Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

--Photo via "Sancta Sanctis" on the occasion of the Nativity of Mary (9/8)

Prayer, like weight-lifting, is a discipline that benefits from a more rigorous and perhaps even "scheduled" pursuit.
--Steven of Flos Carmeli

It's funny how true compassion is so easily seen on the face of a mom - text msg to her Dad, from Bern Luse, during Palin speech

If votes for women do not mean mobs for women they do not mean what they were meant to mean.
--GK Chesterton via "Ruri et Orbi"

Count me among the mob for Sarah Palin. Palin demonstrates very well the Chestertonian understanding of women as the Jack-of-all-Trades. It is only in our culture of death that anyone would venture to say that a woman couldn’t manage the job of Vice President because she had a large family to raise. One might argue (as Chesterton does in the actual context of the above quotation) whether other aspects of the feminine nature are consistent with the duties of a Vice President (few though they be), but it is ridiculous to suggest that a mother can’t handle hundreds of tasks at once. Only a society that so hates motherhood that it no longer recognizes it would make such an argument. - blogger at Ruri et Orbi, after posting previous quote

I watched a convention speech, the one delivered by Sarah Palin, you know, the woman who is completely unqualified to be vice-president because she's so inexperienced and has a large family which includes a pregnant teenage daughter and a Down syndrome child. - Bill Luse

I would like to thank the US media for doing such a grand job this last week of lowering expectations [for] Governor Palin...I trust even now Maureen Dowd is working on a hilarious new column mocking proposed names for the Governor's first grandchild. Perhaps Richard Cohen can just take the week off and they can rerun his insightful analysis comparing the Palin nomination to Caligula making his horse a consul. Whereas we sophisticates all know that if McCain were as smart as Obama he'd have nominated a dead horse to be his consul. No wait... - Jonah Goldberg

Sarah Palin works fast. She instantly became the object of the kind of partisan hatred that most politicians can raise only after prosecuting an unpopular war and lying about their misconduct in office (Nixon), after making sanctimonious dishonesty an art form and getting caught in flagrante with an intern (Clinton), and after winning a disputed election and botching a foreign occupation (Bush). Palin-hatred is an artifact of who she is rather than anything she’s done. Joe Biden famously rose from the working class to the U.S. Senate. Palin became governor of Alaska, but never left the working class...As such, she’s the object of the cultural disdain of a Left that loves the working class in theory, but is mystified or offended by its lifestyle and conservative values in reality. If there’s ever been an exemplar of the rural America that, in Barack Obama’s telling, “bitterly” clings to its guns and religion, it’s Sarah Palin. - Rich Lowry of NRO

When Catholics cry out that Biden is not a true Catholic politician, they adopt the same politics of identity as the mainstream culture. So much for Joyce's "here comes everybody!" But Catholic is different, you may say. After all, it's mainly a system of ideas, so ideological alignment is appropriate. After all, Sarah Palin is more Catholic than Joe Biden. Really? What makes a Catholic? To hold certain ideas? No. To be Catholic is to be in relationship with Christ visibly present in the Bishop who is in communion with the Pope. Are certain ideas more consonant with this relationship? Yes, but they are not the essential criteria. Ideally, this relationship includes reception of the sacraments, but it continues to remain even if the Bishop determines that reception of Communion is not appropriate. - Frederick of "Deep Furrows"

Every once in a while I come across a perfect book—not perfect in the sense of flawless or deep or indispensable, but perfect in the sense of being richly representative of an era or ethos or sensibility...Simon Critchley has written a book that has this sort of culture-reflecting perfection: The Book of Dead Philosophers...His book evokes the true spirit of our age: a self-congratulating honesty that protests against old hypocrisies and evasions—all in close conjunction with a winking lack of seriousness that insulates us from any real engagement or commitment. - R.R. Reno on 'First Things"

You can get knocked up from eating Kraft Dinner every night?! - Kathy Shaidle on word from a New York prof stating that poverty causes unwanted pregnancies

This button ["Against Abortion? Don't Have One"] at the NOW store is about as morally defensible as "Against slavery? Don't own one." It's amusing to recall that the Democrat party was the party of slavery as it is of abortion. - Bill of Summa Minutiae

Biden has claimed that "no decent religious person thinks fascism is a good idea." He has arbitrarily created a tautology that claims no decent religious person thought fascism was a good idea, but chooses not to also propose that "no decent religious person thinks abortion is a good idea."...Biden has claimed, "There is a debate in our church, as Cardinal Egan would acknowledge, that's existed." This is not a true statement, if Biden is referring to a debate about the evil of abortion. There has never been a debate about the serious evil of abortion. - American Papist

The thing about blogging is when something really interesting and bloggable that is surprisingly and instantaneously sucking up the world’s available BlogOxygen happens, the temptation is strong to well, blog on it...But if you blog on some funny thing that happened to you or some cultural blip, readers are gonna go, “Huh? Why isn’t she blogging about the thing that’s sucking the BlogOxygen?” So you end up sitting around, amazed, aghast and reading political blogs like a crack addict. And BlogParalzyed. - Amy Welborn

Many or most of the issues that excited those first social conservatives have since faded away. The pro-life movement, however, has gone from strength to strength, breaking away from its culturally conservative origins and finding new allies in unlikely places. The pro-life movement has made common cause with the movement for the rights of the disabled. Impaired pregnancies are highly likely to be aborted, including more than 90% of Down Syndrome pregnancies (according to a 2002 survey of American patients).
Pro-lifers have discovered shared values with critics of biotechnological research and commercial reproductive technology, such as the former Ralph Nader lawyer, Wesley Smith. The disproportionate incidence of abortion among non-whites has caused pro-life leaders like former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee to take a new interest in issues of race and discrimination...The whole world witnessed this week that the pro-life movement has accepted gender equality and leadership roles for women. - Frum of NRO