Judie Brown: ‘All this civility gives me heartburn’
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Judie Brown is none too happy with Cardinal Dolan:

All this civility gives me heartburn.

Though I cannot agree with every point in Mrs. Brown’s article, I do agree that the calls for civility seem, more often than not, to be an excuse to put a muzzle on those who are exposing evil.

If you are exposing evil, it is because you are outraged by it. If you are not outraged by evil, you won’t expose it. Rather, you will be silent on it. If you are more outraged by the “tone” of those who are exposing evil than you are about the evil they are exposing, then you should consider that your silence on the matter only causes more outrage. You add to the evil, and to the outrage, with your silence. The more of us speak up about evil, the less frustration there is in those who are exposing the evil, and the less frustration they have, the more civil the world will be.

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DNC Video: ‘Government is the Only Thing That We All Belong To’
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The Democratic Party has removed God from their platform and is promoting atheist thought, as we can see in this video shown at the Democratic convention which says “Government is the only thing that we all belong to.”

We are all created in the image of God, whether everyone knows that or not, and it is God who gives us our rights, not government. (See the Declaration of Independence.) The Democratic Party denies that our rights and our dignity come from God. They believe they decide what our rights are, not God. They believe that we get our dignity from them, not from God. They are wrong.

Hat-tip, Obama Isn’t Working.

UPDATE: Now a thread at Memeorandum.

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Mark Shea vs Fr. Peter West and the Perils of the Blogosphere
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I’m just finding out about a battle happening between Mark Shea and Fr. Peter West that has others in the Catholic blogosphere concerned.

Over the past few days, a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Newark, who is a Vice President of Missions for the organization Human Life International, founded by Father Paul Marx OSB, has been taking a familiar internet apostle, Mark Shea, to task for engaging in character assassination, legitimizing homosexual attitudes and  being deceitful.  Now it seems that some professional lay Catholics have gotten Church authorities involved.

The reason I am just finding out about it is that I don’t generally read the Catholic blogs. I do consider Mark Shea to be a friend, though I disagree with him on a lot of things. We go way back. Because I consider him to be a friend, it pains me to see him going through an ordeal, whether he is right or wrong on the matter.

I agree with The BodyGuard who blogs on the Theology of the Body, and it is probably because his blog is about the Theology of the Body that he “gets” this part about social media:

You cannot always reason with another soul, Christian to Christian, when they too have been intoxicated by their own prideful ego and intellect (and while you are likewise still more or less drunk with your own).

 And so I lived through days of seeking to sober up, so to speak, which weren’t always progressive or easy. I hoped that by reaching out to those who had publicly attacked and belittled me (and whom I likewise had treated similarly), we could make Christian peace, by meeting face to face to resolve our differences.

Of course, there’s private email when face to face meetings can’t be worked out.

And while I naively assumed that if one Christian requests this of another, the Christian “code” would require that person to step up and meet with you, I learned something else—if the soul of one’s “opponent” (brother in Christ) does not also go through some form of blogospheric “detox,” they’ll never ever see the value of the mutual self-humbling that permits two Christian brothers to reconcile.

This sort of thing takes a real grasp of the Theology of the Body to understand, I think. In a nutshell, social media can have the same effect on people that condoms do, if not used properly.

 In other words, Christian forgiveness and reconciliation takes two. Duh. So instead, what transpired in my experience was a deeper entrenchment and antagonism of a brother in Christ still-drunk on the stinking fumes of the disembodied “new media”. And here’s a TOB theme after all—without the “body” to communicate the “person”, all this electronic typing at a keyboard is necessarily not fully personal. Hence the desire to meet face to face (body to body) in *person*, to achieve reconciliation between persons. After all, I don’t need to reconcile with my computer, I need to reconcile with you. 

But any willingness to do so threatens the very existence of the depersonalized communication that we new-media Catholics now find so intoxicating. So, don’t be too disappointed if, as in my case, it doesn’t exactly work out well.

Indeed.

Read the whole thing.

Democrats Drop Mention of God From Party Platform
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God isn’t going to like this. I must say, I’m not surprised to see the Democrats taking on an officially God-less platform.

From CNS News, Brody File, via Memeorandum:

Guess what? God’s name has been removed from the Democratic National Committee platform.

This is the paragraph that was in the 2008 platform:

“We need a government that stands up for the hopes, values, and interests of working people, and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential.”

Now the words “God-given” have been removed.

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DNC Hotels Feature Crack Dealing, Bedbugs
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Okay, this is too funny not to mention.

Convention-goers and journalists covering the Democratic convention are reportedly annoyed that their hotels feature drug dealing and bedbugs.

Memeorandum threads here and here.

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‘Lavender Basilica’ in Minnesota Distributes Flier in Defense of Marriage
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The so-called ‘Lavendar Basilica’ in Minnesota has distributed a flier in defense of traditional marriage to parishioners.

The Eponymous Flower:

There is a presence on Facebook of “Catholics” who say “No” , which has a list of parishes resisting the Archbishop, but it only boasts about five hundred souls, many coming from the Lavender Basilica of St. Mary’s, which is the Archdiocese’s Co-Cathedral.  Yet even at this place, the pressure is increasing and there was a flier included in this week’s church bulletin, complained one of the Basilica’s parishioners on the Facebook group

Read the whole thing.

It’s good to see something positive in regard to Catholic identity on this issue at the “Lavendar Basilica.” Let’s pray for more understanding about Catholic teaching on marriage and that upholding the institution of traditional marriage as inherently good is not hatred. To the contrary, to promote traditional marriage is to promote love.

Related posts around the blogosphere:

Abbey Roads: Nienstedt puts pressure on the Lavendar Palace?

.The Volokh Conspiracy: Anonymity Granted to Catholic Donor Opposed to Marriage Amendment, But Amendment Supporters Object.

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Florida GOP Runs Ad Against Charlie Crist
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Charlie Crist may be having an identity crisis and the Florida Republican Party has decided to highlight that. Crist is a former Republican governor who is speaking at the Democratic National Convention in support of Barack Obama. The Florida GOP is running an ad against Crist in response to that.

I guess the ad could be interpreted different ways by different people. I had to watch it three times to figure out what it is trying to convey because I don’t consider the Bushes to be conservative. If you’re a liberal Democrat, though, the point the Florida GOP is trying to make here will likely be much more clear.

Via Memeorandum.

Related posts around the blogosphere:

Orlando Sentinel: GOP slams Crist.

PolitiCollision: The DNC’s sad and tawdry line-up.

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