Archive for April 14, 2009

Levin who’s Levin?

Posted: April 14, 2009 by datechguy in oddities
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Glenn mentions that Liberty and Tyranny is still #1 at Amazon.

Wasn’t planning on buying it myself but when I went out to buy Escape From Hell. (I’m in my 2nd reading of it awesome book review will follow later this week.) I noticed something interesting.

At B.J’s wholesale they had about a dozen copies of Levin’s book I was really surprised to seem them there. I then went to Barnes & Noble. They not only didn’t have the book (tons of Michael Fox’s all over) but the people at checkout seemed to not have heard of it.

After all this is Massachusetts.

Just call me an extremeist

Posted: April 14, 2009 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
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Well I’m against abortion, against illegal immigration and against mortgaging our kids future.

According to the report that makes me a right wing extremest.

And I am going to a tea party protest tomorrow so that clinches it.

The sin of Covetousness: a primer

Posted: April 14, 2009 by datechguy in catholic
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Inside Catholic has a first rate article on the 10th commandment and the sin of covetousness, an excerpt:

In a world filled with tremendous greed and the celebration of wealth amassed by wicked people using unscrupulous means, it becomes extremely easy to justify covetousness. But covetousness is perhaps the most fruitless form of sin there is. With greed, you at least experience possession (though not real enjoyment) of the thing you own. With lust, you at least get sexual pleasure now and then, though not love. With gluttony, you get the taste of food, though not the satisfaction. But with covetousness, you get only the raw envy of the other, with no compensation at all. A jealous man can at least use his jealousy to go out, work hard, and get the same car his neighbor has. An envious man sits there doing nothing, waits till it is night, and then slashes the tires on his neighbor’s car instead of lifting a finger to accomplish any good at all. Jealousy can be redeemed. Envy must simply be destroyed.

Hell is an equal opportunity landlord. As the article says:

The sin of covetousness is typically the sin of the poor and weak, just as the sin of greed is typically the sin of the rich and powerful.

Both are wanted down below. The good move is to decline the invitation.

The logical outcome at Notre Dame

Posted: April 14, 2009 by datechguy in catholic, opinion/news
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Catholic and Enjoying it points out the logical conclusion from the nonsensical argument that because president Obama is not a Catholic.

I think a better example would be the a Leni Riefenstahl Chair for film excellence. After all she was clearly a genius and an important person in film history. So she was friend with Hitler and company and her greatest film was a piece of Nazi propaganda.

Meanwhile rather than simple mockery that I am using Edward Peters actually addresses this nonsense:

It is paradigmatic of the theological Left to ignore canon law when it poses the slightest inconvenience for its plans, but to hide behind canons (or at least behind canonists, even anonymous ones) when they afford some cover (however thin) for obvious blunders or malfeasance. And so Jenkins, invoking unidentified canon lawyers, holds that the USCCB’s 2004 statement, “Catholics in Political Life”, merely restricts Catholic institutions from honoring Catholics whose public record evidences disdain for fundamental moral principles.

Is the man serious?

Does Jenkins really think that Catholic bishops would countenance a Catholic institution honoring a philanthropic murderer, or a free-speech crusading pornographer, or a right-to-privacy pimp, provided merely that the awardee was not a Catholic? Really, that’s too bizarre for words.

I think the problem now is the sin of pride. Any retreat would be an embarrassment for Fr. Jenkins and that embarrassment trumps theology. Peters an expert of Canon Law has a solution:

Seriously, what I wonder is, why, amid the canon lawyers Jenkins claims to have consulted, not one, it seems, pointed out the most obvious solutions to their client’s problem:

The USCCB’s statement applies only to “Catholic institutions”, right? Well, all Jenkins and the ND board need do is declare that Notre Dame is not a “Catholic institution”, and poof! all these problems disappear. Notre Dame could confer honorary doctorates in law on anybody it wants after that, even on people who have built a career out of denying unborn babies the protection of law, and nary a bishop would say a word about it.

Of course then ND just becomes a college with a declining football program.

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