their habit.  A guy who abuses alcohol will be a source of endless domestic misery even if he can hold down a steady job.  Marrying an addict will not cure the addiction.     

...He Asks You for Sex.  Startling -- in this day and age -- but true.  Sex is not merely recreational.  It is the deepest expression of love and commitment possible between two human beings.  It is a total self-giving.  It leads to the creation of life.  It calls for reverence.  That is why it is only for marriage.  Anything outside of marriage is a mockery.  A man who wants to bed a woman down without any sort of commitment is only using her.   Every good father understands this: that is why good fathers are the natural enemies of boys who want to bed down their daughters.  It is a shame that so many girls grow up in fatherless families, and therefore never learn this.  But if you have a good father, or know one, think about this: run from any man who wants to do anything with you that that father would protect his daughter from.

...He Wants You to Shack Up.  Remember this, ladies: shack-up relationships are made to be walked away from.  What else could possibly be the point of playing house without a marriage license?  Moving in with him will not make him marry you.  Repeat: moving in with him will not make him marry you.  All you are doing is providing this jerk with a housekeeper, an economic advantage (is he even working?) and commitment-free sex into the bargain.  And by the way, you will not hang on to the bum by getting pregnant by him, either.  If he really loved you and any future kids, why would he be afraid to enter into a legally binding commitment with you?

Ladies: it is perfectly okay to be alone.  In fact, that may well be your vocation.  It is far, far better to be alone than to live in the captivity of an emotional slave-driver.  If your man is a bum, he doesn't just need the love of a good woman.  If he is a bum, he is incapable of appreciating you or your love, except to the extent you serve his purposes for the moment; you cannot fix him.  If he is a criminal, it is beyond your poor power to reform him.  You will not succeed where the criminal justice system, with all its money and coercive police power and shrinks and probation officers, have failed.  The cube of sugar he tosses you now and then is not worth the gallons of bile you get the rest of the time. 

A man is not a unique fixer-upper opportunity.  If you can't cure a decent man of annoying little habits like leaving the seat up, or throwing his socks on the floor, or filling the bathroom sink with his whiskers, how much less can you expect to succeed in making Sir Galahad out of Al Capone.  

The Weapons of War: Old-Fashioned, But Never Out of Date

In my rejection of the wisdom and truth which the Church has preserved, and which she has used to establish the harmony and order set forth by Christ, I had set myself adrift on an uncharted sea with no compass.  I and others like me grasped with relief the fake certitude offered by the materialists and accepted this program which had been made even more attractive because they appealed for "sacrifice for our brothers."  Meaningless and empty I learned are such phrases as "the brotherhood of man" unless they have the solid foundation of belief in God's Fatherhood.

Bella V. Dodd, School of Darkness: The Record of a Life and of a Conflict Between Two Faiths, Devin-Adair, New York, 1954 at 233.

Thus Bella Dodd -- the Communist Party official who, after being expelled from the Party, reverted to Catholicism under the direction of Bishop Fulton Sheen -- sums up the wasted years of her life as an instrument of the Communist conspiracy.  The Party that preached comradeship and unity in the struggle to build a new world wrung as much work as it could out of her; then, when she ceased to be useful, it threw her naked out into the darkness.  But in the darkness, a door opened, and a friendly light streamed out: the light of Faith.

In her autobiography, Bella Dodd focuses primarily on her involvement in the teachers' union movement in New York, how this led her into the Communist Party, and what then ensued.  She does not discuss the Communist plot to infiltrate the Catholic Church and destroy her from within; she does not mention the penetration of Communist agents into the clergy and ultimately the hierarchy; nor does she discuss the long-range plan to make the Church completely unrecognizable.  She does, however, illustrate the capital importance of taking seriously our obligation to know our faith well, and to be good soil for the seed.  Tracing her path from the cultural Catholicism of her childhood to the slow drift into Communism, and back to the Faith that she had abandoned, Dodd sheds light on some of the methods and tactics of the Enemy, particularly against well-intentioned yet poorly formed Christians.  However hoary these counterfeits and artifices may be, and however many times they have been deployed over the centuries, our own ignorance and short-sightedness still give them devastating effect:

-- False Asceticism.  This was a tactic of the Albigensian heretics that St. Dominic battled in the 13th century.  Observers comparing the threadbare Albigensians to the extravagant priests and bishops wallowing in luxury inevitably concluded that true virtue lay with the former.  So it was with the Communists.  Bella Dodd recounts her first meeting with international agent Harriet Silverman:

When she stood up to go I looked at her threadbare tweed coat, her shapeless hat, and I was moved by her evident sense of dedication....She was the new type of ascetic of our day, a type I was to find prevalent in the Communist Party.  She lived in a small remodeled apartment on the East Side and I climbed four steep flights to reach it.  The room had a cloistered atmosphere; it was lined with bookshelves on which I noticed Lenin's complete works, Karl Marx, Engels, Stalin, Bimba's History of the Labor Movement, and other books on sociology and labor.  There was nothing trivial there.  I noted no poetry.  On one wall hung a large picture of Lenin, draped with Red flags bearing the hammer and sickle.

School of Darkness at 66-67.

Dodd describes the power of false asceticism, which helped her persevere in Communism despite the occasional glimpse of the Party's fangs:

Harriet was ill the night I visited her.  She sat in an old flannel bathrobe and talked with intensity of plans to remake the world.  I was impressed by the fact that she was not concerned about her own poverty, and thought only of the working people of the world.  Suddenly I felt that my efforts to increase salaries for a few college teachers were insignificant.  She  made me feel ashamed of having a good job and a comfortable apartment.  So moved was I that I pressed on her all the money I had with me.

Id. at 67.

False asceticism also provided the Communist Party with martyrs, in mockery of the Church.  Consider the tragic example of the girl who spent herself unstintingly for the enemy of her Faith:

I remember especially an Irish "Catholic" girl, an organizer of the unemployed and a leader of mass demonstrations.  Helen Lynch was tubercular, but she never stopped working for the Party until she died.  Then the Communists claimed her as a martyr.

Id. at 71.

Sometimes poverty reflects true detachment from the goods of this world; and sometimes it is the outward manifestation of inward spiritual bankruptcy.  If we neglect prayer and study, how will we ever be able to tell the difference?

-- False Charity.  Whereas true charity demands nothing in return, and even delights in uplifting those who can never repay, Communist "charity" only indebted its victims to the Party, anesthetized them, and solidified its hold over them:

It was true that it was an infectious thing, this comradeship, for so often it helped in dire need such as Rent Parties where Communists gathered money to pay the rent of some comrade.  This sort of personal aid did much to overcome the doctrinaire aridity of orders by the "functionaries," the title given the bureaucrats, the skeleton staff which stand ready to take over when the Revolution comes to pass.

Id.

This is an especially dangerous weapon in an age when the character of true charity has become so distorted in the minds of so many.  Charity has come to mean "handouts," which gives it a bad name.  But even worse, it has come to mean refusing to speak the truth when speaking out is necessary for fear of making wrongdoers feel badly about their wrongdoing.  Like the rent parties that kept Communists and fellow travelers indentured, this false charity keeps people enslaved to sin. 

-- Divide and Conquer.  We see this weapon being deployed right now by means of the clergy sex abuse scandal.  What difference is there between what we are seeing today and what Dodd describes during the first half of the 20th century?

During the Spanish War the Communist Party was able to use some of the best talent of the country against the Catholic Church by repeating ancient appeals to prejudice and by insinuating that the Church was indifferent to the poor and was against those who wanted only to be free.

The Communist publicists carefully took for their own the pleasant word of Loyalist and called all who opposed them "Franco-Fascists.  This was a literary coup which confused many men and women.  Violent communist literature repeatedly lumped all of the Church hierarchy on the side of the "Fascists," and using this technique, they sought to destroy the Church by attacking its priests.  This was not a new tactic.  I had seen it used in our own country over and over again.  When the Communists organized Catholic workers, Irish and Polish and Italian, in labor unions they always drove a wedge between lay Catholics and the priests, by flattering the laity and attacking the priests.

Id. at 87-88.

Now, in the 21st century, we see unprecedented attacks on priests.  What Party functionary sitting in Communist headquarters in New York City in, say, 1938, could ever dream up the spectacle of Western governments proposing laws to effectively abolish the seal of the confessional -- much less imagine that one of them would be then-staunchly Catholic Ireland?

-- The Abolition of Distinctions among Men.  In Federalist No. 10, James Madison declared that the first object of government was to safeguard the "different and unequal faculties of acquiring property." These differences result in the unequal distribution of property, differing interests, and class distinctions.  After years and years of socialistic indoctrination, we tend to think of these things as bad in themselves; yet Madison understood that to safeguard the diversity of faculties is to safeguard liberty itself.  The Communists understood this too, and therefore made the destruction of all this diversity a priority:

A great leveling process was at work in American life and at that time it seemed to me a good thing.  So it also seemed to the Communist Party, but for a different reason.  Their professional leveling would fit teachers better into its class-struggle philosophy and so bring them to identify themselves with the proletariat.

Id. at 102.

For the last several decades, we have seen the same thing going on in the Church.  In the name of Vatican II -- which actually taught the opposite -- we have seen the attempt to abolish distinctions between clergy and laity.  We saw an effort to make the Pope just another bishop, one among many, without any special dignity or distinction.  We see it in the Order of Preachers, elements of which try to change reality by changing the language: abolishing the term "Third Order" and ordering Dominican laity to use the designation "O.P.", previously reserved to those in the religious life.  This is not reform, but destruction.

-- The Subversion of Women. At a couple of points in her book, Dodd gives us some insight into the Communists' use of women to achieve their destructive aims.  The Party made use of the Second World War in its bid to recruit women in re-making American society in its own image:

The Party did all it could to induce women to go into industry.  Its fashion designers created special styles for them and its song writers wrote special songs to spur them.  Use of womanpower in the war industries was, of course, inevitable, but it also fitted into the communist long-range program.  War-period conditions, they planned, were to become a permanent  part of the future educational program.  The bourgeois family as a social unit was to be made obsolete.

Id. at 153.

After the war, on orders from Moscow, an attempt was made to organize women into an international "peace" movement, appealing to their honorable intentions in order to corral them for Communist purposes.  Dodd explains the reasoning:

Since it was supposedly a movement for peace, it attracted many women.  But it was really only a renewed offensive to control American women, a matter of deep importance to the communist movement, for American women do 80 per cent of the family spending.  In the upper brackets they own a preponderance of capital stock and bonds.  They are important in the making of political decisions.  Like youth and minority groups, they are regarded as a reserve force of the revolution because they are more easily moved by emotional appeals.  So the Soviet campaign for peace was especially geared to gain support of the women.

Id. at 194-195.

Nowhere is the use of women as tools in the fight against the Church more apparent than in the creeping feminism that has penetrated parish and chancery all across the country, and that finds its worst expression in the quixotic crusade for women's ordination.  All mothers are women, and many teachers are women: corrupt the mothers and the teachers, and you end up with a new generation corrupted from childhood.  The feminist assaults on masculinity in general and the male priesthood in particular have shipwrecked the faith of many, destroyed many congregations of women religious and crippled priests.  (And have you noticed the disdain of feminists for Mary, the greatest woman who ever lived?)

The last of the weapons on this list is by no means the least, and seems particularly relevant in the United States:

-- Making Somebodies out of Nobodies.  Bella Dodd uses herself as an example of how and why the Communists advanced unknown figures to overnight prominence:

The "progressive" bloc at the State Federation convention that year decided to run me for a position in the State Federation of Labor.  It seems ridiculous to me now that one so newly come to the labor movement should have been pushed forward against the established machine.  But this, too, was a communist tactic, for Communists have no hesitation whatever in bringing unknown people forward into leadership, the more callow or ill-equipped the better, since they will therefore more easily be guided by the Party.  The weaker they are, the more certainly they will carry out the Party's wishes.  Suddenly and dramatically the Communist Party makes somebodies out of nobodies.  If tactics change, they also drop them just as quickly and the somebodies again become nobodies.  

Id. at 81.

Remind you of anybody you knOw?

Ever since the days of Senator McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee -- neither of whom, by the way, were mistaken -- it has been fashionable to ridicule "conspiracy theories."  But there is nothing theoretical or hypothetical about the great conspiracy of the 20th century on which Bella Dodd shines a spotlight in School of Darkness. Nor is there anything hypothetical or mythical about the ultimate author of this conspiracy -- or the war he continues to wage, using perhaps different tools but the same tactics that have served him so well and so often in the past.

P.S.: Keep praying for priests and bishops.

Dashing Ourselves on the Iceberg of Law, Order and Security

As a denizen of the criminal justice system, I can't help reflecting constantly on how much charity has cooled in the world.  It is not merely the crimes that people commit against one another that inspire these reflections.  More frequently, they are inspired by that which is done in the name of law and order.  We are now so enmeshed in a thicket of picky laws rigidly enforced that it is becoming increasingly difficult to go about one's business without running afoul of the authorities; and when we do, we suffer penalties out of all proportion to the gravity of the offense.  We put up with all this because we are led to believe that it is necessary, for the good of ourselves and of society at large.

My trip to Oakland a couple of weekends ago provided me with an especially sobering occasion to reflect upon the retreat of charity from the world, and how "necessity" provides us with excuses for driving it away.  At the Boise Airport, after having been divested of my shoes, my purse, and everything out of my pockets, I committed the unforgivable crime of not unpacking my liquid toiletry items from my carry-on suitcase before putting it through the X-ray machine.  A rubber-gloved TSA goon pawed through my personal items and held them up for public view.  While another set of goons in the background selected cute young girls out of the crowd of passengers to put through the naked scanner, I received a lecture about exceeding my ounce limitations for liquid shower soap.  As he shoved my soap, shampoo and toothpaste into a ziplock bag, the TSA goon sought to assure me of the indispensability of this degrading process.  "All this is necessary," he said, the corner of his mouth upturned.

Yeah?  When human beings are herded like cattle; made to take off their shoes and belts; groped or forced to stand naked (in effect) in front of an electronic scanner; subjected to a myriad of petty humiliations; crammed into a confined and cramped space for the duration of the flight, during which they are bossed around and generally treated like infants pursuant to federal law -- and are charged exorbitant rates for the privilege -- it is difficult, if not impossible to remember that we are incarnate spirits, made in the image and likeness of God.  Does this reflect a civilized order?  And if civilization is to collapse, what exactly are we defending that is worth all this?

Just as we are inclined to purchase peace at any price (and history is full of examples), it appears that we have allowed ourselves to be reduced to saving our hides at any price, as if there is nothing in this world or the next that is worse than death.  We will jettison every virtue, from modesty to charity, in order to stay alive; and in the process, we become slaves.  To quote a line from a famous Charlton Heston movie: is life in bondage better than death?

We must remember that we are not put on this earth for the sole purpose of prolonging our time on it.  Our overriding duty is to view this life in the light of eternity, and act accordingly.  So far from providing us a way of running from our problems, including threats to our security -- viewing the world in the light of eternity does not require us to jettison common sense -- this would actually provide us with the only really worthwhile solution. 

Can I Ask Just One Politically Incorrect Question Here?

In all honesty, I have not closely followed the Casey Anthony trial.  I haven't watched streaming video on the internet, and since I don't have cable or satellite or any other television signal coming into the house, I haven't seen most of the lurid coverage of the trial.  I did see part of the defense's closing argument, which I found tiresome as well as difficult to follow due to my not having seen most of the rest of the trial.  

One thing that does seem clear, however, is this: whatever the jury may have thought about the evidence that Casey Anthony was a miserable human being and a rotten mother, they did not think that it was enough to overcome the presumption of innocence on the most serious charges.  And now the floodgates of outrage open against the system, against the jury, and against the woman who is said to have chloroformed her child so she could go out and party.

So can I ask just one, tiny, politically incorrect question here?

Suppose that as soon as Casey Anthony found out she was pregnant, she had walked straight into a Planned Parenthood clinic and paid some doctor to abort that little girl.  Would we have gotten national outrage?  Wall-to-wall news coverage?  Twenty-four-hour legal pundit commentary?  Weeping talk-show hosts?  I mean, same outcome as what people generally believe now: a little girl, dead by her own mother's hand.

Yes.  I, too, hear only crickets.

Atheist BULLboard: Free Speech?

In a sophomoric attempt to be provocative, and proving once again that a fool and his money are soon parted, something called American Atheists spent 20 large to put up the following billboard near the Lincoln Tunnel in New Jersey:

One of the questions before the house is: are these people champions of free speech?  Indeed, is this a legitimate use of the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment?  Some brief observations:

-- Error does not have a right to be heard. Persons who promulgate errors do not have a right for their errors to be heard. A right of one person to be heard necessarily entails an obligation on the part of the rest of us to listen. Who wants to be forced to listen?

-- If you take the position that the public airing of errors ought to be tolerated because "who is to decide what is true and what is false?", then aren't you really saying that truth is unknowable? If you are Catholic and hold this view, how do you square it with your faith?

-- The idea that there is some benefit to the publication of error deserves more careful scrutiny than it is given. There is no basis to assume that an error will always be recognized as such once it sees the light of day, or that its folly will be obvious to everyone: its folly is clearly not seen by some, or else there would be no one who would want to preach it. True, an error publicly displayed and publicly contradicted is better than a public error that goes unchallenged; but better than either is an error that is not made public in the first place. St. John Chrysostom certainly thought so: he went so far as to say that heretics ought to be smitten across the face, and made to fear the consequences of declaring their false doctrines in public.

-- There is such a thing as hell.  How many people's journey there began because, in the name of tolerance, they were exposed to pernicious ideas?  Could we tolerate the preaching of errors -- and blasphemous ones at that -- if we took seriously the existence of hell, and the irremediable evil of damnation?  If we stopped to imagine the horror of a soul's first seconds in hell, and its realization that there is no escape, and no reprieve for all eternity -- could we bear the thought of even one person's eternal ruin?

Forty years ago, William F. Buckley, Jr. gave an interview to Playboy magazine which was later published in his excellent anthology Inveighing We Will Go.  Some of his thoughts from this interview are pertinent:

Society has three sanctions available for dealing with dissenters of this kind [Black Panthers, the KKK].  There is the whole family of social sanctions; if they don't work, we then have legal sanctions; if the legal sanctions don't work, we are forced to use military sanctions.  As an example of the social sanctions, I give you what has happened to Gerald L. K. Smith, the fierce anti-Semite.  Would Smith be invited to join the sponsoring group of the Lincoln Center?  If he gave a $1,000 contribution to the President's Club, would he be admitted as a member?  No.  Gerald L. K. Smith has been effectively isolated in America, and I'm glad that he has been.  After such an experience as we have seen in the twentieth century of what happens -- or what can happen -- when people call for genocidal persecutions of other people, we have got to use whatever is the minimal resource available to society to keep that sort of thing from growing....I would like to see people like Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver [Black Panthers and convicted felons] treated at least as badly as Gerald L. K. Smith has been.  But no: they get applauded, they get invited to college campuses, they get listened to attentively on radio and on television -- they are invited to Leonard Bernstein's salons -- all of which makes rather glamorous a position that, in my judgment, ought to be execrated.

...For as long as that kind of thing happens, you encourage people to consider as tenable a position that in my judgment ought to be universally rejected as untenable.  The whole idea of civilization is little by little to discard certain points of view as uncivilized; it is impossible to discover truths without discovering their opposites are error.  In a John Stuart Mill-type society -- in which any view, for so long as it is held by so much as a single person, is considered as not yet confuted -- you have total intellectual and social anarchy. 

At this point, Playboy asks Buckley if the ventilation of these uncivilized points of view might not serve the cause of exposing their untenability and discrediting their adherents.  Buckley is quick to point out the disparity between the abstract appeal of an argument and its real-life application: 

I acknowledge the abstract appeal of the argument, but I remind you that it can be used as an argument for evangelizing people in Nazism, racism or cannibalism, in order to fortify one's opposition to such doctrines.  The trouble is that false doctrines do appeal to people.  In my judgment, it would be a better world where nobody advocated tyranny; better than a world in which tyranny is advocated as an academic exercise intended to fortify the heroic little antibodies to tyranny.

Playboy asks: what is the harm in allowing a doctrine to be preached whose evils are apparent?  Buckley points out the road that we set ourselves on once we start tolerating the promulgation of error:

What is apparent to one man is not necessarily apparent to the majority.  Hitler came to power democratically.  It's a nineteenth-century myth to confide totally in the notion that the people won't be attracted to the wrong guy.  George Wallace [the segregationist 45th governor of Alabama] not Nixon or Humphrey, got the highest TV ratings.  Take, once more, the Panthers.  There are, I am sure, hundreds of thousands of Americans who would like to hear a speech by Eldridge Cleaver.  One reason they would like to do so is the excitement.  Another is that they like to show off.  People like to show their audacity, their cavalier toleration of iconoclasm....I contend that it is a responsibility of the intellectual community to anticipate Dachau rather than to deplore it.  The primary responsibility of people who fancy themselves morally sophisticated is to do what they can to exhibit their impatience with those who are prepared to welcome the assassination of Bobby Kennedy because that meant one less pig.  Their failure to do that is, in my judgment, a sign of moral disintegration.  If you have moral disintegration, you don't have left a case against Dachau.  If you don't have that, what do you have?  Make love not war?  Why?

Why indeed?  The question whether, in the name of free speech, we really owe dissenters like American Atheists a public forum is one that deserves, not a knee-jerk reaction, but serious consideration. 

Meanwhile, While The News Media Try to Take Down the Catholic Church...

March 1, 2010,  Hammond, Indiana:  a substitute teacher working in three school districts, as well as with a company working with autistic and disabled children, makes his initial appearance in federal court on charges arising from his possession of at least 90,000 images of child pornography.  Some of the images depict children younger than five, including infants.

March 4, 2010, Bay Minette, Alabama:  a mistrial is declared in the case of a middle school teacher accused of multiple charges of sexual abuse, attempted sexual abuse, enticement and harassment of four teenage girls.  The mistrial followed one girl's sealed testimony that there had been more than one criminal contact with at least one of the girls.  The state may file additional charges.

March 5, 2010, Londonderry, New Hampshire: a high school English teacher is arrested on one count of indecent exposure for sending four nude photos of herself to a 15-year-old student. 

March 5, 2010, Canandaigua, New York: a high school art teacher is convicted on one count each of forcible touching and endangering the welfare of a child, misdemeanors, and acquitted of one count of forcible touching and one count of sexual abuse in the third degree.  A female student had accused him of touching her inappropriately; he had admitted to touching her on the thigh, near the knee.

March 5, 2010, Winchester, Indiana: a junior-senior high school basketball coach is charged with two felony counts of child molesting and one felony count of child solicitation, based on allegations that she inappropriately touched and exchanged nude photos with a female student. 

March 6, 2010, Oswego, Illinois: a high school English teacher is charged with sexual assault and aggravated sexual abuse.  He is accused of committing these acts on a female student at the school, outside of school hours.

March 8, 2010, Alexandria, Virginia: a middle school teacher is convicted of three counts of production of child pornography for having filmed himself having sex with a 15-year-old boy on school grounds. 

March 10, 2010, Houston, Texas: a high school speech teacher and coach is arrested on charges out of two counties based on allegations of inappropriate relations with students (sex unspecified).

March 12, 2010, Junction City, Oregon: a former high school wrestling coach is arraigned on six counts of second-degree child abuse and two counts of using a child in a display of sexually explicit conduct.  The charges are based on allegations of a sexual relationship with a female student starting when she was 15 and lasting several months.
 
March 17, 2010, Jersey City, New Jersey: a special ed. high school teacher is charged with aggravated criminal sexual contact, child abuse, endangering the welfare of a child and official misconduct for having allegedly masturbated in front of a 15-year-old male student in a school bathroom.

March 18, 2010, Damariscotta, Maine: in a three-page handwritten document, a fourth-grade teacher confesses to touching three of his female students across their breasts and between their legs while they sat working at their desks.  He faces charges of unlawful sexual conduct and unlawful sexual touching.

March 18, 2010, Frederick, Maryland: a kindergarten teacher is indicted on charges of sex abuse of a minor and continuing course of conduct involving sex abuse of a minor.  He is alleged to have abused a child throughout the 2008-2009 school year.

March 19, 2010, Carlsbad, California: an elementary school teacher takes a plea to two counts of sexual battery and one count of false imprisonment for molesting three of his students.

March 19, 2010, Memphis, Tennessee: a high school teacher and coach makes his initial appearance in federal court on a charge of transporting a minor across state lines for the purpose of sexual activity.  He is alleged to have engaged the boy in various disgusting activities between 2002 and 2005.

March 22, 2010, Newton, North Carolina: a high school band teacher is indicted on one count of sexual activities with a student and one count of indecent liberties with a student.  The charges stem from alleged sexual contact with a 17-year-old student.

March 23, 2010, Colville, Washington: A psychologist for the Colville School District pleads guilty to first-degree child molestation and possession of child pornography.  The charges stem from his molestation of an 11-year-old male student, attempting to molest another, and possessing gay porn depicting young boys on his school computer and his home computer.


March 24, 2010, Belmond, Iowa: A high school teacher and coach turns herself in and is charged with sexual exploitation by a school employee for having a sexual relationship with an 18-year-old male student.  The teacher had won numerous coach-of-the-year awards in Idaho.

March 24, 2010, West Jordan, Utah: after a preliminary hearing, a middle school teacher's aide is bound over on multiple charges of forcible sodomy and forcible sexual abuse stemming from her alleged sexual relationship with two male students. 

March 24, 2010, Benson, North Carolina: a former band teacher is charged with five counts of sexual exploitation of a minor and four counts of sexual offense with a student based on allegations that he had sexual contact with a 17-year-old student, took explicit pictures of the student.  Crimes are alleged to have taken place on campus and at the teacher's residence.

March 25, 2010, Burbank, California: after turning herself in to police,  a sixth-grade English and social studies teacher pleads no contest to one count of having unlawful sex with a minor and one count of performing lewd acts upon a child.  In exchange, prosecutors dismissed three counts of unlawful sex with a person under 16 and one count of oral copulation with a person under 16.  These charges arose from the teacher's affair with a male student at her school.

March 25, 2010, Sidney, Ohio: A retired police officer and study hall monitor pleads no contest to three counts of child enticement and one count of obstructing official business.  These charges arose from his inappropriate relations with a 13-year-old student.

March 25, 2010, Santa Clara, California: A high school special ed. teacher is sentenced on six felony counts, including oral copulation with a minor, sexual penetration and sodomy on a person younger than 18, arising from his sexual relationship with a 17-year-old female student.

March 25, 2010, Clarksburg, West Virginia: a high school music teacher pleads guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a misdemeanor.  He had originally been indicted on two felony charges of distribution and display to a minor of obscene matter for sending a male student links to porn sites, as well as a text message describing sex acts he would like to perform on the boy.

And this is only a fraction of the news items on teacher sex abuse -- just this month.  But since the liberal news media are in bed with the liberal teacher's union, there are no crusades to take down the public school system.

Meanwhile, Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna, Promoter of Justice for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith -- the man charged with prosecuting clergy sex abusers -- has said that over the last nine years, the Congregation has considered accusations "concerning around three thousand cases of diocesan and religious priests, which refer to crimes committed over the last fifty years."  Admittedly, this does not include cases that are not timely referred to Rome -- like, say, the debacle in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee that the media are trying to pin on Pope Benedict -- but that statistic averages out to 60 cases per year.

If I had the time and space, I bet I could come up with a lot more than 60 cases of public teacher sex abuse for just the year 2010, which isn't even half over.

I'd say, on average, a kid is a lot safer with a Catholic priest than he is in a public school.

H/T Bad Bad Teacher, which provided many of my leads, but which I will not link to because it unfortunately contains very risque ads. 

The Counter-Offensive Begins

Via the Idaho Health Freedom Act, signed into law last week, the Idaho legislature directed the attorney general, Lawrence Wasden, to  "seek injunctive and any other appropriate relief as expeditiously as possible to preserve the rights and property of the residents of the state of Idaho, and to defend as necessary the state of Idaho, its officials, employees and agents in the event that any law or regulation violating the public policy set forth in the Idaho health freedom act...is enacted by any government, subdivision or agency thereof." Hence, notwithstanding that the experts think it's pointless, Idaho has joined 12 other states in filing a lawsuit against the federal government to block implementation of Obamacare.   

The plaintiff states filed a 23-page complaint today in the federal district court for the Northern District of Florida.  They seek declaratory and injunctive relief: a declaration that the 2,409-page law is unconstitutional; and an injunction against its enforcement.  Paragraphs 2, 3 and 4 sum up the constitutional issues:

2. The Act represents an unprecedented encroachment on the liberty of individuals living in the Plaintiffs’ respective states, by mandating that all citizens and legal residents of the United States have qualifying healthcare coverage or pay a tax penalty. The Constitution nowhere authorizes the United States to mandate, either directly or under threat of penalty, that all citizens and legal residents have qualifying healthcare coverage. By imposing such a mandate, the Act exceeds the powers of the United States under Article I of the Constitution and violates the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.

3. In addition, the tax penalty required under the Act, which must be paid by uninsured citizens and residents, constitutes an unlawful capitation or direct tax, in violation of Article I, sections 2 and 9 of the Constitution of the United States.

4. The Act also represents an unprecedented encroachment on the sovereignty of the states.... 

 The two district judges in the Northern District of Florida, Pensacola Division, were appointed by Reagan and Bush the Elder, respectively, so let's hope the forum was well-chosen and that this action will get a fair hearing.  We shall see where this goes.

The 13 plaintiff states are: Alabama, Colorado, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Washington.   Some of these plaintiffs have left very few fingerprints in the annals of rock-ribbed Republicanism (with a capital "R"): Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Washington are all blue states.  This reflects a point Rush Limbaugh made yesterday: the bipartisanship in the debate over Obamacare has been on the side of the opposition. 

How pointless would this exercise be, I wonder, if all the states -- or even just a simple majority -- joined the suit.

Never, Never, Never, Never Give Up

...however tempted one may be.

We have suffered a total and unmitigated defeat...We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude...we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road...we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when...the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced...: "Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting." And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

Winston Churchill in the House of Commons, denouncing the Munich Agreement, 1938

Time to take the last half of the last line to heart.

America

Well, it was a nice country while it lasted.

For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, is taking away from Jerusalem and from Judah stay and staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water; the mighty man and the soldier, the judge and the prophet, the diviner and the elder, the captain of fifty and the man of rank, the counselor and the skilful magician and the expert in charms.  And I will make boys their princes, and babes shall rule over them.  And the people will oppress one another, every man his fellow and every man his neighbor; the youth will be insolent to the elder, and the base fellow to the honorable.

Isaiah 3:1-5

Needed: Another Lepanto

The Obamacare debate starts tomorrow.  Wear out the rosaries.

I Can Has Cheezburger?

On second thoughts...forget it.

This tray of slops is featured on Fed Up with Lunch: The School Lunch Project, a blog with a substantial readership by a teacher, Mrs. Q., who is eating the same school lunches her students are getting every day throughout 2010 and reporting on them, complete with photos.  Mrs. Q. says some of the items she is served are not bad-tasting (relatively speaking); but almost all of them look unappetizing.  For example:

This is a classic example of what we get when we let the government take over functions that traditionally belonged to mothers and fathers.

One of the hallmarks of real love is doing everything in one's power to give the beloved the best of everything.  This...

...ain't it.

Yet for generations, those who have the greatest stake in the well-being of children -- their parents -- have been persuaded to turn their kids over to the gentle ministrations of that which has the least stake: government.  Government usurps more and more parental functions, and performs them incompetently, on the grounds that parents allegedly aren't doing them at all.  This is government schools' excuse for taking an adversarial stance against parents, which stance is one of the philosophical underpinnings of the university education courses where your kids' teachers are trained.  And the reason parents are adversaries is because they are the single biggest obstacle to the government's ability to mold and shape children as it sees fit. 

Which brings us to the other rotten things kids are getting, of which school lunches are only the tip of the iceberg.  In an age when government schools have brought us sex education at younger and younger ages, political indoctrination, illiteracy, crime on campus, sex abuse perpetrated by teachers, condom distribution, the general breaking down of inhibitions and natural modesty, and a host of other bads, it shouldn't come as a surprise when they can't provide children with meals that at least measure up to the slop standards on your average hog farm.

Yeah, I know: not all public schools are bad; not all public schoolteachers are having sex with their students; my kids go to an excellent school; the school I teach at has high standards; you're being too hard on all the overworked, underpaid faculty and staff trying to eye-drop holy water into hell; etc., etc., etc.  But for all that there are individual teachers out there doing their best, there is a sobering reality, of which lousy lunches are only one sign, that parents need to grasp: 

The government simply does not love your kids.

Nor will it be around to pick up the pieces when your kid comes home with ptomaine poisoning.  So for God's sakes, pack him a lunch every day.

H/T the Crescat via Facebook. 

Case Closed.

Four decades ago, people laughed at Archie Bunker when he proffered his solution to stickups and skyjackings.  But now that this jihadist with the crotch bomb has underscored the fact that we are basically on our own in the fight against terrorists on our commercial airliners, it's looking as though ole Arch's idea wasn't so dumb after all.

They'll Have Nun of It

We all know the apostolic visitation of institutes of women religious in the United States has not sat well with certain congregations and prominent religious.  We hear complaints about how "demeaning" and "intrusive" is the visitation; we  hear the lamentations of liberal religious comparing themselves to victims of battered wife syndrome; we even hear about the "lack of transparency" of a process that has its own website.  

Now, it appears the temper tantrum is working itself into a rolling boil.  Crows the Non-Catholic Reporter: "The vast majority of U.S. women religious are not complying with a Vatican request to answer questions in a document of inquiry that is part of a three-year study of the congregations. Leaders of congregations, instead, are leaving questions unanswered or sending in letters or copies of their communities' constitutions."  In particular, the "vast majority" is annoyed by a three-part questionnaire that seeks information about individual institutes, including vital statistics and -- most offensive of all -- how Catholic the institutes really are.    The deadline for responding to the Visitator's questionnaire was November 20th.  According to NCR's source, only about half of the responses to the questionnaires have been accounted for, and only 1% of these have been answered as asked. 

If it is true that most women religious are refusing to answer this questionnaire, then that  right there should tell Rome everything she needs to know about the state of women religious in this country.  That some congregations have responded to the visitation by consulting civil lawyers is also very revealing, as well as counter-Scriptural.  But just in case Rome doesn't get the point, some of her daughters are driving it home with what apparently passes for "thought" in liberal congregations.  Some choice samples from the NCR piece:

-- "What I can say quite clearly is that every leader that I know is trying to answer the survey with integrity. How that integrity works out in each case is up to the wisdom of each leader and her council."  Whatever that means.

-- "I feel the response was a thoughtful, respectful response to a very puzzling situation. The purpose of this investigation is unclear to me, given the level of the questions. I have always been proud of our community and the many women who serve God's people. The first sentence of our letter [to Apostolic Visitator Mother Clare Millea, Superior General of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus] says it all, 'As apostolic women religious, we are faithful to the call of the Gospel and to our respective charisms.' "  Since Vatican II, as demonstrated by additional quotes below, so many women religous have felt free to redefine "faithful" that this sentence says exactly nothing.

-- "Vatican II took us out of the ghettos and into ecology, feminism and justice in the world. The Vatican still has a difficult time accepting that."  This sentence does say it all.

-- "[It is] unlikely the Vatican wanted us to come out of this being more confident of our identity as self-defining religious agents, but that is exactly what has happened."  A stunning admission, evidence of the need for the visitation.

And then, from the Too Stupid for Comment Files, there is the hyperventilating stuff that both illustrates the secularization of religious institutes since Vatican II and contributes to the stereotype of women as hysterical, coming from the type of women who profess to be out to destroy stereotypes:

All along, said one woman religious, the challenge has been to respond to the Vatican in a way that breaks a cycle of violence. She said that the women religious communities have attempted to respond by using a language "devoid of the violence" they found in the Vatican questionnaire and within the wider study. She characterized the congregation responses as "creative and affirming," and part of an effort to set a positive example in "nonviolent resistance."

"On the one hand we didn't want to roll over and play dead," she said. "So the question was, "How do you step outside a violent framework and do something new?' That was the challenge that emerged." One congregation, she said, cited a U.S. bishops' statement concerning domestic abuse in its response letter to Millea. "The point is, there have to be more than two choices: Take the abuse and offer it up, or kill the abuser."

Women religious, she said, are asking if there is a "Ghandian or Martin Luther King way" to deal with violence they felt is being done to them.

The dissenters who responded to the questionnaire with non-responses or with just their constitutions claim that the constitutions tell the whole story about their institutes, and that beyond these, they do not need to elaborate.  

Obviously, the constitution only tells half the story.  The other half of the story is how faithful these women are to their constitutions, and to what extent their constitutions are a dead letter.  This is the half were we find out the hypocrisy of the liberal religious, who demand transparency from Rome and opacity for themselves.