A Complaint I Never Thought I'd Hear

After years of bitching and complaining and putting down lawyers, denizens of Idaho's small counties are finding out: yes, they do need a couple of lawyers here and there after all.

According to the Idaho State Bar, there are 3,165 active lawyers in the state. (I'm willing to bet there are more lawyers than that in New York City alone.) The Second Judicial District, which includes the small counties of Clearwater, Idaho, Latah, Lewis and Nez Perce, has just 178 active lawyers. Of these, most are probably in Latah County (Moscow) and Nez Perce County (Lewiston). There are probably more lawyers in this picture of the Briefcase Brigade than there are in all of Idaho County, the biggest county in the state in terms of square mileage, but one of the smallest in terms of population.

And so, when somebody in Idaho County gets charged with a crime, and can't afford to hire private counsel, court-appointed counsel has to be imported all the way from Moscow. That is a drive of at least two hours -- could be more, depending on the weather.

So if anybody out there reading this is in Idaho County, and is charged with a crime, and has court-appointed counsel, and is not scheduled to go to court until winter, then there are two things you need to do: (1) Since the chances are fairly good you're Catholic, go to confession. And (2) be very, very good to your public defender.

Banned Books Week: A Celebration of Freedom?

Today the American Library Association begins its 26th annual celebration of Banned Books Week, an event designed to keep before our eyes the specters of Fahrenheit 451 and Nazis and other totalitarian thugs setting fire to mountains of forbidden books, reminding us to be ever on the lookout for the forces of darkness and tyranny that set out to stifle human thought by regulating what we read.

That, at any rate, is the stated purpose of Banned Books Week. But is that really all there is to it? A review of the ALA's Banned Books Week materials on the Internet (apparently under renovation, with many non-operative links) raises a few questions.

1. Is the mere regulation of library materials, without more, contrary to liberty, where citizens remain free to purchase the materials libraries may not carry? Most libraries are public entities, staffed by government employees and funded by the taxpayers. Must taxpayers support with their dollars access to materials that violate the ideals they cherish? Must they acquiesce in the respectability that library access confers on that which is by nature not respectable? Are not the patrons of scurrilous materials free to purchase them at privately-owned bookstores and newsstands, or even off the Internet?

2. What is the nature of the "censorship" the American Library Association dreads and fears? The ALA's website includes a set of guidelines for librarians who face "challenges" to library materials. "Challenges" -- which the ALA apparently finds undesirable -- include the following (taken directly from the ALA' s website):

• Expression of Concern. An inquiry that has judgmental overtones.
• Oral Complaint. An oral challenge to the presence and/or appropriateness of the material in question.
• Written Complaint. A formal, written complaint filed with the institution (library, school, etc.), challenging the presence and/or appropriateness of specific material.
• Public Attack. A publicly disseminated statement challenging the value of the material, presented to the media and/or others outside the institutional organization in order to gain public support for further action.
• Censorship. A change in the access status of material, based on the content of the work and made by a governing authority or its representatives. Such changes include exclusion, restriction, removal, or age/grade level changes.

As the ALA clearly concedes above, "censorship" necessarily entails government action against a work based on its content. But the ALA also lumps in with censorship citizen complaints of various types. Do citizen complaints against library smut threaten the survival of the First Amendment? What about the First Amendment rights of those who do not want their tax dollars underwriting sexually explicit, anti-Christian or violent material?

3. In surveying the ALA's list of "Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000," it is clear that some of these books are accepted as literary classics (by the way: has anybody seriously questioned whether The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are, at this late date and after numerous film and television adaptations, really on the "censorship" hit list?). But many of them are aimed at children or "young adults" (i.e., children). Now parents have not only the right but the duty to regulate their children's reading. Are they not entitled to be alarmed when public institutions undermine their parental efforts by providing their children with easy access, behind their backs, to literature that is forbidden to them at home? Are concerned parents in fact the primary source of the "challenges" the ALA finds so ominous? Is the ALA being intellectually honest in holding that freedom includes the "freedom" of little kids to look at inappropriate materials against the wishes of their parents?

In its alleged quest to secure the blessings of liberty, the American Library Association ignores and indeed opposes the most obvious safeguard on liberty: the cultivation of virtue. In a letter to a cousin, John Adams wrote:

Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People in a greater Measure than they have it now, They may change their Rulers and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty. They will only exchange Tyrants and Tyrannies.

In a letter to his wife, Adams wrote:

The furnace of affliction produces refinement in states as well as individuals. And the new Governments we are assuming in every part will require a purification from our vices, and an augmentation of our virtues, or they will be no blessings. The people will have unbounded power, and the people are extremely addicted to corruption and venality, as well as the great.

Virtue is tough to cultivate while you're busy shoveling dirt into your heart. As long as freedom means nothing more than the removal of obstacles to societal corruption, the genuine article will remain in peril. So maybe it's about time the American Library Association quit worrying about parental objections to Heather Has Two Mommies, and started exercising its hitherto unused freedom to read more of the Founding Fathers. (And while they're at it, maybe that most scurrilous of reading materials, the New Testament.)

September 28th: Memorial of the Martyrs of China

Today is the memorial of the 120 Martyrs of China, canonized October 1, 2000 by Pope John Paul II. Several are Dominicans; most perished during the Boxer Rebellion. Wounded and oppressed China needs the intercession of all of them as much now as she ever did.

Here is a link to the Pope's homily from the Mass at which he canonized these saints, along with St. María Josefa of the Heart of Jesus, St. Katherine Drexel, and St. Josephine Bakhita, whose life and hope Pope Benedict XVI described at length in his encyclical Spe Salvi.

God Love the Math Geeks

Using a network of 75 computers running a Windows XP program, a group of mathematicians at UCLA have discovered a thirteen-million-digit prime number. It is the 46th known Mersenne Prime, named after the 17th-century French scholar and Minim Friar Fr. Marin Mersenne, who came up with a partial list of these apparently remarkable numbers. This discovery qualifies the UCLA group for a prize of $100,000.00 offered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to the first discoverer of a Mersenne Prime exceeding ten million digits.

This is the first I have ever heard of Mersenne Primes, and after trying to find out exactly what they are, I feel like I know even less about them now than I did before they intruded upon my blissful ignorance. My particular brand of geekery runs along other than mathematical lines, so I just simply do not get what Mersenne Primes are -- other than that it is unknown whether there is an infinite number of Mersenne Primes.

But since greater minds than mine think Mersenne Primes are worth at least a 75-computer network and a $100,000.00 prize, I take it they are something special. I therefore offer my congratulations to the UCLA team.

Stick to What You Know

A cardinal rule of authorship: stick to what you know. It is next to impossible for a writer to be persuasive, moving or even interesting without following this rule.

This bodes ill for playwright Buddy Sheffield, whose bawdy musical Idaho! opened off Broadway on Thursday. Asked whether he has ever been to Idaho, Sheffield says: "I haven't, but I know it's beautiful."

Questioned about the cornfields and the repeated references to Idaho as "the prairie," and the heavy Southern drawls, and the pig-hugging farmers (not to mention the high prevalence of table-cloth-pattern dresses, battered cowboy hats, farmers posing for pictures with potatoes and rifle-toting grannies), Sheffield says he knows he does not accurately portray the Gem State -- but that's all good, because his play just portrays New Yorkers' stereotypes of Idaho.

Sheffield hopes he will be able to capitalize on the crass ignorance he assumes is an outstanding trait of New Yorkers and take his purported spoof of the great Broadway musicals to the Big Time. Straining all credibility, he declares: "I hope the musical runs for five years on Broadway and everybody in Idaho gets to come and see it and feel proud about it."

Yuh-huh.

September 25, 1066: The Battle of Stamford Bridge

942 years ago today, King Harold Godwinson -- the last Anglo-Saxon king of England -- whupped both King Harald Hardråde of Norway and Harold's turncoat brother Tostig, the outsted Earl of Northumberland at the Battle of Stamford Bridge.

In what would turn out to be the last of the Viking invasions of England, Harald Hardråde and his army landed in England earlier in the month with a view to conquering England. Acting on intelligence, Harold Godwinson took the Norwegians at unawares at Stamford Bridge, where the latter were waiting for supplies and an exchange of hostages and not expecting armed opposition. Although the Norwegians fought valiantly, they went down to defeat. Their survivors were allowed to return to Norway, conditioned on their pledge never again to attack England.

Unfortunately for Harold Godwinson, he was only two weeks away from getting his own butt whupped, and himself killed, at the Battle of Hastings. Whereas Harold's victory marked the end of the age of Viking invasions of England, William the Conquerer's victory marked the end of the Anglo-Saxon age. Centuries would pass before another English-speaking king sat on the throne of England.

It's ONLY a MOVIE

Question: What do you get when you put together The Da Vinci Code, a deranged former medical student and a knife? Answer: a priest fighting for his life, and one of his parishioners in serious condition.

25-year-old Marco Luzi went to Santa Marcella Catholic Church in Rome, asked to see the priest, Father Canio Canistri, age 68, and then stabbed the priest in the neck and stomach with a knife he had hidden in a cloth. Antonio Farrace, a 78-year-old retired policeman, came to Fr. Canistri's aid and is in the hospital in serious condition. Luzi wounded two more people while fleeing from the scene, and was then captured by police.

In addition to having a psychiatric history, Luzi was apparently obsessed with apocalyptic notions, fed by The Da Vinci Code. In the apartment he shared with his mother, police found apocalyptic notes, material on the Antichrist, the phone number to L'Osservatore Romano, and a large reproduction of Da Vinci's The Last Supper, with a note pointing to one of the Apostles, saying, "This is the hand in which a knife is hidden." He told police he was Antichrist, that he heard voices telling him to attack Fr. Canistri, and that he had watched The Da Vinci Code the night before the attack.

Naturally -- to the extent they pay any attention to this incident -- we can expect the it's-only-a-movie crowd to weigh in against the idea that The Da Vinci Code, for all its anti-Catholicism, had anything to do with inciting this murderous attack on a Catholic priest. A movie is only a movie, after all; it's only make-believe; movies don't affect people's behavior; and this guy was already a nutjob to begin with.

That movies don't affect people's behavior must be why book publishers didn't bother to redouble their efforts to hawk Dan Brown's novel when the movie came out; that must be why merchandisers figured the movie would not make people want to part with their money to buy shirts, games, and other Da Vinci Code junk; that must be why cable outlets didn't bother to cash in on the Da Vinci Code craze by airing "debunk Christianity" programming; in fact, that must be why advertising isn't a multi-squillion-dollar industry.

And of course, it has nothing to do with why Fr. Canistri is fighting for his life at this moment. God come to his assistance -- and ours.

Things I Have Never Understood

I can't come up with anything exciting today. But I can always come up with stuff I don't understand. In fact, that list grows daily.

So. Ahem. I have never understood:

-- Algebra, or any kind of math, or why anyone would enjoy math, especially algebra. (Though I'm very glad some people in the world do enjoy math, because otherwise civilization would grind to a halt.)

-- Jacques Derrida. The day this guy starts making sense to me, I'm going to check myself into the nearest asylum.

-- Why James Fenimore Cooper was listed amongst the greats of American literature. (For the record, Mark Twain didn't get it, either.)

-- The Code of Federal Regulations. And I'm a lawyer.

-- Why, in James Bond movies, the female leads wear stiletto heels on dangerous and physically demanding missions requiring a speedy retreat, like, say, burglarizing and sabotaging the bad guy's center of operations. (Example: Michelle Yeoh in Tomorrow Never Dies.)

-- Why, when I subscribe to a cable service, I have to pay for a bunch of channels I don't want, instead of being able to pick channels I do want; and why cable companies think they're being family-friendly by telling parents they can "block" channels they don't want their kids to have access to, even though said parents still have to pay for "blocked" channels.

-- Why, when a new English translation of the Mass is up for deliberation, the bishops assume that I need to be protected from big words, even though I majored in English and have a doctorate-level degree, and even have Merriam-Webster Online bookmarked on my web browser. (And many others of the faithful have more degrees than I do, and perhaps just as many as the bishops themselves -- if not more.)

-- Prairie oysters. Who was the first person to look at that and think that would make good eats? Same thing with caviar, with or without champagne, and snails.

-- Body piercings other than in the earlobes. Especially in the tongue.

-- What it is that's so attractive about shoes with extremely pointy toes. They look like witch shoes. (Though I guess they could come in handy in socially compromising situations...)

-- Women who form romantic relationships with, and even marry, guys on death row.

-- Why women who are extremely pregnant have to run around in skin-tight clothing.

-- Why couples who are willing to have children together and buy homes together are nevertheless unwilling to get married.

-- Why anybody would think Obama-Biden is a winning combo for America.

September 18th: St. Joseph of Cupertino

Over and over again in the lives of the saints, we see that God makes the most out of those who are the least in the eyes of the world. He can, and does, make great saints out of men and women of outstanding intellect and academic achievement, success in business, or social status: witness St. Thomas More (extremely successful lawyer, member of Parliament, Lord Chancellor of England); St. Alphonsus Ligouri (another extremely successful lawyer who later became a priest and bishop, and founded two orders); St. Thomas Aquinas (Dominican friar of towering intellect); St. Louis IX (king of France).

Too often, though, God can make little or nothing out of The Great. Not because He is not God, and all-powerful, but because The Great are often choked with pride, which makes them resist God's grace. So God turns to the little, the humble, the unwanted, the dull and the useless: because these do not resist grace; because, having no self-love, they have room in their hearts for love of God and neighbor; and because, since they are of no account in the eyes of the world, it is clear that the extraordinary things they do are the work of God.

Case in point: St. Joseph of Cupertino, whose feast is today. Read his story here.

Prayer Alert: Fr. Donoghue

Please pray for Fr. John F. Donoghue, about whom you have previously read in this space. Fr. Donoghue is in his eighties and has been in poor health for some time; and for the last week, he has been too ill to offer his customary 7:00 a.m. Mass. The outlook appears to be poor. Please pray for him.

In Father's absence, there has had to be Communion services instead of Mass at 7:00 a.m. Please also pray that, in due course, another priest will step forward and offer the 7:00 a.m. Mass. This is the only daily Mass in Boise that ordinary working slobs can start their day with.

CORRECTION: I have just been alerted to the fact that there is a 7:30 a.m. Mass offered every morning at Bishop Kelly High School, so there is more than one pre-8:30 Mass on weekdays. But we still want the 7:00 a.m. Mass to continue -- hopefully with the incomparable Fr. Donoghue.