Finally! LGBT-Z rights!

It seems that we can finally add zoophilia to the growing list of alternatesex rights emerging in our culture. And in the military, no less. LGBT-Z Rights!

From Timothy Whiteman of the Wilmington Political Buzz Examiner:

Senate legalizes bestiality in the Armed Forces

Timothy Whiteman, Wilmington Political Buzz Examiner

December 4, 2011 

The Associated Press (via the Boston Globe) is reporting that the Democratic-controlled US Senate has passed the $662 billion 2012 NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act).

The NDAA covers everything from jet strike fighters to housing for military families.

It also de-criminalizes both sodomy and bestiality.

In a press release from the US Senate Committee on the Armed Services (Chairman - Sen. Carl Levin, D-MI) from June 17, 2011, under the Military Personnel Policy section (page 9), it clearly states that the Committee has added to the Fiscal Year 2012 NDAA the following;

Also repeals Article 125 of the UCMJ, relating to the offense of sodomy.

The Library of Congress has recorded and saved for posterity every letter and number associated Senate bill, S. 1867. Specifically;

S.1867National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012

Sec. 920c. Art. 120c. Other sexual misconduct

(d) Repeal of Sodomy Article- Section 925 of such title (article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice) is repealed.

On an official US Air Force website, Article 125 of the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice) formerly prohibited both sodomy and bestiality.

(a) Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy. Penetration , however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense.

(b) Any person found guilty of sodomy shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

The official website for the US Senate has listed by name the 93-7 vote in favor of the NDAA.

Gay activists will no doubt explain that this expansion of "rights" has nothing whatsoever to do with traditionalist arguments that legalizing gay marriage will open the doors to all manner of legal sexual unions.

Just because the military has permitted soldiers to have sex with animals doesn't mean that these soldiers and their pet-amours will ultimately be permitted to sanctify their love with legal recognition as marriage.

Unlike gay marriage, interspecies marriage would be to place a legal imprimatur on an unnatural union.

Welcome to pagan wonderland.  

Pope Benedict feels the burdens of age and duty

The Holy Father will be 85 years old soon, and many close observers have noticed the toll that the years and the crushing responsibilities are taking on him.

I was thrilled when he was elected pope, following the passing of Blessed John Paul II. Benedict is one of the great theologians of the 20th century. He is a brilliant man, with a genius for subtle and salient explication of theology, Biblical texts, and culture. His Introduction to Christianity is one of the best overviews of the rational and spiritual basis for the faith, and as pope he has written a beautiful series of theological commentaries ordered on Jesus' life and ministry. His Salt of the Earth, which is an interview with a journalist, is one of the best commentaries on modern culture and the Church's role that I've read. The only difficulty I've had with his books is that I've marked so many pages that the bookmarks are useless. Every page has one.

His service to the Church has been exemplary. For decades he did an extraordinary job as Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. He is a superb administrator, and he is directly responsible for the very effective measures the Church has taken to prevent sexual abuse. The Catholic Church is now the safest institution for children in America. The secular world should learn from his example.

The Church has been blessed by the succession of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVII. John Paul strengthened and sanctified the Church with his charisma and his courage. Benedict has consolidated John Paul's achievements with his intellect and his administrative skills.

Please pray that the Holy Father's health will sustain him in the great tasks that remain before him.

God, gays, and K'd up circuit boys

Jay Michaelson's essay in Religion Dispatches, with my commentary:

Why Rick Santorum Can't Just Say: God Doesn't Want You To Be Gay

Gay rights and the collapse of pseudo-secularism

By JAY MICHAELSON

It’s been widely observed that religious foes of LGBT equality...

There are very few actual foes of LGBT equality, religious or otherwise, the Westboro Baptist Church notwithstanding.

The vast majority of people-- Christians included-- strongly support full rights for gays. The right to free exercise of religion, the right to freedom of speech, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to trial by jury, etc.

Gay marriage has nothing to do with "rights", because marrying anyone you want isn't a "right".

There have always been constraints on marriage. Constraints on who may legally marry is a matter of statutory law, decided by the mechanisms of representative democracy. There are no "rights" involved in defining marriage, as long as the definition applies to all and thereby satisfies the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Denying marriage to people who want to marry a sibling isn't denying the rights of the incestuous. Denying marriage to more than two people isn't denying the rights of polygamists. Denying marriage to people who want to marry themselves isn't denying the rights of narcissists. Denying marriage to people who want to marry children isn't denying the rights of pederasts. Denying marriage to people who want to marry the dead isn't denying the rights of necrophiliacs.

Denying marriage to gays isn't denying the rights of gays. It's simply defining marriage in accordance with the majority view, which is how a democracy works.

Gays and others who want to change the legal definition of marriage are entitled to do so, through the legislative process. Those who want to maintain the traditional definition are entitled to do so, through the legislative process. The only "right" involved is the right to access to and participation in the legislative process.

 ...frequently make arguments of convenience. These arguments are usually guised in the language of rhetorics other than that of religion. Thus homosexuality is pathological (medical), destructive of society (sociological), narcissistic (psychological)—anything, really, as long as it’s bad, which is what opponents of equality really mean.

There are religious reasons to oppose gay marriage and homosexual conduct (it's sinful), and there are secular reasons (it's not marriage as traditionally understood, it's unhealthy, pathological, destructive of society... ). Those are all perfectly defensible viewpoints.

Aware, however, that pure rhetorics of sin and God’s will are of limited public efficacy—mostly for cultural reasons, though also for legal/political ones—the more candid statements are rarely spoken publicly.

There are many millions of religious people who are quite willing to state simply that homosexual conduct is sinful. I think it is, and that's my primary reason for opposition to it. Many religious people carry the debate to secular issues, for which strong arguments can be made as well, that others who don't share their faith may agree on.

As Mark Jordan has recently described in great detail, this instrumental use of non-religious rhetoric has led to a discursive slipperiness, leaving the keen observer wondering: What, exactly, is wrong with homosexuality?

It's sinful. Also, it's unhealthy, for the person engaging in it and for the society that facilitates it.

Opponents of equality often seem unable to respond consistently, instead attempting to marshal a variety of non-religious arguments to bolster what is at heart a religious condition. Chosen, as they typically are, for efficacy rather than for accuracy, these arguments often turn out to be wrong.

Homosexual conduct is associated with astonishingly high rates of disease. It is a profound public health issue, about which there is no honest debate.

Last week, for example, Rick Santorum argued that same-sex marriage would be a slippery slope, because “in terms of pleasure,” polygamous marriages offered as much pleasure as gay marriages do. This strange new line of thinking pre-supposes that the only reason for same-sex marriage is pleasure, just as the only reason for a homosexual “lifestyle” is pleasure, lust, and so on. 

The connection between gay marriage and polygamy is obvious. If marriage to someone of the same sex is permitted, by what logic can marriage to more than one person be denied?

This is, of course, absurd. Gay couples get married for the same reasons that straight couples do, with pleasure being pretty far down the list, behind, say, love, companionship, taking care of one another, societal recognition, raising children, and so on. Santorum’s ignorant comment (one of many, of course) assumes, incorrectly, that homosexuality is a (changeable, optional) predilection of the gonads, rather than an orientation of the heart. Lust, not love.

Gay couples certainly have a range of motives and desires, just as straight couples do.

Likewise, Alan Chambers, President of Exodus International, recently gave an interview on Christian Radio wherein he described the “homosexual lifestyle” again in terms of selfishness and pleasure. The radio host, in turn, stated that LGBT activists (it was interesting to hear her say the acronym—I think its foreignness and length helped her case) simply don’t understand how a person changes when they are born again in Christ. Because LGBT activists are irreligious, they just don’t get how religiously-inspired change is possible.

This, too, is factually wrong. As readers of this publication know, a great many LGBT activists (this one included) are religious.

Indeed yes. I think that they are mistaken about God's law regarding homosexual conduct, but it is certainly true that there are many quite religious people who are gay and are gay activists.

Many others are formerly religious. We know quite well what it is to live in the light of God, Christ, dharma, et cetera. And many of us have experienced that doing so while not lying and repressing oneself is actually more religiously spacious than the alternative. 

Relation to God is about truth, not "spaciousness".

And, to state the obvious, any queer person in a committed relationship with a partner or with a circle of friends and companions knows that selfishness is as pathetic in a queer life as it is in a straight one. Apparently Chambers has forgotten that during the AIDS plague, queers were highly unselfish in their taking care of one another (including, let’s mention out loud, lesbians taking care of gay men).

That's true, and deeply admirable. I've seen it myself in my medical practice, and I have great respect for the selfless men and women who care for their friends and partners.

But we must not forget the maniacal promiscuity and recklessness that spreads AIDS and myriad other diseases in the gay community.

There has been much courage and love, and much depravity.

It’s a pity that Chambers’ experience of the gay community (apparently extremely brief, according to this report) was limited to its most vapid representatives. But even K’d-up circuit boys take care of one another.

"K'd up circuit boys"?

Does "K'd up" refer to ketamine, K-Y jelly, or Kaposi's?

In making these bogus arguments, Santorum and Chambers inevitably run afoul of the facts, because the facts are not what really interest them. If we assume that Santorum is being sincere in his bigotry rather than purely opportunistic, what he’s really interested in is religion, not social policy.

"K'd up circuit boys..."?

If it were social policy that motivated him, he’d read the studies of same-sex couples in Massachusetts and in other countries, which show that they raise children as well as opposite-sex couples, form stable families, and the rest. 

"K'd up circuit boys..."?

But what Santorum is motivated by is actually religion: a fear of sexuality and of women souped-up by a misreading of Leviticus, Romans, and Corinthians.

It's odd to hear a gay guy accuse Santorum, who has seven kids and a beloved wife of twenty years, of having a fear of sexuality and of women.

But he can’t really say that on television. If he were honest, he’d just come out and say something like: “I’m sorry, but God just cannot abide any homosexual behavior.” But he isn’t.

He'd be right to do so. But he's trying to point out that there are solid non-religious reasons to critique homosexual behavior. Why Michaelson finds the effort to appeal to common values objectionable is unclear.

Now, in no way am I claiming that the Bible prohibits same-sex intimacy.

It condemns same-sex sex. Intimacy is another matter, and can mean very different things.

I have written abook showing the exact opposite: that Biblical values demand us to affirm it. Rick Santorum’s views are not dictated by St. Paul, but he believes that they are, and that’s enough.

The Bible is quite clear on the sinfulness of homosexual acts. It is also clear on the blessing of love and care for each other. Relationships of all sorts can involve a composite of good and bad.

Let me take one further step. Santorum and other homophobes...

I really don't like the word "homophobe". Very few people are afraid of homosexuals, and even fewer are afraid to the point of diagnosable mental illness, which is what "phobia" means.

Many people hold the opinion that homosexual acts are sinful. That's an opinion, not a phobia.

Heterophobes like Michaelson should know the difference.

... cannot speak frankly because their real motivations are private, emotional, and incoherent.

The Catholic view to which Santorum (and I) subscribe is quite coherent-- homosexual desire is not sinful. Homosexual acts are. People who have homosexual desire and/or commit homosexual acts are God's beloved sons and daughters, just like each of us. We are all sinners, loved always and redeemed, if we accept redemption. Part of accepting redemption is acting, as best we can, in accordance with God's will.

It’s not as though Santorum dispassionately selected Catholicism from a menu of religious ideologies. He believes because he feels.

And feels because he believes.

Even before his wife’s miscarriage (in 1996), before his political career, some concatenation of circumstances installed what some have called religious “software” in his brain.

Huh? I'll have to ask my neurosurgical colleagues in Pennsylvania who operated on him...

Things are good when religion is dominant, bad when it is not. This is the truth of his experience.

What?

I’m reminded of a story told by Tim LaHaye, notorious author of the apocalyptic “Left Behind” series. LaHaye was ten years old when his father died, and obviously devastated by the loss. As LaHaye tells it, it was during a pastor’s eulogy for his father that he truly came to believe. The pastor explained how his father was now in heaven with Jesus, and the young LaHaye knew this to be true, felt it to be true. Indeed, he must have wished it to be true as well. Of course he did; what ten-year-old boy wouldn’t?

That, not evolution or homosexuality or any other point of dogma, is the real issue for people like LaHaye, Santorum, and Chambers: the fundamental comfort that religion provides.

Ketamine, amyl nitrite, and promiscuity provide comfort.

A relationship to God provides truth, which is comforting and terrifying in turns. Fear and trembling.

If people evolved from apes, according to this logic, Timmy LaHaye’s father is not in heaven with Jesus and Rick Santorum’s son died for no reason.

Evolution and the Catholic understanding of man are quite consistent, if one accepts that man's physical nature evolved and his spirit/soul were independently created.

And this is why we cannot argue with people who subscribe to this framework: there is simply too much at stake for them.

We believe what we say.

They have wedded their fundamental sense of okay-ness to the truthfulness of a set of doctrines.

We believe what we say.

Not only is sociology not at issue for Rick Santorum, Romans isn’t either. What is at stake is his very sense that the world is a good place, that things are basically okay, and that he himself is okay as a result. That may be expressed in a theological framework, but it is a psychological reality.

Santorum is figuratively on Dr. Michaelson's couch, getting psychoanalyzed. For free, no less.

If I marry my partner, therefore, Rick Santorum is not okay.

Right. The only reason one could oppose gay marriage is if one has a psychiatric condition. All sane people agree with Jay Michaelson and K'd up circuit boys.

The rest is window dressing. The fake sociology, the religious doctrines of sin and salvation, all of it.

Reluctance to bestow a legal imprimatur on a sexual culture synonymous with promiscuity and contagion is "fake sociology"?

Santorum and Chambers have had powerful religious experiences, and they avail themselves of such doctrines to articulate the inexpressible. 

This is expressible: gay marriage isn't marriage.

The fake secularism, the fake science, the bogus constructions of homosexuality—

All based on publicly available data and obvious inferences...

all of these are so transparently false because they are mere props. As one after another of them collapse,

Here's "fake science": gay lifestyle is associated with astronomical rates of promiscuity, mental illness, violence, alcoholism, drug abuse, AIDS, syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia,  HPV, herpes, anal cancer ... . The life expectancy of an active urban homosexual man is equal to the life expectancy of men in Canada in 1871.

anti-gays will eventually be left only with their convictions, and the reasons why they have them. Perhaps only then, echoing Portnoy’s therapist, might we say “Now vee may perhaps to begin.”

In my view, the most shameful aspect of contemporary homosexual culture is not the sex itself. The most shameful aspect is the willful lying by "activists" like Michaelson about the real world consequences of gay sex, especially among men.  Male homosexuality is deadly, more deadly than drunk driving, I.V. drug abuse, and Russian roulette. The leading killer of gay men is gay men.

Condoms aren't the answer. They haven't been the answer. The answer is continence and chastity, and a respect for God, for others and for oneself, which is the Catholic understanding and Rick Santorum's understanding.

It is Michaelson, not Santorum, who is devaluing the lives of gay men. 

My reply to Doug Indeap on the constitutional "separation of church and state"; Part 3

Doug Indeap has replied to my recent post on the Establishment clause and the relationship between church and state.

I should note that I appreciate Doug's detailed comments. My replies are a bit snarky, partly because this is a blog and that's what is done on blogs, and partly because Doug, however thoughtful and polite, is trying to censor me and several hundred million of my fellow Americans. That angers me. I employ sarcasm to make my point. Doug employs police and attorneys to force you to comply with his point.

Doug:

... your post is largely premised on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of constitutional law. The Constitution places certain matters beyond the purview of the normal electoral and legislative processes. Our individual rights, for instance, are not up for majority vote, as you seem to suppose.

I understand the premise of constitutional law as well as you do, Doug. We agree that the Constitution places certain rights beyond the legislative purview (the right to free expression of religion and the right to keep and bear arms, for example). We differ on what the Constitution places beyond the legislative purview.

I believe that the Constitution prohibits the establishment of a national church. In every other manifestation of religion it protects free exercise. It's the plain reading of the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses.

You believe that the Constitution empowers unelected judges to expunge religious expression from civic life, thereby establishing de facto atheism as our civic religion. You believe that the Constitution empowers judges to micromanage vast aspects of our religious life, including what our children are taught in schools and can say and see in schools, and what we citizens can put on our public property and what opinions that we citizens can express via our elected officials.

I see the Establishment clause as prohibiting a national religious establishment. You see the Establishment clause as a license for tenured judges and irreligious litigants to use the power of the state to suppress civic religious expression by American citizens.

I see the First Amendment as a charter for free expression. You see it as a cudgel to suppress religious expression that you hate.

Your post is premised as well on other fundamental misunderstandings. You seem not to appreciate the distinctions between (1) We the People, (2) the government, and (3) individuals.

I understand the distinction.

For instance, you proclaim that "We the People (i.e. the government)" have the right to say we trust in God.

Yep.

"We the People" and "the government" are not one and the same.

Right. We the People are sovereign, and we elect the government to express our will, with the constraints of the Bill of Rights.

"We the People," acting through a constitutional convention, created "the government" and, in the process, gave it certain powers, refrained from giving it other powers, and expressly limited some of its powers.

Indeed. Could you cite for me the section of the Constitution that empowers federal judges to censor students' prayers at high school graduations? Was that the Establishment clause, the Free Exercise clause, or the Freedom of Speech clause?

"We the People" could amend the Constitution and thereby change the government's powers; the government itself, though, cannot do that.

What hypocrisy, Doug. "Living Constitution" judges change the Constitution regularly, without formally amending it. Every day some batshit federal judge discovers a new right that nobody can seem to find in the Bill of Rights. The right to kill a child in the womb. The right of the government to take private property from citizens to increase municipal tax revenue. The right of atheists not to hear things they don't like. So you're finally admitting that when the Supreme Court or some loon federal judge discovers some "right" that's not in the Constitution and that no one else had noticed for two hundred years, they're acting unconstitutionally? I knew that you and I agreed on some things.

The government must act within the constraints established by "We the People" in the Constitution, including the separation of church and state.

Oh. What was that "separation of church and state" clause in the Constitution, again? Section and article, please. No fair using the KKK initiation oath as a reference.

Your disbelief that the Constitution might bar the government from saying anything that 312,529,476 Americans don't all agree reflects yet another fundamental misunderstanding--because it indeed does just that in certain respects.

Actually, the Constitution doesn't restrict what the government says. It restricts what the government does. "Congress shall make no law...", not "High school valedictorians shall say nothing about..."

The whole point of the government in a representative democracy is to express what the voters have elected it to express. The government represents the people. Elections aren't unanimous, so not everyone will agree with what government says. That's ok. Our elections are decided by majority vote. President Obama won the last presidential election, although I didn't vote for him. President Obama's speeches about the deficit don't violate my freedom of speech. I don't have a heckler's veto over what the president says.

You don't have a heckler's veto either. A high school valedictorian's speech about God doesn't violate your right to free exercise of religion, any more than the President's speech violates my right to freedom of speech. If you don't like the valedictorian's speech, don't listen. Bring your IPod to the ceremony, or hum a tune to yourself. Don't call the police. You've got to learn to suppress your totalitarian instincts.

Speech doesn't violate rights. The use of government force ("Congress shall make no law...") violates rights. You're the one who uses force, Doug.

The Constitution prohibits the Establishment of religion, which is the act of recognizing a national church. It does not prohibit any government official from saying something about religion.

The Constitution prohibits the government from making certain kinds of laws-- from using force. It does not prohibit government officials from saying things, like prayers. In fact, the Constitution is quite emphatic about protecting freedom of speech and free expression of religion.

That is what the constitutional guarantees of individual rights and constitutional limits on government power are all about. The government is constrained to act according to the Constitution REGARDLESS of whether those on one or the other side of an issue amount to millions or dozens or one.

You make my point. The government is constrained to act according to the Constitution. Where in the Constitution are judges empowered to censor civic religious expression? Why do you continuously use the constitutional constraints on government power to invoke government power? Why do you call the police when someone at a school graduation prays? Why do you incessantly use the First Amendment-- the charter of free expression-- to shut people up?

You and I appear to agree on one thing: The courts' explanation that the references to God in the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Motto are more about acknowledging tradition than promoting religion is "bull." As you say, when most Americans recite these references they "mean it."

Damn right.

If the courts acknowledged that and dealt with it forthrightly, they would then have to recognize that such governmental pronouncements are indeed unconstitutional. The courts, though, dodge that conclusion by the "bull" that it is all about tradition and not about religion.

The reason that the courts invoke tradition to insulate some religious expression from censorship is that "separation of church and state" is junk jurisprudence, not any part of Constitutional law, and has created a garbage heap of incoherent and unconstitutional judicial censorship. The transparent purpose of "separation of church and state" is to extinguish civic religious speech-- speech that is explicitly protected in the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment, which makes no distinction whatsoever between private and civic free expression.

A teacher is no more prohibited by the First Amendment from stating a religious opinion than she is prohibited by the First Amendment from stating a political opinion.

If courts were to enforce your 'mandatory censorship' interpretations of the First Amendment consistently, federal marshals would storm the podium during the State of the Union Address and arrest the President for violating the Constitution when he implores God to bless America. The FBI would arrest the employees at the U.S. Mint for printing prohibited religious speech on our money, and the U.S. Army would dismantle countless national monuments that are slathered with invocations of God. No religion on public property! Klaverns of the godless would go to Arlington Cemetery and tear up those crosses and stars of David on the graves. Ecrasez l'Infame!

Censorship of civic religious expression is not prohibited by the Constitution-- the Constitution guarantees free exercise and makes no distinction between civic and private speech, but, heck, atheist ideologues with a totalitarian itch tell us what the Constitution really means. Who needs to read the document itself?

The reason that judges invoke "tradition" to protect some religious expression is that if they followed your junk logic consistently, they'd be arresting everyone from the President on down, and the whole "separation of church and state" scam would be exposed for the totalitarian project that it is.

You guys just hate Christianity, and you do what you can get away with, and call it law.

Thomas Woods on the contributions of the Catholic Church to Western civilization

Historian Thomas Woods has a wonderful new book-- How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization-- and for readers who want to know the truth about the origins of modern science, law, commerce and art, the book is a must. Woods lays out the facts about the central role the Church played in creating the modern world and the unique scientific and cultural triumphs of the West.

Woods has penned a fine essay summing up his observations about the Church and the civilization it built:

Commentary: History shows contributions of Catholic Church to Western civilization

Published: Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2011 5:00 a.m. MST

By Thomas E. Woods, The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, Va.)

TOPEKA, Kan. — About the least fashionable thing one can do these days is utter a kind word about the Catholic Church. The idea that the church has been an obstacle to human progress has been elevated to the level of something everybody thinks he knows. But to the contrary, it is to the Catholic Church more than to any other institution that we owe so many of the treasures of Western civilization. Knowingly or not, scholars operated for two centuries under an Enlightenment prejudice that assumes all progress to come from religious skeptics, and that whatever the church touches is backward, superstitious, even barbaric.

Since the mid-20th century, this unscholarly prejudice has thankfully begun to melt away, and professors of a variety of religious backgrounds, or none at all, increasingly acknowledge the church's contributions.

Nowhere has the revision of what we thought we knew been more dramatic than in the study of the history of science. We all remember what we learned in fourth grade: While scientists were bravely trying to uncover truths about the universe and improve our quality of life, stupid churchmen who hated reason and simply wanted the faithful to shut up and obey placed a ceaseless stream of obstacles in their path.

That was where the conventional wisdom stood just over a century ago, with the publication of Andrew Dickson White's book, "A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom," in 1896. And that's where most Americans (and Europeans, for that matter) believe it still stands.

But there is scarcely a historian of science in America who would endorse this comic-book version of events today. To the contrary, modern historians of science freely acknowledge the church's contributions — both theoretical and material — to the Scientific Revolution. It was the church's worldview that insisted the universe was orderly and operated according to certain fixed laws. Only buoyed with that confidence would it have made sense to bother investigating the physical world in the first place, or even to develop the scientific method (which can work only in an orderly world). It's likewise a little tricky to claim the church has been an implacable foe of the sciences when so many priests were accomplished scientists.

The first person to measure the rate of acceleration of a freely falling body was Father Giambattista Riccioli. The man who has been called the father of Egyptology was Father Athanasius Kircher. Father Roger Boscovich, who has been described as "the greatest genius that Yugoslavia ever produced," has often been called the father of modern atomic theory. In the sciences it was the Jesuits in particular who distinguished themselves; some 35 craters on the moon, in fact, are named after Jesuit scientists and mathematicians.

By the 18th century, writes historian Jonathan Wright, the Jesuits "had contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes, and microscopes, to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics, and electricity. They observed, in some cases before anyone else, the colored bands on Jupiter's surface, the Andromeda nebula, and Saturn's rings. They theorized about the circulation of the blood (independently of Harvey), the theoretical possibility of flight, the way the moon affected the tides, and the wave-like nature of light."

Their achievements likewise included "star maps of the southern hemisphere, symbolic logic, flood-control measures on the Po and Adige rivers, introducing plus and minus signs into Italian mathematics."

These were the great opponents of human progress?

Seismology, the study of earthquakes, has been so dominated by Jesuits that it has become known as "the Jesuit science." It was a Jesuit, Father J.B. Macelwane, who wrote the first seismology textbook in America in 1936. To this day, the American Geophysical Union, which Macelwane once headed, gives an annual medal named after this brilliant priest to a promising young geophysicist.

The Jesuits were also the first to introduce Western science into such far-off places as China and India. In 17th-century China in particular, Jesuits introduced a substantial body of scientific knowledge and a vast array of mental tools for understanding the physical universe, including the Euclidean geometry that made planetary motion comprehensible.

Jesuits made important contributions to the scientific knowledge and infrastructure of other less developed nations not only in Asia but also in Africa and Central and South America. Beginning in the 19th century, these continents saw the opening of Jesuit observatories that studied such fields as astronomy, geomagnetism, meteorology, seismology and solar physics. Such observatories provided these places with accurate time keeping, weather forecasts (particularly important in the cases of hurricanes and typhoons), earthquake risk assessments and cartography.

The centrality of the Catholic Church specifically and Christianity generally in the astonishing accomplishments of Western civilization is a fact of history. A brute fact. To ignore it, which is routine in modern education, is negligence. To deny it, which is de rigueur in godless circles, is a lie, born of bigotry and hate.

Those who hate the Church-- and they are many-- would do well to understand the scientific, cultural, political, economic, legal, and artistic revolution the Church wrought, if only to understand the miracle and to try to replicate it under other metaphysical systems. It's worth noting that many godless modernist systems-- Marxism for example-- try to do just that. Marxism has been called, with reason, a Christian heresy, an attempt at salvation of mankind with mortal saviors.

The history of the West since the fall of Rome is the history of the Church, applied. Most of it has been magnificent, some tawdry. As the influence of the Church in the West recedes (it is, thank God, growing in the East and the South), we will get to know again much of the evil that the Church vanquished centuries ago.

I suspect that even the Church's most impassioned enemies will pause when they begin to see what de-Christianization really means. The 20th century in Europe was a prelude. 

The National Atheist Party

From the Huffington Post, with snippets from yours truly:

Atheists face uphill climb with new political party

By Kimberly Winston| Religion News Service

How viable is a political party with the word “atheist” in its name?

Troy Boyle, a corporate legal representative for a finance company, thinks very viable. Last March, he and a friend founded the National Atheist Party, which they believe to be the first American political party organized on the belief that God does not exist.

The N.A.P. is the second atheist American political party, actually... 

Boyle, 45, got the idea to start the party while watching an interview with Richard Dawkins, the British evolutionary biologist and author of several “New Atheist” manifestos, including the best-selling “The God Delusion.” In the interview, Dawkins wondered why atheists did not organize to influence politics.

Atheists wait patiently for instructions from Dawkins.  

“It struck me like a bolt of lightning when he said it,” Boyle recalled.

Bad metaphor for an atheist. Be careful of lightning, Troy.

From his home in Elsmere, Ky., he started researching atheists in politics. “And I found nothing.

Yea. Atheists have scrupulously avoided political involvement, except for a few piddling and oh-so-tentative forays (1789, 1793, 1848, 1917, 1922, 1932, 1936, 1949, 1956, 1961, 1968, 1975. A few still dabble.

So I picked up the gauntlet. I decided to start a political party.”

There's a nice book about atheism's insignificant little dips in the political pool that Troy might peek at. 

First called the Freethought Party, its original Facebook page attracted only a couple hundred members. But when the name was changed to the National Atheist Party, supporters started streaming in, currently more than 8,200.

8,000 Brights didn't know that Freethought meant atheist.  

“It immediately began growing much quicker and with less argument and controversy among members,” Boyle said. “Everyone seemed to understand implicitly what the National Atheist Party would stand for.”

We understand.  

What it stands for, Boyle said, is no governmental favoring of religion — including no religion.

Mandatory Civic Atheism isn't a religion, you see.  

“We are convened with the idea that the Founding Fathers had it right,” Boyle said in an interview.

"All men are Created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights..." 

Boyle isn't bothered by cognitive dissonance.

“The separation of church and state, the establishment of the U.S. as a secular nation — those two concepts are our watchwords.

Neither is anywhere in the Constitution. We are most emphatically a Christian nation, founded on Christian concepts. Our roots, our culture, our shared values and assumptions are emphatically Christian.

The distinction between secular and church power is also a distinctly Christian idea ("Render unto Caesar..).

North Korea, for example, is an explicitly secular nation with a very effective separation of church and state. It has a vibrant atheist party. The only party. 

Atheist parties have an uncanny propensity to become wildly popular once they gain power. In fact, nobody ever even thinks about starting another political party in nations governed by atheist parties. Once you go atheist, ya' never go back.

We don’t want government to impose a religion,

Except Civic Atheism.

and we don’t want government to impose no religion.

Except Civic Atheism.

We want government to be silent with regards to religion.”

Civic Atheism means that you have the right to remain silent. An obligation, actually. 

Boyle says the NAP has 7,500 members and a chapter in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The largest chapter is Florida, with 200 members, and the smallest is Alaska, with two.

The two atheists in Alaska have no doubt each formed his own chapter. Atheists are a fissiparous lot.  

Bridget Gaudette, a 33-year-old medical case manager, joined the Florida chapter after visiting NAP’s Facebook page. She now volunteers as NAP’s deputy vice president and focuses on outreach.

Atheist outreach in in the 20th century. 

“I am a big advocate of civic participation in government and I’m an atheist, so I loved the idea of a political party that could be the voice of atheists,” she said.

Another political party that could be the voice of atheists, she means. Why do they always forget?

The party’s platform was decided on by a vote — again via Facebook — and includes hot-button issues such as gay marriage (for it) gun control (tighten it), abortion (a woman’s decision), immigration (reform it), energy (green it), and the economy (legalize recreational drugs to create revenue and jobs).

Why vote? Could've guessed the party platform in my sleep. I wonder how they feel about Christmas creches on public property? 

Currently, the NAP is registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a 527 political party, which means it is a nonprofit that can put money behind issues, but not behind specific candidates.

Sorry, Jong-Un. Their support for specific fellow atheist politicians will have to remain spiritual, not financial.

Boyle hopes his party will support candidates sometime in the future.

Kim Jong-Un is mortal.  

There could be quite a wait.

He's only 28.

A November poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 67 percent of Americans said they would be “uncomfortable” with an atheist in the White House.

They didn't ask the other 33%, who would be uncomfortable, too.

In 2007, the Pew Research Center found that a candidate who doesn’t believe in God would have the hardest time gaining support from voters, with 63 percent “less likely to support” an atheist, outranking a gay candidate (46 percent), a philanderer (39 percent) or a Mormon (30 percent).

To date, only one “out” atheist serves in Congress, Rep. Pete Stark, a California Democrat.

 Hopefully he'll be even more "out" in 2012. 

“Relative to other religious minority groups, atheists tend to anchor the low end of the favorability scale,” said Robert P. Jones, CEO of Public Religion Research Institute, who ties it to the Cold War image of “godless communism.”

Atheism is a religious minority? So Mandatory Civic Atheism is an establishment of religion? 

John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron and an expert on religion and politics, says the NAP may be the first American political party to organize itself around atheism.

Except...

But such issues-based parties have a long history of dotting the American political landscape — before disappearing.

Atheism doesn't disappear. It just flares up periodically and makes mankind miserable. Like herpes. 

Sometimes, their concerns are absorbed by a major party, and other times, they fade away, Green said. 

“One of the reasons it is hard for a minor party to sustain itself is they don’t win very much,” Green said. “It is easier to keep people interested when it comes to ideas — you follow them on Facebook, subscribe to their magazine and you go to their convention. That is an easier thing to do than to try and mobilize millions of voters.”

Historically, in many parts of the world, atheists have stayed in power quite effectively. They only have to win once.  

None of this fazes Boyle, who says donations are coming in and membership is growing.

8,201....8,202.... 

“We know we are a minority and we know that is not likely to change in the near future,” he said. “We simply want the right to exist.

The right to exist? The right to exist? The right to exist?

Atheists aren't persecuted. There are no atheist martyrs. Atheists are the only religious group in history that has never suffered significant persecution. 

Atheists are persecutors, on a scale unparalleled in history. Atheists in power deny other people the right to exist. Every atheist government has been totalitarian. No exceptions. 

The American public's distrust of atheists isn't "persecution". Americans don't like atheists because they think atheism is idiotic and atheists are bullies. Americans understand atheists.

And if that doesn’t turn into a majority landslide of popular support,

In atheist countries, the atheist party always wins elections with a landslide. It's like it's preordained.

whoever thought it was going to? But an election on an issue or on a candidate can be swayed by a small group of people. ...

Look how effective atheists have been in using the judicial process to censor civic expression of Christianity. Imagine how much anti-Christian hate they can stir up in the legislative process.

In two or 10 or 20 years, who knows how many of us there will be and when we vote on an issue it will matter.”

A bright future for the Brights! And what about an acronym for the National Atheist Party? NAP's? No. Not catchy.

Why not the National Socialists National Atheists?

Hmmm... The National Atheism Party... The Na(s)te Party.

Pronounced the "Nasty" Party.

Heck, no need to explain the acronym.

Fr. McCloskey's Catholic desiderata for 2012

Fr. C. J. McCloskey at The Catholic Thing has seven wishes for the Catholic Church in America in 2012:

Desiderata for 2012 

By Fr. C. John McCloskey III 

Way back in 1989 (my, how the years fly by), I wrote an an article for the Christmas edition of the old Crisismagazine entitled “Good Guys Finish First: Ten Reasons to Smile This Christmas.” Over two decades later, I remain bullish on the Catholic Church in America for the New Year of 2012, especially if the year includes persecution and further societal decline.

That’s because the Church flourishes in bad times. Why? Because it is the answer to humanity’s problems, which are in their roots moral. No country can flourish or perhaps even survive if it kills its babies, indulges in pornography as its favorite entertainment, and neglects to protect the institution of marriage.

But, “bullish” as I am, my optimism needs some elaboration. The good news for the Church in America and, indeed, in the world is that the sequential pontificates of Blessed John Paul and Pope Benedict have dealt a death blow to the Long Purgatory afflicting the Church from the close of Vatican II. 

In another piece written some years ago, I suggested 2030 as the target year for a generally healthy Church running on all spiritual cylinders in our country. I projected this recovery because the authentic teaching of the Second Vatican Council is gradually being revealed, enforced, and practiced.

Bl. John Paul saw a “new spring time for the Church” and a new civilization of love and truth in the new millennium. Pope Benedict on the other hand has posited “a small creative minority” of members of the Church, at least in Europe and what was known as the West. Which prophetic view will be correct (or whether in fact they are both aspects of the same reality) will become apparent in the decades ahead.

So what does the Church in the United States need right now, in 2012? Here are some suggestions, in no particular order:

1. Large numbers of new priests who will celebrate the Holy Mass reverently, spend hours in the confessional, preach the evangelizing and life-giving truth to the faithful, and strive in their prayer and ascetical life to imitate the Holy Cure of Ars.

2. Thousands of men and women religious who will bear witness to the eschatological life by their poverty, chastity, and obedience and – by the habits they wear in public – will give glory to God and attract additional vocations. This includes those in monasteries who spend their lives in prayer.

3. More bishops who put their interior and ascetical life before anything else (including meetings and dinners), so that they can be true spiritual fathers to their priests, shepherds to their flocks, and examples of holiness and sound preaching. These bishops should also be willing to firmly discipline those Catholics-in-name-only, who operate in the public square and give scandal to the faithful and our fellow citizens.

4. A laity that takes seriously Vatican II’s universal call to holiness and evangelization through their family lives, friendships, and presence in workplaces and public affairs. The local parish is very much in last place. It exists to provide opportunity for worship and reception of the sacraments, Catholic formation and catechetical education. Ideally it should be a launching pad to change the world, not a place to hide from it.

5. Truly Catholic colleges and universities. In fact, I hope by this time next year that they all qualify for favorable mention in the list of Catholic colleges maintained by the Cardinal Newman Society, even if their average SAT scores and college athletic rankings decline. (As it happens, the Angelic Doctor does not mention these in his Summatheologiae as necessary for salvation.)

6. A Catholic laity prepared to be confessors and/or martyrs for the faith in the decades ahead in our country. Ah, you say, it can’t happen here! I reply: You bet it can! For the vast majority of us it would be the quickest if not the most comfortable route to canonization. The best way, however, is to live your family, professional, and spiritual lives so faithfully and attractively that the many hundreds of people you know are drawn to wonder what you have that they don’t, and then to receive from you the reply, “I am a Catholic.” That should generate the response, “How can I become one too?” And then you can bring them to Christ and his Church through your local parish. That is how the Church spread from 64 to 312 A.D. among the first Christians, who exercised a one-to-one, family-to-family apostolate to the pagans around them, and gradually converted the Empire. It is due to their perseverance that we are here.

7. As long as we are wishing boldly, a newly elected, well-formed devout Catholic president would help, as would Catholic voters, judges, and legislators who strive to live both their public and private lives according to the moral and social teaching of the Church. If that were to happen . . . well, we might find ourselves in a truly exceptional country of citizens attempting to order their lives according to the natural law and divine revelation, and respecting human dignity from conception until natural death. We might, in fact, become what our American founders intended, “a shining city on a hill.”

Happy New Year!

Let us hope and pray that Catholics, and all of our Christian brothers and sisters, will work together to bring our nation closer to a new civilization based more fully on love and truth.

In other words, may we bring our nation closer to Christ.