Archbishop Timothy Dolan: Anti-Catholicism is America's Pastime

New York's Archbishop showed me something here, no mincing words. Maureen Dowd finally held accountable for her incoherent rants. Click on the above link, a very worth-while read.

"...Finally, the most combustible example of all came Sunday with an intemperate and scurrilous piece by Maureen Dowd on the opinion pages of the Times. In a diatribe that rightly never would have passed muster with the editors had it so criticized an Islamic, Jewish, or African-American religious issue, she digs deep into the nativist handbook to use every anti-Catholic caricature possible, from the Inquisition to the Holocaust, condoms, obsession with sex, pedophile priests, and oppression of women, all the while slashing Pope Benedict XVI for his shoes, his forced conscription -- along with every other German teenage boy -- into the German army, his outreach to former Catholics, and his recent welcome to Anglicans.

True enough, the matter that triggered her spasm -- the current visitation of women religious by Vatican representatives -- is well-worth discussing, and hardly exempt from legitimate questioning. But her prejudice, while maybe appropriate for the Know-Nothing newspaper of the 1850’s, the Menace, has no place in a major publication today."

10/31 Post note: Archbishop Dolan confirmed he submitted this piece to the New York Times and they declined to print it.

Two Years From Now, These Will Be Considered the Good Ol' Days for Obama

I don't understand. President Obama does nothing in his first 12 days in office and wins the Nobel Peace Prize, but then legitimately sets a true record for approval rating plummet and no one gives him any credit???

From Gallup:

"...the 9-point drop in the most recent quarter is the largest Gallup has ever measured for an elected president between the second and third quarters of his term, dating back to 1953

...More generally, Obama's 9-point slide between quarters ranks as one of the steepest for a president at any point in his first year in office."

The Liberal Tenet of Work vs. Jobs

The Obama administration reported yesterday that it has saved or created 30,000 jobs by awarding $16 B-B-B-Billion to federal contractors in government projects. With a calculator, it comes out to a cost of more than $500,000 per job created which again shows you the inefficiencies and incompetence of this administration.

Now, let’s take that $16 Billion and try to stimulate this economy another way. Let’s give out 160,000 one-hundred thousand dollars low-interest loans, that should be noted have to be paid back, to small business entrepreneurs wanting to open a business. If each hires 2 people, when grouped with the entrepreneur, this would create 480,000 new jobs. Now what happens if one percent of the 160,000 companies actually become large companies down the road (Apple computers started in a garage). Take 1600 companies and times that by 10,000 jobs as well. 16 million new jobs.

The basic truth about Liberals is that they are very good at creating work for their constituencies, and very bad at creating established, long-term jobs. They can create a $60,000 job for a person directing traffic at a highway work site holding a stop sign, but this job is gone the day the work is completed.

Here is a great example of this using Boston’s Big Dig in the epicenter of Liberalism. The government wanted to move a highway underground that went through the middle of the city. It was originally budgeted for $2 Billion, and came in at a final cost of over $22 Billion. In the year 2000, 5,400 workers were hired for the job and at the end, in 2004, only 1,000 were still employed, and they were on short-term, mop-up duty.

Last week, in a poll of CEO’s only 13% expect to offer more jobs in the short term, although the majority expect their sales to grow in this same period. This, coupled with the Dow Jones hitting 10,000 this week, leads more credibility and concern to a job-less recovery, and very big problems for the Obama administration.

Best of VCR: What's the Nobel Prize Worth?

Originally posted June 5, 2008. Thought I would dust it off with our President's recent honor. I read today that the nominations for this year's award we due Feb. 1st, 2009, so Obama was nominated 12 days into Office. This shows you the obsession in making sure Obama got this award regardless of achievements. This award is even more completely meaningless going forward than it was in the past, if that is possible.


This week, MSNBC.com ran a cover story on the downfall of Dr. James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.

Long-time pro-lifers are very familiar with Dr. Watson but not for his scientific advancements. They are familiar with him for his extreme culture-of-death philosophies:

In Prism magazine (1973), Dr. Watson suggests that children not be declared alive until three days after birth so that doctors may allow severely deformed children to die if their parents so choose.

Decades later, in an interview with the Australian paper The Sunday Age, Watson was quoted saying: "Any time you can prevent a seriously sick child from being born, it is good for everyone..."

What makes this man so incredible is not his accolades, but the place our society give him. He is an esteemed Nobel Laureate.

In researching the history of the Nobel Prizes, you will find such dark names in the ranks of the Nobel nominees as Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin. As the ol’ Yankee manager, Casey Stengel, said, "You can look it up."

What you will not find on the list of nominees are the names of Mahatma Gandhi nor Pope John Paul II.

In regard to the Holy Father, the Nobel organization did not believe embracing your assassin in a jail cell, speaking out for the most helpless and downtrodden members of society over the span of 30 years and being at the epicenter of the fall of Communism (bringing it down without a shot being fired) worthy of their recognition.

Despite what Al Gore and Jimmy Carter would tell you, this clearly defines how political these Nobel awards are.

So back to Dr. Watson… What finally brought down his career? He made racist remarks against the African American and Jewish communities.

One of the benefits of being pro-life is that your views allow you to quickly identify what kind of person is standing in front of you. Through our commitment to life, we knew the kind of man Dr. James Watson was in 1973; it took the rest of the world more than 30 years to catch up.

Grief: The Battleground between the Divine and the Mortal

Mary Ellen Barrett is a Catholic writer and a homeschooling mother of seven on Long Island. I have quoted her writing previously on my blog.

In August, while on a camping trip, it is believed her fourteen-year-old son, Ryan, had a seizure that resulted in his drowning. As a parent who shares with her a deep love of our Catholic Faith and for our children, we all share in this heartache.

Ryan was very loved within his community, and aspired to become a priest. When Auxiliary Bishop Peter Libasci came to Ryan’s wake, he told a mourner, "I just had to come and see the little priest."

Mourning directly exposes our souls and our hearts to the presence of God without any obstructions. There are no pretenses or falsehoods in mourning; no rhetoric, no social pleasantries, no cosmetic appearances, no designer clothes, nor teeth whiteners. Nothing but the true essence of human struggling and emotions with all else stripped away.

Grieving is the battleground between the Divine and the mortal. Our mortal nature and senses tell us that our loved one is gone forever because we no longer have their physical presence; and our Faith tells us that they are in God’s embrace and that we are called to believe the nonphysical and things that can't be seen -- what our senses can’t perceive and hearts can't prove. It is a very tough battle.

This struggle is what Mary Ellen calls "sitting at the foot of the cross" in this beautiful piece where she wrote about her grief. You will see there are no pretenses in her words, just her struggling with her essence and the belief in her God. It is a very worthwhile read:

Triumph of the Cross
"One month. It's been one month since our world came crashing down around us and we began our vigil at the cross of Christ.

To learn to embrace the suffering and turn it to some use has been, at times, a nearly impossible task for me. I miss my Ryan so badly it is a physical pain that just will not go away. A stabbing knife in my chest that often makes it hard to catch my breath.

To sit at the foot of the cross in the real way that Dave and I have this past month, it is necessary to surrender to God and to just trust that His plan is for our ultimate salvation. I confess to having my moments of bewilderment/anger at why God called Ryan home but I pray through that and ask Ryan to pray for me. I know that Ryan is happy in heaven, that he is doing good there. There have been several little intercessions he has accomplished for his mom and dad and I'm told others have had little prayer requests granted. I am so comforted by the knowledge that he is home with Our Lady, helping his family and friends.
I still want him home with me. That is me, my fallen, broken nature. To be aware of his joy and yet want him here. I can't help it. I don't think I ever will be able to feel differently.

Still we chug along here, life still happens. Babies need feeding and changing, toddlers require care, older kids need to do school and go to music and soccer and other places. I am sometimes annoyed that the world hasn't stopped, frozen in time because my son died, but then I see that going to dance and soccer is good for the kids and visiting with family heals me.

So the grief crashes over us in waves. Mind numbingly, over-powering waves and then we gasp and stick our heads up and catch our breath. We see the world around us and the love being bestowed on us and we know it is good.

Sitting at the foot of the cross gives others the opportunity to minister. We have been so cared for and generously provided for in the last month. I still receive a delicious hot dinner every evening at 5:00 pm. I We spent this last weekend in a beautiful New England resort owned by my cousins, being catered to as if we really deserved such treatment. The dearest friend in the world and her husband and children still take care of so many details of daily living for us so that we no longer have to think. The generosity of our parish family, community and homeschool group have been unimaginable. Thank you all dear people.

This community too, this blogging world with is so "real" in spite of it's "unrealness" The cards, letters, donations, emails, gifts and prayers have overwhelmed us in their love. Thank you all so much.
I have almost 1,000 thank you notes to write. Yes 1,000. Between the wakes and the funeral and the giving that followed almost 1,000 people expressed their gratitude for Ryan's life and love for our family.
If you know me, you know how long that it is going to take to get that done. If you don't know me, let me tell you it's going to be a while.

I want to assure everyone that this blog is not going to become a constant outpouring of grief. I won't be able to keep it out entirely but I still want this to be a happy place that records what we do here and how we do it. I still will rant politically over at CatholicVote.org and I still intend to keep up with other writing commitments. Soon.

For today, the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross, let me assure you that the suffering we embrace does in fact unite us to Christ. While I think I have felt every emotion going in the last month the one that prevails is unity to Christ. A comforted, loved feeling. Knowing that my Father in heaven has embraced my family and I and is holding us close is a warmth I can't describe. To witness and experience the Body of Christ in the real, powerful and practical way that we have is evidence of the suffering doing good. It is evidence that God is in His heaven, that my son is there too and he is caring for Dave and I.

The cross will be triumphant, we shall all be united again.

Until then I can't wait to hug my boy."