Benedict XVI’s Visit to Great Britain Will Bring Out the Lunatics

The Vatican announced today that Pope Benedict XVI will visit Great Britain on September 16-19. “Accepting the invitation of Her Majesty Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom, and of the bishops’ conferences of England and Wales, and of Scotland, His Holiness Benedict XVI will make an apostolic trip to the United Kingdom from 16 to 19 September,” the Pope’s spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said.

The theme chosen for the papal visit to England is “Heart Speaks Unto Heart,” Cardinal Newman’s motto.

According to Inside the Vatican magazine, following the pope’s arrival at Edinburgh airport on September 16, he will be driven to Holyrood Palace where he will be welcomed by Her Majesty the Queen. “He will then travel through the center of Edinburgh in the Popemobile, and the Scottish bishops are encouraging ‘as many people as possible’ to attend and line the Pope’s route and to attend the public Mass in Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park.”

Given the official welcome by the Queen, it is doubtful that the British government will permit the threatened legal action against the pope planned by the UK’s infamous village atheists, the Oxford biologist and town crank Richard Dawkins and U.S.-based journalist Christopher Hitchens.

The two men have allegedly been scheming for months — with the help of two British lawyers, Geoffrey Robertson and Mark Stephens — to have the Crown Prosecution Service arrest the pope for “crimes against humanity.”

Dawkins and Hitchens think that the can make a case against the pope for his alleged “cover-up” of sexual abuse in the Catholic church. They point to the arrest of Augusto Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, when he visited Britain in 1998 as a example of taking action against foreign leaders.

Last year, Palestinian activists talked a British judge into issuing an arrest warrant for the Israeli politician Tzipi Livni during a visit to Britain.

“There is every possibility of legal action against the Pope occurring,” said lawyer Stephens. “Geoffrey and I have both come to the view that the Vatican is not actually a state in international law. It is not recognised by the UN, it does not have borders that are policed and its relations are not of a full diplomatic nature.”

It is doubtful that Hitchens, at least, will be on hand for the legal fireworks as he was recently diagnosed with cancer.

NCR Blogger Rebuts Biased New York Times Attack on Pope

It’s not often you read someone in the National Catholic Reporter defending the pope.  After all, with the exception of its excellent Vatican correspondent John Allen, Jr., the NCR is to Catholicism what The Nation is to the Republican Party:  the official organ of opposition. For decades, it’s been the primary forum for angry ex-priests, angry ex-nuns and even, in the case of uber-liberal Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee, angry ex-archbishops.  It regularly features columns by the usual collection of geriatric Sixties liberals, such as Richard McBrien of Notre Dame, ex-priest Eugene Kennedy, Joan Chittister, Charles Curran, and so on. For a “NCR Catholic,” the papacy is not a “charism of unity” that has held an international community of believers together for well neigh 2,000 years but merely an archaic medieval institution that should have long ago been jetisonned by a “progressive” church (small C).

Thus, it was something of a surprise to read new NCR blogger Michael Sean Winters actually step up and defend Pope Benedict XVI (the arch-villain for the NCR for literally decades!) against the assorted imbecilities and logical incoherence of the New York Times. “This morning’s New York Times “expose” regarding then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s role in the Vatican’s response to the clergy sex abuse crisis exposes more than it intended,” Winters writes. “It exposes the fact that the authors, Laurie Goodstein and David Halbfinger, and their editors, do not understand what they are talking about and, at times, put forward such an unrelentingly tendentious report, it is difficult to attribute it to anything less than animus.”

Amen. Here’s some of the good bits:

The Times article comments, this is not reporting really, that, “Yet throughout the ’80s and ’90s, bishops who sought to penalize and dismiss abusive priests were daunted by a bewildering bureaucratic and canonical legal process, with contradicting laws and overlapping jurisdictions in Rome, according to church documents and interviews with bishops and canon lawyers.” Have Ms. Goodstein and Mr. Halbfinger ever seen a rerun of “Law & Order”? Legal processes are complicated and sometimes bewildering. The authors note that some cardinals were worried about maintaining the presumption of innocence in ecclesiastical tribunals. The horror. Shame on them. Worrying about a silly thing like the presumption of innocence in a court of law. Hell, it is only one of the cardinal (no pun intended) principles of a civilized society.

But, the sentence that most betrays the bias of the Times has nothing to do with the sex abuse of minors. In making the case that Cardinal Ratzinger found time to pursue other matters of lesser importance, they write: “As Father Gauthé was being prosecuted in Louisiana, Cardinal Ratzinger was publicly disciplining priests in Brazil and Peru for preaching that the church should work to empower the poor and oppressed, which the cardinal saw as a Marxist-inspired distortion of church doctrine.” This reads as “Bad Cardinal Ratzinger, persecuting those justice-loving liberation theologians.” The operative word in that sentence is “for.” Cardinal Ratzinger did not, in fact, punish liberation theologians “for preaching that the church should work to empower the poor and oppressed.” He took steps against Liberation Theology because it was built on a faulty anthropology, entailed a materialist analysis of the human person, and reduced the idea of the “Kingdom of God” to a more just earthly regime.

How such a clear and intelligent analysis got past editor Joe Feuerherd is difficult to say. But it’s a hopeful sign.

Mel Gibson’s Latest Rant

Not that he needs my help, but I’ve long defended Mel Gibson from accusations that he’s a bigot.  I thought a lot of the rage directed his way over his film, The Passion of the Christ, had less to do with any real or perceived anti-Semitism in the film than it did over its depiction of the Gospels as they are actually written.  In other words, the people attacking The Passion were often really attacking the historicity of the Gospels themselves, often with little scholarly or historical justification.

As for Mel’s arrest for drunk driving and subsequent rant about “the Jews,” my feeling was that, yes, Mel probably inherited a little anti-Jewish feeling from his old man, but that, really, he was more needling the cop than anything else.  Had the cop been black or Asian, he might just as well started dropping other racial epithets, I felt.

Well, if the most recent story is to be believed, he is certainly capable of those as well.  According to Radaronline.com, Mel was surreptitiously recorded during an argument with his apparently now-ex girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva and said some pretty nasty things — using racial and demeaning female epithets that he probably wouldn’t use in an audience with the pope.  It sounds to me like he was set up:  Grigorieva’s lawyer probably wanted her to get some more “dirt” on Mel to use as leverage for a bigger financial settlement.  After all, how many women carry around a digital tape recorder, already running, to record every word in an angry argument?

But I must say, I’m a bit embarrassed for him.  It’s not that he used vulgar language or swore.  I swear.  My wife swears.  We’ll use coarse language in private.  We do draw the line, however, over words that are inherently demeaning to any racial group or gender.  I was raised to never, ever, EVER use the “N word,” and, similarly, I’ve never used any other racial epithets that many New Yorkers, say, use as a matter of course — like “guinea” for Italian, say, or anti-Jewish or Polish slurs.    When I lived in Hawaii, I was shocked by how the Hawaiians routinely use expressions like “Flips” for Filipinos or “tight Pakes” for Chinese.  I’ve taught my own children the same linguistic discipline.

Clearly Mel’s a troubled guy — an enormously talented and, in some ways, thoughtful guy, but troubled nonetheless.  But then again, a lot of people are troubled.  A lot of people have their demons.  A lot of people harbor racist sentiments that just are never recorded on tape.

I’m sure the breakup of his longtime marriage really unhinged him… and he is full of regret and wants more than anything to get back together with his ex-wife.  (Contrary to media reports, he did not marry Grigorieva.)

I still wish Mel the best.  Like most people, in his better moments, I’m sure Mel isn’t a racist.  Or maybe he’s just an occasional racist.  That description would fit a lot of people.  What will really be sickening will be the pile-on of politically correct media sleazebags, like TMZ.com, who will run with this story for weeks, maybe months.  Sometimes it’s just better to keep your mouth shut.  Especially when arguing with your ex-girlfriend.

UPDATE July 15, 2010: Well, it just keeps getting uglier and uglier, doesn’t it? I am naturally skeptical of anything “consensus” the lamestream media produce these days since, in my experience, anything the media agreed upon as obviously true (e.g., Barack Obama will be a great president, global warming) usually ends up being anything but.

And it’s also obvious that Gibson was completely set-up by what appears to be a conniving, fairly obvious gold-digger.

That said, however, I draw the line at hitting a woman. There is no justification for a tough guy like Mel punching a woman half his weight, let alone the mother of one of his children, in the face. For that, he deserves whatever scorn he gets… even if Whoopie Goldberg is right that he’s probably not a true racist in his heart. I feel sorry most for his kids… for the shame that this talented but tormented guy is bringing on his seven adult children. I know there is redemption, even in Hollywood, but I can’t see how Mel’s kids will ever live this down.

Frank Fenner: Another Crackpot Prediction of Doom

NOTE:  The photo above is an illustration of what the earth would look like if ALL of the ice on earth melted and the worst fears of the climate change doomsayers came true:  About 4% more of the earth’s surface would be covered by water than is true today.

I would take the aged scientist Frank Fenner’s predictions of imminent doom more seriously if his fellow scientists hadn’t been making the same predictions for 400 years — and have a near perfect record of being wrong.

Apparently Fenner, a 90-year-old microbiologist, calmly told The Australian newspaper recently that the human race faces extinction within 100 years due to… wait for it!… overpopulation, famine and, yes, climate change.

“We’re going to become extinct,” Fenner told the newspaper jovially. “Whatever we do now is too late.”

At least Hollywood is more original: In the film 2012, which I found entertaining if a bit tedious, the extinction comes from a new kind of Flood: all the land masses are covered by a massive melting of the earth’s ice. The problem is, such a scenario is scientifically impossible. If all the ice on earth did, in fact, melt, it wouldn’t come close to covering all of the land masses.

According to William Johnston, melting the 29.3 million cubic kilometers of grounded ice would produce 26.1 million cubic kilometers of water and raise the levels of the oceans about 66 feet — enough to swamp small low-lying islands but which would leave most of the earth untouched.

Johnston estimates we would have 128 million square kilometers of land compared to 132 million square kilometers today.  So much for Hollywood!

Back to Fenner. How does he know that “over-population” is going to do us in? After all, scientists have been complaining about “over population” since the days of the British economist Thomas “the End if Near” Malthus in the early 1800s when the earth’s population was about 978 million. Here is Malthus’s “scientific” prediction:

The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world. (An Essay on the Principle of Population, 1798, Chapter VII, page 61.

Of course, other scientists have made equal fools out of themselves. Paul Ehrlich, of course, the author of The Population Bomb, famously predicted:

“In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.” – Paul Ehrlich, 1970

“When you reach a point where you realize further efforts will be futile, you may as well look after yourself and your friends and enjoy what little time you have left. That point for me is 1972.” – Paul Ehrlich, 1971

“Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity…in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion.” – Paul Ehrlich, 1976

“Human-induced land degradation… affects about 40% of the planet’s vegetated land surface… [and is] accelerating nearly everywhere, reducing crop yields.” – Paul Ehrlich, 1997

I dunno. Doom and gloom certainly seems to make people money. Al Gore’s personal net worth went from $1 million when he left office in 2000 to $100 million today. As the Democrats demonstrate almost daily, there is a sucker born every minute.

Meg Whitman Governor is Democrats’ Worst Nightmare

Meg Whitman Governor and Carly Fiorina are the Democrats’ worst nightmare.  They are smart, accomplished, tough business women who got where they are, not by milking the political system and becoming professional parasites, but by actually working for a living.  They also give the lie to the Democrats’ frequent claim that left-wingers like Barbara Boxer speak for all, or even most, women.

Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard Co. CEO, trounced the liberal Republican Tom Campbell in the election June 8 57% to 22%.  Meg Whitman, former eBay Inc. chief executive, also beat her rival, California State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner 64% to 26%.

Consider the difference between Meg Whitman Governor on the one hand and Barbara Boxer on the other.

Barbara Boxer has been a professional politician her entire life.  She’s never held a job.  Never run a business.  Never met a payroll.  Never created jobs for other people.  All Boxer has ever done, her entire life, is spend other people’s money — and collect her hefty government paychecks and pension for doing so.

She has spent her entire adult life as a full-time freeloader, living off of the taxpayers - first as a member of the Marin County Board of Supervisors, then as a U.S. Congressman and then finally, beginning in 1992, as a U.S. Senator.  Naturally, therefore, Boxer believes that virtually every problem people face can be solved by raising taxes and spending (other people’s) money on more government programs.

Meg Whitman Governor, on the other hand, like many of the successful Republican women now in politics, made her fortune the old-fashioned way… not by milking the tax payers but by building a successful multi-million-dollar enterprise that actually helps people.

EBay, like Amazon, is one of the more successful of the early dot-com web businesses — and literally millions of people, all over the world, make money by taking advantage of the infrastructure and open markets that EBay makes possible.  Whitman prospered not, as President Obama would have it, by “spreading (other people’s) wealth around,” but by making more wealth.

There has never been a more dramatic choice presented:  Old, bitter liberals like Barbara Boxer who still cling to the discredited Big Government policies of the 1960s… versus new, energetic, accomplished, successful women like Whitman and Carly Fiorina.

As the saying goes:  Is it November yet?

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