The Ark and The Dove

Anne Rice: Atheist --> Catholic --> Heretic

John Nolte of Big Hollywood just blogged about Anne Rice's decision to reject the teachings of the Catholic Church after her recent conversion to Catholicism.

Nolte quotes the following from her facebook page:

I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

One scratches one's head. Feminism, democracy, humanism, science, and life are all compatible with Christianity. One might even say that Christianity spawned their modern incarnations.

I can't quite see how one could possibly be pro-gay and pro-artificial birth control in the name of Christ, though. It's a bit like saying you are Muslim for the sake of Krishna, or attracted to Lutheranism because of Calvin.

French Benedictine Nuns Cut Record Album

Breitbart linked to this clip about a cloister of nuns who recorded chant.

I can't say that I plan on putting their album on my Amazon wishlist, but it's refreshing to get a news piece involving the religious that isn't a major scandal.

Papists vs. Zombies

GeekDad ran a review of an iPhone game called Twin Blades, featuring an anime-style nun that fights off hordes of the undead.

I don't think it will be inspiring vocations (and I'm pretty sure that she is not wearing an appropriately cut habit), but at least it beats another article about gay priests or pedophilia cover-ups.

This is Bad News?

The NYTimes recently ran an article on "The New Abortion Providers."

It's an unintentionally satisfying read as it explains how the pro-life movement has effectively eroded the medical community's will to perform abortion.

In a 1992 survey of OB-GYNs, 59 percent of those age 65 and older said that they performed abortions, compared with 28 percent of those age 50 and younger. The National Abortion Federation started warning about “the graying of the abortion provider.” In the decade after Roe, the number of sites providing abortion across the country almost doubled from about 1,500 to more than 2,900, according to the Gutt­macher Institute. But by 2000 the number shrank back to about 1,800 — a decline of 37 percent from 1982.

The article, of course, couches such statistics in grim, dark, and depressing tones...and makes the rare, embattled abortionist seem like some kind of noble super-hero. It also makes sure to open with an anecdote about how a pro-life call to out abortionists lead to murders. It uses a heroic tone to describe a new wave of feminists medical practitioners who are reforming the medical community from within:

Its leaders have built residency programs and fellowships at university hospitals, with the hope that, eventually, more and more doctors will use their training to bring abortion into their practices. The bold idea at the heart of this effort is to integrate abortion so that it’s a seamless part of health care for women — embraced rather than shunned.

Such a bright new dawn they forecast...

So, you see, the accidental optimism caused early in the article is quickly crushed under the promise of a resurgence in an abortive ideology.

And there's this gem of a paragraph:

By taking jobs on university faculties, the young doctors avoid walking to work through a scrum of screaming demonstrators. “Some people like to live on the edge — I don’t,” said Emily Godfrey, a 40-year-old doctor who practices at a primary-care clinic at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she also does abortions. “I’m a Catholic girl from the suburbs. I’m a yoga student. I like calm and serenity.”

A Catholic girl from the suburbs by day, and covert abortionist at your local university by night. She likes calm and serenity. You know who else likes calm and serenity? People who live in wombs.

And the rest of the article is as painful to read as you could expect. Abortionists talk about how they have to just get over the emotional conflicts they have and how they are making great strides incorporating abortion into medical school curricula.

It's a thoroughly unpleasant read, but I suppose it is also necessary to know what these people are up to.

Obama and the Slave Trade

Way back before Obama was President, columnist Stanley Crouch had written an essay on Obama: Not Black Like Me.

The thrust of the article was that Obama might be of African descent, but that his ancestors did not experience American slavery...therefore he does not descend from a culture steeped in American notions of blackness. Surely, he might have been a victim of American racism, but his rise to power is not part of a genealogical continuum extending back to servitude.

It occurred to me the other day that if Barack Obama's father was a native of Kenya, then it is entirely possible that Obama's ancestors had actually sold other Africans into Western slavery. Apparently (according to that trustworthy source Wikipedia), Obama identifies his father as a member of the Luo ethnic group, which invaded Kenya during the 1500s -- right when the European role in the African slave trade was getting started. Whatever would an invading Luo do with captured Kenyans? I wonder...

Prof. Fired over Natural Law?

FoxNews is running an article about a  University of Illinois professor who was fired after expressing Catholic views of natural law regarding sexuality in e-mails related to a class he was teaching on Catholic Morality.

While the article indicates that "The professor, Ken Howell of Champaign, said his firing violates his academic freedom," it should also be noted that he was an adjunct professor.

That means he didn't have tenure nor was he tenure track. This, of course, means that his job was never particularly secure to begin with. It also shows what people are talking about when they say tenure protects academic freedom. Had he been a tenured professor he might have a case that this violates some freedom. Adjuncts, however, are slaves to the system. They are cheap labor to fill in for classes that graduate students can't teach yet.

The fact that he was an adjunct for nine years might also be a count against him. Unless he is doing some really amazing work in his field or in some field (or unless he is married to a tenured professor), the school most likely had little reason to keep him around. Indeed, adjuncts can have something of a shelf-life, and a new crop of younger, fresher faces who failed to land tenure-track jobs are always looking to bump off the old adjuncts. 

I'm not even entirely sure what the article means by his being "fired." Did they strip him of his classes mid-semester, or have they just not decided to rehire him for the fall? I don't see why any school would be under a contractual obligation to rehire an adjunct.

If I were the chair of his department and facing a lawsuit, I would just turn around and say that he was no longer needed or that I had to make budget cuts in our worsening economy.

Apparently, he was also the director of their Newman center, but lost his position after he could no longer teach at the school. I don't quite get the logic there, but, oh well.

I'm also not sure why the University of Illinois was running classes on Catholic Morality in the first place.

Arrr, Matey

Drudgelink to article on colleges getting heavy on Internet piracy...

The gist of the piece is that federal agencies will withhold funding to schools that don't do enough to stop piracy. It sort of sounds like media companies are using the government like some kind of union thug.

Anyway, my only reason for addressing this here was for the following quote:

"If the university is going to prohibit underage drinking, I think it ought to prohibit anything on the Internet that's illegal, too," said Alicia Richardson, an Illinois State University junior who applauds her school's restrictive policies on file-sharing. "I'm not going to mess with it. I know the consequences."

Right, so if schools enforce copyright policies which directly harm absolutely no one half as well as they enforce the policies designed to keep women from sexual assault and everyone from alcohol-related death, I don't think the pirates will have anything to fear.

It also makes me feel bad for Alicia Richardson, who must be the loneliest, saddest student at Illinois State. I can imagine her now on Friday night, sitting home alone in her apartment while all of her friends sneak off to booze it up at secret parties to which she hasn't been invited.

The irony, of course, will be that schools enforce anti-piracy policies more ruthlessly than alcohol policies. After all, think of what's at stake.