Steve Skojec

OK, parents of toddlers everywhere - I have a question.

Are your children pure engines of destruction? Are they bright, inquisitive, and mechanically adept enough to field strip a TV remote in less than ten seconds? Can they climb absolutely anything, unscrew virtually any top, and dump any liquid imaginable anywhere you’d least like that liquid to be? Are they insanely willful? Do they shrug off corporal punishment, corner standing, reprimands, being ignored, and positive reinforcement alike?

Do they throw fit after fit? Do they cling to and climb on just one parent (usually mom) 24/7?

Do they somehow always wind up in your bed at night, because they will otherwise scream for hours keeping everyone up?

I love my kids. They are smart, funny, and insanely cute. They simply seem impervious to our best efforts to cure them of their worst behaviors. I am not afraid of punishing them, but I don’t want to make them terrified of me just to get them to fall in line.

Those of you with difficult toddlers, what works (or worked, if you survived) for you? What didn’t?

Our eldest wasn’t like this. This is uncharted territory.

Indeed, He is risen!

I’m not going to beat around the bush today. I’ve spent too long amongst real bushes, cleaning years worth of dead brush (I’m talking downed trees, not just twigs) from the hill behind our new place. I’m tired, grumpy, and dirty.

The Jews are upset - still - over the Good Friday prayer regarding their salvation. Only this time, they’re peeved over the new one, the one that they asked for.

SPIEGEL ONLINE talked to German rabbi Walter Homolka about why he considers the prayer to be offensive and the likely damage to Catholic-Jewish relations.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Homolka, you — and around 1,600 rabbis worldwide — are sharply protesting the Vatican’s revival of the Latin Good Friday Prayer, which reads: “Let us also pray for the Jews: That our God and Lord may illuminate their hearts, that they acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the Savior of all men.” Do you consider Benedict XVI to be anti-Semitic?

Walter Homolka: He is trying to focus on the specific aspects of his church — that’s his duty. But in this case he has lost his sensitivity. It is insulting to Jews that the Catholic Church, in the context of Good Friday of all things, is once again praying for the illumination of the Jews, so that we can acknowledge Jesus as the savior. Such statements are made in a historical context which is closely connected with discrimination, persecution and death. Given the weight of responsibility that the Catholic Church has acquired in its history with Judaism, most recently during the Third Reich, this is completely inappropriate and must be rejected to the utmost degree.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What is the effect of Benedict’s new version of the Latin phrase?

Homolka: He indicates that he believes that the path to salvation, even for Jews, can only go through Jesus, the savior. This opens the floodgates for the conversion of Jews. The Internet is already full of comments by conservative, right-wing Catholics who say: “Wonderful, now we finally have the signal to convert the Jews.” This kind of signal has an extremely provocative effect on anti-Semitic groups. The Catholic Church does not have its anti-Semitic tendencies under control.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So Benedict is encouraging anti-Semitic tendencies?

Homolka: He is accepting them, at the very least.

[snip]

Homolka: In 2006, the chairman of the General Rabbinical Council of Germany, Rabbi Henry Brandt, expressed himself in very clear words to (leading German theologian) Cardinal Walter Kasper. He said that any approach to the possibility of a mission by the Church to convert Jews is essentially a hostile act — a continuation, on a different level, of Hitler’s crimes against the Jews. These are strong but honest words. The Catholic Church should acknowledge the fidelity of God, who abides by his choice of the nation of Israel as his chosen people.

This is, of course, total nonsense, so let’s get it right out of the way.

Dear Jews,

Unlike Hitler, (who you compare us to) we love you, and that’s why we want you to convert. Because despite your protestations to the contrary, we hold without equivocation that outside the Catholic Church, there is no salvation. Since that’s dogmatic,  not simply the opinion of a traditional few, we don’t really have an option in believing it. Our hand is forced. There’s nuance, sure, but you abandoned your covenant as the chosen people of God when your ancestors in the faith rejected the Messiah. Your covenant therefore cannot (strictly speaking) be salvific for you. Pope Eugene IV put this in quite non-negotiable terms when he promulgated his papal bull on the topic during the Council of Florence, Cantate Domino:

It [the Church] firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart “into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels” [Matt. 25:41], unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock; and that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is so strong that only to those remaining in it are the sacraments of the Church of benefit for salvation, and do fastings, almsgiving, and other functions of piety and exercises of Christian service produce eternal reward, and that no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.

We of course believe in a merciful God, so we entrust those souls who have died outside strict union with Rome to His care, and hope and pray for their salvation. We can’t presume salvation for them, however, so the urgency which we feel for the conversion of all non-Catholics is be such that we must work diligently toward their salvation through the sacraments of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

To desire the conversion of Jews, to pray and work actively to accomplish it, can be construed by no reasonable man to be “anti-semitic”. It is, in fact, the most pro-semitic attitude one could possibly have. We desire, with the love of souls that Christ commends us to, the salvation and eternal happiness of all peoples, especially our elder sibling in the faith, Judaism.

The stark reality of sin is that we are all responsible for the death of Christ, and His blood is therefore upon us all. The specific historical reality is that Christ’s death occured at the demands of the Jewish people, and they took willingly upon themselves the curse that went with it. Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, in her visions of the Passion, said of this:

WHENEVER, during my meditations on the Passion of our Lord, I imagine I hear that frightful cry of the Jews, ‘His blood be upon us, and upon our children,’ visions of a wonderful and terrible description display before my eyes at the same moment the effect of that solemn curse. I fancy I see a gloomy sky covered with clouds, of the colour of blood, from which issue fiery swords and darts, lowering over the vociferating multitude; and this curse, which they have entailed upon themselves, appears to me to penetrate even to the very marrow of their bones,— even to the unborn infants. They appear to me encompassed on all sides by darkness; the words they utter take, in my eyes, the form of black flames, which recoil upon them, penetrating the bodies of some, and only playing around others.

The last-mentioned were those who were converted after the death of Jesus, and who were in considerable numbers, for neither Jesus nor Mary ever ceased praying, in the midst of their sufferings, for the salvation of these miserable beings.

This sounds harsh, and it is. The good news is, He died for us all - because of us all - and and His sacrifice is redemptive for the many who will accept Him. Including the Jews. Hence the reason Jesus, Mary (and all Catholics) never cease in their desire for the conversion of the Jews.

So stop whining about it. I’ll say it again: we pray for you because we love you. We don’t want you to go to hell. You don’t have to agree with it, but don’t give us a hard time about it, or you’ll tempt us to stop caring at all.

I’m about this close.

The New York Times recently ran a story about the growing number of young men and women who are choosing to return to the land to eke out a living, growing organic produce and livestock or making artisinal cheese:

Last week, Mr. Shute could be found here, elbow-deep in wet compost two hours north of New York City, filling greenhouse trays for onion seeds. Along with a partner, Miriam Latzer, he runs Hearty Roots, a 25-acre organic farm.

“I never thought I wanted to farm,” Mr. Shute said. “But it feels like an honest living.”

His partner, Ms. Latzer (the two are not a couple) is 33 and a former urban planner. Her parents, a professor and a librarian, “think its crazy that I’m a farmer,” she said. “They wonder what planet I came from.”

This one. Steeped in years of talk around college campuses and in stylish urban enclaves about the evils of factory farms (see the E. coli spinach outbreaks), the perils of relying on petroleum to deliver food over long distances (see global warming) and the beauty of greenmarkets (see the four-times-weekly locavore cornucopia in Union Square), some young urbanites are starting to put their muscles where their pro-environment, antiglobalization mouths are. They are creating small-scale farms near urban areas hungry for quality produce and willing to pay a premium.

“Young farmers are an emerging social movement,” said Severine von Tscharner Fleming, 26, who is making a documentary called “The Greenhorns” about the trend.

This is tremendously appealing to me. I even find that some of my reasons - dislike of corporate farming, desire to reduce petroleum costs/usage, desire to build local sustainability and economy rather than global - are beginning to coincide with my more liberal counterparts in this latest back-to-the-land renaissance.

Our new house has more land than the last one, and we’re about to get a garden started once we get final approval from the landlord.

It’s not a farm, but it’s a start.

  

The hour of our Lord was–at last come, his death-struggle had commenced; a cold sweat overspread every limb.

John stood at the foot of the Cross, and wiped the feet of Jesus with his scapular. Magdalen was crouched to the ground in a Perfect’ frenzy of grief behind the Cross. The Blessed Virgin stood between Jesus and the good thief, supported by Salome and Mary of Cleophas, with her eyes rivetted on the countenance of her dying Son.

Jesus then said: ‘It is consummated;’ and, raising his head, cried out in a loud voice, ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.’ These words, which he uttered in a clear and thrilling tone, resounded through heaven and earth; and a moment after, he bowed down his head and gave up the ghost. I saw his soul, under the appearance of a bright meteor, penetrate the earth at the foot of the Cross. John and the holy women fell prostrate on the ground.

The centurion Abenadar had kept his eyes steadfastly fixed on the disfigured countenance of our Lord, and was perfectly overwhelmed by all that had taken place. When our Lord pronounced his last words, before expiring, in a loud tone, the earth trembled, and the rock of Calvary burst asunder, forming a deep chasm between the Cross of our Lord and that of Gesmas. The voice of God–that solemn and terrible voice–had re-echoed through the whole universe; it had broken the solemn silence which then pervaded all nature. All was accomplished. The soul of our Lord had left his body: his last cry had filled every breast with terror. The convulsed earth had paid homage to its Creator: the sword of grief had pierced the hearts of those who loved him.

- The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ; Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich

The ongoing controversy surrounding Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, intrigues me. There is, for example, the need to ask how much Wright’s preaching differs from that found in other predominantly Black churches in this country. According to some reports, it’s not at all uncommon:

Many U.S. voters have been shocked by the sentiments expressed by the pastor of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama but they should not be surprised, say faith leaders with experience of black American churches.

Anger at discrimination, real or perceived, and strong memories of racial injustice is a common thread running through black American discourse and is reflected in religious life, they said.

[snip]

frustration over race coupled with a desire to correct injustice fuels sermons in many black churches, said progressive evangelical leader Jim Wallis, who is white, in an interview.

“There is a great deal of … anger in the black community and in black churches and the elephant in the room here is that most white Americans would be very uncomfortable in most black churches on Sunday morning,” said Wallis, who founded the Sojourners community and magazine.

While I haven’t had time to explore everything he’s said, I find that the comments which to many seem to be the most outrageous are taken from his post 9/11 sermon. I watched a video today which seems to put this sermon into a more sensible context than one finds it on talk radio and in the mainstream media. Have a look at this if you’d like to see a broader version of what was said, rather than simply the carefully selected soundbytes:

Not quite the same, is it?

Wright is obviously very wrong about a lot of things we’ve heard him saying, presuming that they, too, weren’t taken out of context. On this, however, I think he’s on to something:

“We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki. And we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye…We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because of stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own backyard. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

To many Americans, this is secular blasphemy. And yet, the U.S. was guilty, through intentional military action, of the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocents during World War II. As bad as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, there were also the firebombings in Dresden and Tokyo, which caused more immediate civilian deaths – in Tokyo the number was nearly 100,000 in one night – than either of the atomic bombs did. From the perspective of moral theology, these were not morally justifiable actions. They were several orders of magnitude more evil than September 11th was. Should Wright be demonized for observing the irony here?

We also overwhelmingly support Israel as it continues to make the lives of the Palestinian people unbearable. This is not to say that Palestinian bombings are justified, only that Israeli military power and economic strength vastly outweigh those of Palestine. There is an asymmetry there that is unappreciated or unrecognized by many Americans who might perceive things differently if they were more aware.

What happened in New York and at the Pentagon was the result of evil men believing that ends justify means and that therefore committing the mass murder of innocents was a justifiable and honorable thing. And yet the fact that they have those ends in mind at all is not something that has occurred strictly within a vacuum.

Despite protestations from GOP hacks, talk radio, and Rudy Giuliani, we have given them plenty of reasons to hate us through our foreign policy, our exportation of debauchery, and yes, our arrogance. The fact that they responded by perpetrating a horrible atrocity shows the iscrutable depth of their own depravity, and the responsibility for such actions clearly falls on those who perpetrated them. It is foolishness, however, for us to use our outrage as an excuse that frees us from our own obligation to perform a collective self-examination. The American conscience, as it were - particularly when we examine our actions in times of war - has often been found gravely wanting.

Conservatives who have found solace in supporting Ron Paul in this race know that this principle of “blowback” is highly unpopular with the American people. If one gives credence to the fact that our own actions contributed to the attack we suffered on that fateful September day, they are treated as a pariah, particularly among many of their “conservative” peers.

The idea that the our foreign policies do not have an impact on our relations with those who are affected by them - even to the point where some may be willing to attack us as they did seven years ago - is a fallacy. It is our job to understand the volatility of the peoples that we are dealing with, to listen to their complaints, and to recognize the possible consequences. It has become popular, particularly among the American Right, to believe that we were attacked for the sole reason that “they hate us because we’re free” and not because of anything we’ve done. There is partial truth to the idea that they hate us because we are not like them, that we are free from their law and their morality, but this alone is not the reason why they attack us. Reducing it to that is also a fallacy.

And as Chesterton said, “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”

My wife went to Sam’s Club today to get some of the big 25lb. bags of bread flour. We’re stocking up on staples so when the economy finishes going to hell, we at least can make some kind of food to eat.

The only problem is, the bread flour was gone. All of it. They typically have palettes and palettes of the stuff, and there was just a big gaping hole.

Are people beating us to the stockpiling punch? What’s going on here?

I was checking web stats today and saw I had visitors coming from Slate.com. They apparently did a blog roundup on the new Bin Laden tape, and they excerpted my agitated suggestion that we oblige OBL on his accusation that the pope wants a new crusade:

Steve Skojec says bring it on: “If you want a new crusade, Bin Laden, go ahead and go after the pope. Ever hear of the Battle of Lepanto? How about Granada? Vienna? The Catholic armies of the past broke the back of the Ottoman Empire and scattered the warriors of jihad so badly they had to nurse their wounds for centuries.”

On it’s own, this quote loses some of the nuance in my original post, like the grumbling admission that Catholicism ain’t what it used to be. (I need to learn to think in soundbytes if I’m going to get quoted.) There will be no Catholic armies coming to the rescue this time, because there are no Catholic nations. I wish there were.

Hilary left a comment that summed up my sentiment rather well, in all of it’s indignant futility:

“There’s still one dwarf left who draws breath in Moria, eh?”

Pretty much. And the orc hordes are coming.

Bush and Cheney are getting all hot and bothered over Iran again. They’re back on the wagon, talking up their fears that Iran may still be on track to build weapons of the nook-u-lar variety:

Washington Post:

Most striking was Bush’s accusation that Iran has openly declared its nuclear weapons intentions, even though a National Intelligence Estimate concluded in December that Iran had stopped its weapons program in 2003, a major reversal in the long-standing U.S. assessment.

“They’ve declared they want to have a nuclear weapon to destroy people — some in the Middle East. And that’s unacceptable to the United States, and it’s unacceptable to the world,” Bush told U.S.-funded Radio Farda, which broadcasts into Iran in Farsi.

Experts on Iran and nuclear proliferation said the president’s statement was wrong. “That’s as uninformed as [Sen. John] McCain’s statement that Iran is training al-Qaeda. Iran has never said it wanted a nuclear weapon for any reason. It’s just not true. It’s a little troubling that the president and the leading Republican candidate are both so wrong about Iran,” said Joseph Cirincione, president of Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation.

Financial Times:

Dick Cheney, US vice-president, said yesterday that Iran might have restarted work on nuclear weapons, writes Daniel Dombey in Washington . Speaking in Oman on a tour of the Middle East in part focused on rallying the region’s leaders against Tehran, Mr Cheney said the current status of Iran’s programme was unclear.

Last year, a US national intelligence estimate said it had “high confidence” that Iran’s weaponisation work had halted in 2003, adding with “moderate confidence” that it had not been resumed as of mid-2007.

“We don’t know whether or not they’ve restarted,” Mr Cheney told ABC News.

I’ve been watching the signs for some time. The question is - will they pull the trigger?

Ron Paul tells the Washington Times that the GOP is ignoring the large new Republican voting block he brought into the party during his bid for the nomination:

The Texas congressman says neither he nor his supporters have heard from Mr. McCain or Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan since March 4, when the Arizona senator accumulated enough delegates to clinch the party’s presidential nomination.

“I don’t think they want them,” Mr. Paul told The Washington Times, adding that indifference doesn’t surprise him because the party’s establishment has deserted traditional conservative principles for big government and foreign intervention.

“We don’t agree with them,” he says. “We agree with the Old Right, and they’re the New Right, which is ‘The Wrong,’ [because] the New Right has morphed into neoconservative.”

Many of his 800,000 presidential nomination votes were from newcomers to the Republican Party — the kind of dedicated small-donor volunteers the party needs, he says.

McCain’s campaign has claimed that they haven’t reached out because Paul’s run for the White House hasn’t officially ended. Paul has reasons of his own for that:

Mr. Paul says that neoconservatives who hijacked the Republicans extol what he most abhors: the belief that government is part of the solution, not the problem, and that America’s inherent beneficence entitles it to force selected other nations to make themselves over in America’s image.

That’s partly the reason why, even though Mr. McCain has crossed the finish line of this marathon, Mr. Paul will keep running in states with upcoming primaries.

He wants to see whether the surprisingly successful appeal of his limited-government message represents the beginning of a “revolution” within the Republican Party similar to the one that began swelling the party’s ranks with church-going newcomers 30 years ago.

“I am doing a few more things, in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, maybe Idaho,” he says. “I’m curious right now to see how the rallies go. Whether they fade off now — just see what happens.”

Seeing what happens will be an important step in determining the future of the party. As a friend of mine who is immersed in the Catholic political culture of Washington told me recently, “I think the Catholic Republican moment is over; the Catholic libertarian moment is now to begin.”

There is evidence of this in the large Catholic support base for Ron Paul. Paul is, in reality, more of a Constitutional Libertarian than a modern Republican, but the nature of our party system makes running within the party essential to attract attention, and classical Republican values are not incompatible with Paul’s message. Running as a member of the GOP, Paul garnered far more support and media coverage (not to mention substantial cash donations) than he ever did as a Libertarian candidate in 1988.

Paul himself may very well not be the answer. As I’ve said before, I find Ron Paul’s ideas far more appealing than Ron Paul the man. He seems decent, sober, and knowledgeable, but he lacks a certain something that he needs to bring real credibility to revolutionary ideas born from reactionary politics. People think Ron Paul is crazy (I’m not one of them) in part because of how he presents himself. Moreso, however, they think his political philosophies are crazy, despite their rootedness in the history of our country.

As crazy as people want to believe him to be, they can no longer take for granted that he has serious grassroots support, much of it from young Americans who will be energized to make change. The Times reports that Ron Paul:

•Has drawn 803,217 votes, or 4.55 percent of ballots cast in this year’s primaries and caucuses, putting him fourth among Republicans, with more than Rudolph W. Giuliani or Fred Thompson.
 
•Raised $32.6 million for his campaign through the end of January, including a one-day online record for either party of $6 million on Dec. 16.
 
•Had his best show of support in Washington’s caucuses, where his 20.8 percent was good for third place.
 
•Had his best showing with a second-place finish in Nevada’s caucuses, with 13.7 percent of the vote.
 
•Claims to have secured 42 delegates to September’s nominating convention, although other estimates show him with less than half that number.

Even if Ron Paul goes away, I think that the coalition he has built is here to stay, and will shape the future of the Republican party.