The Ark and The Dove

Marches in Washington

I couldn't help noticing that when "tens of thousands" of people marched on Washington the other day, they got on page A1 of the Washington Post, not on A10 like the other "tens of thousands" of people march.

I also couldn't help noticing that although they did note that there were many fewer people there than the organizers estimated, and fewer than at previous such events, they didn't search out and find the handful of counterprotesters and devote half the pictures or the tagline to them.

So what do we have to do to get noticed?  We were on the same order of magnitude in terms of number of people.  And we show up year after year with more and more.  Perhaps it's that they have more celebrities at their rallies, but one can't help but wonder if the reason is that the Post thinks one of them is more newsworthy than the other.  Actually I almost feel like cutting them some slack when supposedly pro-life Pres. Bush phones it in every year instead of making even a token appearance.

I've got an idea.  Next year, let's announce that we're calling off the March for Life and that instead we're going to have a march to Protest the Policies of The Administration.  The pro-life organizations can secretly start a front group to sponsor the event with a name like "The Ancient and Mystical Society of Bush Is a Dum-Dum."  Then when they show up with their cameras and notepads, we'll say "Ha ha, fooled you, we're having a pro-life march!"  But then they'd probably get mad and put us on page D37.  Or maybe we could just march on the offices of the Post, so that they couldn't ignore us.  Not to sound like I'm complaining or anything.

Spiegel trio

Der Spiegel had three articles today that I thought were worth taking a look at.  That's pretty good for any news site, and I know I've linked to them recently, so they must be on a tear.  I'm hoping people will comment on them rather than take them as exact expressions of my views.

I. The West and Islam: "Hurray, We're Capitulating!" by Henryk Broder. The Europeans' wishful thinking stems from their need to avoid conflicts, coupled with a strong survival instinct. They may perceive reality, but they do so selectively. "The West has values worth defending, doesn't it?"

II. Looking for Monks and Nuns in the New Millennium by Joachim Mohr.  Everyone wants to go visit monasteries, but nobody wants to be a monk or a nun.  Maybe the problem isn't that everyone is so atheist, but that a la carte-style religion is so ingrained even in Catholics.

III. German Sunday Closing Law applies to Scientology by dsl.  Scientology is considered a business, not a religion, under German law (which seems unusually reasonable to me).  City officials thus have found a weapon against the unpopular organization in Germany's strict Sunday-closing laws for businesses.

Old Books

An American businessman has acquired the oldest known copy of the Gospel of St. Luke and one of the oldest of St. John and donated it to the pope.  The copy, known as "The Bodmer Papyrus" is estimated to date to about A.D. 200.

March For Life Mass

Re: the homily -

Someone told me that Fr. Groeschel said that Fr. Bill's homily was the best homily he's ever heard at a youth Mass.  That's the rumor I heard on the street.  It was a good homily.

Re: news coverage -

The Post has an piece on us.  I notice that in the interest of being "fair and balanced," they somehow managed to find the handful of pro-abortion counterprotesters and devote three of seven pictures to them.  If you don't believe me about the numbers, note that they did not have any wide-angle crowd shots of the pro-abortion rally like the first picture.

Thought experiment

What if when (let's pick a test case politician) President Bush was elected, he was the guest of honor at a very large and public religious ceremony in a church, in which clergy delivered long sermons hailing him as a savior sent from God to deliver the nation from evils and then anointed him with oil?  What would the media coverage of this event be like?  Would it be likely to be anything like this?

The reason I post this, btw, isn't because I want to see the separation-of-church-and-state attack dogs sicced on everybody, but because I can't help thinking that there's a pattern to whom they bark at or don't.  The reason I pick Bush is because it seemed to take people a while to stop getting in a tizzy over the fact that he said "God" in his official speeches.  Have you been inside the Lincoln Memorial?  Also, what people approve of.  One of Albert's favorite topics is how people commonly say that the Democrats are right with the Church on one half (or some portion) of the Church's teaching but bad on the other, while the Republicans are good on that one but bad on the other, but this is incorrect, and not because the Republicans are right about everything.

The Most Horrifying Story I've Read In a Long Time

Have you heard about the girl in Washington state that will no longer age normally?
You can read about it here and the standard opinion of the operation here.

I've found this story so horrifying that I can't quite wrap my head around it. It seems so wrong at a visceral level and yet so many people seem to think it's fine, it really reminds me of the abortion debate in many ways. The arguments are pretty much the same, who are you to judge, it's a difficult decision therefore any choice is a good one, have I parented any mentally handicapped children, etc. Basically since a large number of people have thrown out the tools needed make moral judgments they resort to not making moral judgments, except against me.

Just in case you were curious, Ed Peters sums up my thoughts rather nicely. Ashley's treatment is a case of mutilation. Just because she wasn't going to use the organs that would have developed at all or in the same way she would have if she wasn't brain damaged doesn't mean you remove them. We don't follow up final vows with surgeries, medicine has a purpose, to heal. Nothing the doctors did to Ashley could be described as healing.

Interesting...

Whom do Islam Online's English-speaking readers consider the World's Most Influential Person this year?

Admirable Celebrity Alert!

I'll get the sour grapes out of the way first: who wants to bet that this story will be a headline on par with Mel Gibson's drunken rampage or the next stupid thing Paris Hilton does?  That's right, nobody.  That's what I thought.

Now the story.

Sly Stallone, having been away from the Church for years, is back.

He says that the fame and fortune he found after the success of the first movie became the occasion for him to drift away, complacent in his feelings of self-sufficiency.  But the serious illness of his daughter made him face up to reality.

Praise God, and good for him.  It takes courage to admit you were were wrong and need to change.  Maybe we could keep him in our prayers.

Btw, did you notice there's another Rambo coming out, too?

Oops

Baby put through airport X-ray machine by accident.

"This was an innocent mistake by an obviously inexperienced traveler," said Paul Haney, deputy  executive director of airports and security for the city's airport agency.  Doctors determined that the baby was unharmed.

I heard a rumor...

A sighting of the Advent Man.  Also goes by "Old Man Advent."