I Am Who and What I Say I Am

I'm a little puzzled by the John Jay Report apparently understating the influence of homosexual behaviour amongst the offending priests (and bishops). This seemingly because the offenders didn't think of themselves as homosexuals while they sought sexual gratification with post-pubescent males. I don't think of myself as lazy even if there's a lot of work I should be doing now that I'm neglected, ok? So don't judge me.

John Jay report a "whitewash" of clerical homosexuality?:

The John Jay College of Criminal Justice recently released its report, commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, on the clerical sex scandals that came to light over the past decade. Some have alleged that the study is a "whitewash" of the issue of clerical homosexuality, since the report denies that a man engaging in sexual acts with a post-pubescent teen male should be called a "homosexual" if he doesn't think of himself as a homosexual.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Musings of a Pertinacious Papist.)

A Little Exercise for the Grey Cells

can be found here:

The Collection of Atoms Called "Mike Flynn"...:

replies to the collection of atoms designated "Sam Harris" and tries to persuade him to stop babbling nonsense.

Someday I hope Flynn gives up this nonsense of writing award winning fiction and publishing one great novel after another and finds his true calling: explaining Thomistic philosophy to materialist New Atheist dunderheads.

Also, how can I ever publish fiction when anything I even dream of attempting pales next to his work? It's intimidating, dammit!

Read the whole thing.

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

Do you need facial hair to be a Catholic apologist?

Oh good, something to do while I'm busy retiring:

Do you need facial hair to be a Catholic apologist?:

So you want to be a Catholic apologist? It isn't all that hard, really. There's only a handful of things you need in order to be an effective and successful Catholic apologist. Faithfulness to the Magisterium. Love of Scripture. Passion for the truth. And facial hair.

Read the whole thing.

(Via New Advent World Watch.)

Is Waterboarding Torture?

The first question we should be asking is "Should we allow torture at all?" And the answer, I insist, is no.

The follow-on question "Is torture effective?", given the answer to the first question, is irrelevant. Effective or not torture is immoral and dehumanizing both for the victim and the torturer. You shall not do evil that good may come of it. Without this fundamental truth moral reasoning loses it's coherency. So I disagree with the author of the article cited below to that degree.

A legitimate question might be "Is waterboarding torture?" Prior to 2001 (and the torture-works-ticking-clock rationale) the answer was clearly yes:

Is Waterboarding Torture?:

I agree with you, Matt, that there are several questions surrounding this issue that, while disturbing, are disputable. “Should we allow torture?” and “Is torture effective?” are two examples. But the question of whether waterboarding is torture is not one of them.

Read the whole thing.

(Via First Thoughts.)

For the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes: "Song of Bernadette"

Since today is the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes this seems an appropriate link:

For the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes: "Song of Bernadette":

People forget that Leonard Cohen wrote something else besides the now-ubiquitous "Hallelujah". He composed this haunting ode to love and human frailty, "Song of Bernadette." Here's the great Jennifer Warnes - whatever happened to her, by the way? — performing this, evidently on "The Smothers Brothers" show in the early 1970s.

Read the whole thing.

(Via New Advent World Watch.)

Our Problem is

We have the attention spans of goldfish. If something is broadcast that confirms our beliefs or our suspicions we accept it without further thought. Actually investigating the basis for our beliefs and opinions risks disconfirmation, something we are ill-equipped to deal with.

The case in point is the Liberal/Moderate contempt for the Fox News network and it's viewers:

Are Fox News Viewers Misinformed?

This is a great example of:

Are Fox News Viewers Misinformed?

This is a great example of how the internet undermines the biased academic class.



Via Roger Ho.

(Via Lex Communis.)

What He Said

(Well, isn't that what most of my posts say?)

Reaping the Whirlwind:

Zac Alstin on how Nazi thinking became our own.

In what sense did we win World War II?

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

A Follow-Up Post

My mentor in the sixties and seventies was Larry Evans. He is a Grandmaster and an excellent teacher. I had the honour of watching him play against Bent Larsen in the 1972 tournament I referred to in the previous post. My teacher got taught.

In the after-game analysis Bent explained that he knew that Larry thought (and taught) in terms of concrete concepts. So he deliberately steered the game into complications where Larry's point-count style chess (from Bent's perspective) would not help him. Wow.

Bent Larsen, 1935-2010:

Danish chess legend Bent Larsen died yesterday in Buenos Aires, following a short illness, at the age of 75. He was a leading grandmaster from the mid-to-late 50s through the early 80s, and for a period from the mid-to-late 1960s until his 1971 Candidates match against Bobby Fischer was considered a genuine title contender and even at one point possibly the strongest player outside the Soviet Union.

Read the whole thing.

(Via The Chess Mind Blog.)

Bent Larsen dies at 75

In the glorious days of my youth the greats of chess did battle and we all stood in awe. Bent Larsen was one of those greats. I partly took up the Grand Prix Attack because he was one of the first grandmasters (that I knew of) to practice it.

He played in the Grandmaster tournament on San Antonio in 1972, following Fischer's victory over Spassky. I met him and his wife on a street corner there. They were both so gracious to me and left a positive impression. I am sad at his passing.

Bent Larsen dies at 75:

Bent Larsen photographed in January 2010 by Peter Heine Nielsen.

Hello Everyone,

It is sad news that the great chess player Bent Larsen is no more.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Alexandra Kosteniuk's CHESSBLOG.COM.)

A Rule For Reasoning

is to weight the expert's testimony based on his actual expertise and it's relevance to the topic under debate. So when a big-name sports player tell me to buy something that has nothing to do with his or her sport, I ignore the recommendation.

Enter Stephen Hawking on the subject of Natural Theology:

Fr. Robert Barron: "I confess that something in me tightens whenever I hear a scientist pontificating...":

... on issues that belong to the arena of philosophy or metaphysics. I will gladly listen to Stephen Hawking when he holds forth on matters of theoretical physics, but he’s as qualified to talk about philosophical and religious issues as any college freshman. There is a qualitative difference between the sciences, which speak of objects, forces, and phenomena within the observable universe, and philosophy or religion which speak of ultimate origins and final purposes. Science, as such, simply cannot adjudicate questions that lie outside of its proper purview—and this is precisely why scientists tend to make lots of silly statements when they attempt to philosophize.

Read all of Fr. Barron's piece,"Stephen Hawking & More Tiresome Atheism,"on WordonFire.org.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog.)

Global Warming

isn't what it used to be. The actual data and reasoning about long-term effects of humans on the climate remain opaque to me. But there's still something uncomfortably like the Chicken-Little panic about some of the claims that have been made, not least by Al Gore. So this is interesting news:

The Thing that Used to be Global Warming...:

...and then morphed into the much-harder to grip "climate change" is suffering from severe changes in the climate of public opinion. Happens when you get caught with your pants down.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

What Happened After Vatican II

and why? Here is an intriguing interpretation:

The Liturgical Experts’ Long Tassels:

Publicly owned corporations are more accountable to their shareholders than tenured bureaucracies, which may explain why it took the Ford Motor Company only two years to cancel its Edsel, and not much longer for Coca Cola to restore its “classic” brand, while the Catholic Church has taken more than a generation of unstopped attrition to try to correct the mistakes of overheated liturgists.

Read the whole thing.

(Via First Things: On the Square.)

Political Correctness

that I can agree with:

Toward a Jolly-Friendly Media:

In which we continue to discuss ways to make Amerika affirm the Jolly Lifestyle, as well as how to teach our children to practice safe eating.

Say it with me!: We're out and we're stout!

Read the whole thing.

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

The Probability of God

Wow. There's a 99% probability that God exists? Who knew that kind of calculation was possible?

The Probability of God:

Betrand Russell, famous for his agnostic views as much as for his theories on logic, was once asked how he would answer if he turned out to be wrong about God. Russell was delighted with the question and answered, “Why, I should say, ‘God, you gave us insufficient evidence.’”

I suspect that upon their meeting, God corrected the ol’ Brit, showing how the evidence was there and that Russell had simply chosen to ignore it. But it does raise the question of why different people when presented with much the same evidence, come to such varying conclusions about the existence of God.

Read the whole thing.

(Via First Thoughts.)

Persecution

isn't a subject in many sermons nowadays. (I'll omit ranting a out abortion, contraception and the other elephants in the room.) But my growing sense of unease in our culture of comfort and self is tweaked by little signs of a coming storm.

“Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you [falsely] because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
(Matt 5:10-12 NAB)

We are too comfortable, too sheep-like in the presence of the increasing hostility of the world elite towards Jesus, His teaching and His disciples. We need to prepare ourselves and our children for the troubles that are coming.

Ok, sermon over. Now to the news:

Catholic prof fired for giving Church teaching on homosexuality:

Our good friend and fellow Catholic convert, Dr. Kenneth Howell, who worked for St. John's Catholic Newman Center as Director of the Institute of Catholic Thought, and taught Introduction to Catholicisim and Modern Catholic Thought at the University of Illinois, Urbana, has been fired for relating the Catholic teaching on homosexuality in his class:

• "Illinois professor fired for giving Catholic teaching on homosexuality" (CNA, July 9, 2010).
  
  
• "University of Illinois Instructor Fired Over Catholic Beliefs" (FOX News, July 9, 2010).
  
  
• [Advisory: this article is vile, anti-Catholic, and illustrates why a secular academic climate today could get a good and decent Catholic professor fired]: P.Z. Myers, "Honesty about sex is going to disqualify a lot of professors of Catholic dogma" (Pharyngula, July 9, 2010).

Read the whole thing.

(Via Musings of a Pertinacious Papist.)

Thought and Prejudice

In this instance I'm struck by the reflexive approval of most, if not all, things homosexual. When I started on a reasoned argument (rant) about why homosexual unions should not be elevated to equality with marriage, my daughters, bless them, were embarrassed and demanded we stop talking about the subject. It didn't help this was in a public place (a restaurant for Sunday Brunch).

Their aversion to disagreements with the homosexual agenda puzzles me. They have or are getting a University education. Shouldn't reasoned disagreement be the heart and soul of their intellectual life? Even if they strongly disagree with me, I'm wanting reasoned arguments and facts. They seem to recognize no value to these things independent of achieving the results they have chosen to endorse. Is this how far the intellectual rigour has fallen at Universities?

Ok, rant mode off. Here is an interesting article about how research itself is produced and disseminated in a doctrinaire fashion to promote the ideology of the day:

Who could possibly have predicted this?:

Research showing the risks of lesbian and gay parenting is ignored in the race to make a political case

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

Philosophy and Chess

are sometimes close companions. Dennis M considers death and the arguments for survival beyond death:

Maroczy - Korchnoi ?:

The Hungarian grandmaster Geza Maroczy died in 1951, but on some reports, his chess career didn't end there. He took about 34 years off, and then, with the help of a medium named Robert Rollans, played a game against Viktor Korchnoi that lasted until 1993. (He lost, but hey - he was rusty. You can replay the game here.)

Read the whole thing.

(Via The Chess Mind Blog.)

Using Your Head

is necessary to solve problems. Here is a series of propositions that lead to the solution of whether or not abortion is justified in the case of rape:

Challenging a La Presse journalist on the logic of his pro-abort stance:

1. Every species on Earth can only reproduce after its own kind (for example, rabbits can only give birth to other rabbits, dogs can only give birth to puppies, etc.).


2. Therefore, a fetus is of human nature.


3. The fetus is clearly alive, as witnessed by its continual growth, its need for nutrition and hydration, its beating heart, its brain waves, etc.


4. From 2 and 3, we deduce that the fetus is alive and human.


5. The fetus has a distinct and unique human DNA, different from its mother and from any other human being.


6. The fetus has all the components to develop into a complete and independent human organism.


7. From 4, 5 and 6, we deduce that a fetus is a living human being distinct from its mother.


8. Intentionally ending the life of an innocent living human being is a grave injustice.


9. Abortion ends the life of the fetus.


10. From 8 and 9, we deduce that abortion is a grave injustice.


11. While rape is a grave injustice towards the woman, this tragedy does not alter points 1 through 10.


12. Therefore, we deduce that aborting a fetus conceived through rape remains a grave injustice, as per 10.

Q.E.D

Read the whole thing.

(Via SoCon Or Bust.)

Six Impossible Things

to believed it you're an atheist:

Alice, Atheists, and the Ability to Believe Impossible Things:

“Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” — Alice in Wonderland

Read the whole thing.

(Via First Thoughts.)

More Evidence

that the MSM is heavily filtering the news to promote their world-view:

:

I did not know this stuff....

...which, apparently, is the point of the news media's practice of suppressing news reports about leftist violence:

While the media is all over the recent bombing attempt in Times Square, they quickly swept the 2008 bombing of the Times Square military recruiting station under the rug. The hometown New York Times relegated the terror attack to regional news, even

Read the whole thing.

(Via Lex Communis.)