Death at a Crosswalk

The shocking news this week is the death of a crosswalk guard, who saved an 8-year old’s life by either shielding him or pushing him out of the way of the driver of a dump truck that hadn’t seen either of them.

Like most tragedies, this required an unlikely series of events. One is that the driver would not see them in the crosswalk despite the yellow lights and signs and the fact that the guard was carrying a stop sign of some sort. Then too you have to have the crosswalk guard and the child not judge that the truck wasn’t going to stop, not to be able to escape until it was too late. It must be hard to tell that a vehicle is not going to stop, especially if, as is reported, he wasn’t speeding and was going under 20mph. You probably can’t imagine that he can’t see you.

One thing is certain: the law of physics doesn’t obey any right-of-way laws. A 150-lb person is no match for a 2 or 3 ton vehicle, be they in a crosswalk or not.

A half-dozen years ago it was early on a Sunday morning and I anticipated very light traffic on the normally busy road that leads out of our annex. I was making a left turn and so looked briefly to the left, then a bit longer to the right. Nothing. The roads were clear as day as I pulled out into the intersection.

*smash*

Out of nowhere a car to my left hit me just below the driver’s panel. Fortunately no one was hurt and I apologized profusely to the driver. The driver’s wife was extremely angry but the driver much less so. “This car is six months’ old,” he said, “and this is the second time its been in a major accident that wasn’t my fault.”

Later I went back to the scene of the accident and tried to figure out how I could’ve missed that car. Obviously I should’ve looked left again (left-right-left as is taught). (I'd looked left while in the intersection, which is like putting on a condom after sex.) The car seemed blended with the environment; a perfect color tan. I thought if it had been red… Excuses...But I didn’t see the car and couldn’t replay the tape. And based on that experience I have sympathy for the driver of the dump truck that hit them. How heavy the guilt must feel.

The driver looked haggard, slovenly, like he was permanently in just-trying-to-get-thru-the-day mode. He was an overweight 40-yr old who was the picture of someone whose life was slightly out of control. Years of watching COPS on FOX has led me to the conclusion that having a cigarette when you're in trouble is not a sign of insouciance but nervousness. They reach for their cigarettes for comfort.

May he find and experience forgiveness and may God bring something good out of something so bad.

The Salvation Controversy

Sometimes the blog comments in a thread are better than the original post, and I think this was reflected in a dead tree equivalent: in this case, the tasty Correspondence section of the May First Things (not online yet) in response to this article authored by Avery Cardinal Dulles.

The original article, I think, intends to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted" with regard to the issue of salvation and as such is unsatisfying. We seek the truth in order to escape the lens of our own prejudices and yet in this instance those who are comfortable will likely assume all statements of comfort are meant for them, and those afflicted will assume all afflicting statements are for them. To the extent something contains seeming contradictions we will likely affirm in them what we already have a tendency to affirm.

The letters in response, by comparison, are models of clarity and conviction even if they don't illuminate the answer to the controversy so much as illuminate the first principles.

I think the principles in regard to answering "Who will be saved?" include the attempt to look at what has been revealed to us (including from Scriptural, Patristic, & Magisterial sources) and go where the data leads you. This seems an intrinsically holy, self-effacing way to go about it.

Another method is also holy and self-effacing albeit the opposite of the previous method. It recognizes that Truth transcends the confines of Scripture and Tradition. Wherever Truth is found, God is found. So some operate on the assumption that a holy, merciful, loving God is incompatible with a God in which those who don't know Christ go to hell. This method is subject to abuse but is necessary because God does limit Himself to goodness after all, and at least since William of Occam, that attribute of God can't be taken for granted.

A third method is to see the salvation issue merely as a means to an end: the truth of how many are saved is not important except the impact it has on personal behavior of Christians. Here truth is not sought for its own sake but as a means to the end.

* * *
I recall a Baptist preacher trying to remove works from the salvation equation by saying "how many works is enough? One, two, twenty-five, three-thousand?". But that sort of line-drawing is present in his "faith alone" theory since faith is a continuum. You could say "how much faith is enough? Mere intellect assent? Enough to have felt it once but never thereafter? Enough to pray occasionally? Enough to die for Him?"

There's also the pious sentiment that "only God reads hearts, so only He knows who is saved" but I would argue it's exactly the opposite. Only God knows Himself, and so only He knows who is saved. It wouldn't matter if we could read hearts because we wouldn't know where to draw that line between saved and unsaved. It's not heart-reading that matters, but the line between Judgment and Mercy (is there one? or will they 'kiss'?), and only God knows where to draw it. Man would have to know God and man doesn't: I'll quote a mystic saint (St. Faustina) in support:

I asked Jesus why the Angels had been punished as soon as they had sinned. I heard a voice: Because of their profound knowledge of God. No person on earth, even though a great saint, has such knowledge of God as an Angel has.

As a priest on EWTN's forum once wrote with regard to the issue:

Your salvation is in the hands of God. You are asked to place your faith and hope in that God, who alone knows your eternal destiny and whom alone you can totally trust. Thus, there can be no greater certainty than that in your faith and hope in God saving you. And remember that the faith and hope are themselves also gifts from God. There is no purely human knowledge of one's eternal destiny that can contain the infinitely greater certainty contained in your faith and hope through Christ our Lord.

Tragic

A local crossing guard was killed today. How sad. If you might say a prayer for her soul it would be appreciated.

Two Generals

On Thomas J. Jackson, from the Columbus Dispatch:

Historian Bevin Alexander is a Virginian but doesn’t count himself among William Faulkner’s unvanquished Southerners — despite the title of his new book: How the South Could Have Won the Civil War...

“To use an old Southern phrase, we are well shut of our selfish aristocrats, who tried until the last to hold on to the unpaid labor of slaves so as to get and keep their wealth.

“The elimination of slavery and the aristocrats who fed on it was a glorious and long-overdue advance.”

The advance, Alexander posits, could easily have been delayed or thwarted had the Confederates done one simple thing: listened to Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson.

Robert E. Lee gets most of the accolades when historians gauge the brilliance (or lack thereof) of Civil War generals North and South. But to Alexander, the only true genius, the only visionary general, was Jackson.

The advent of the minie ball rifle — accurate to a quarter-mile, four times farther than the musket — created what Alexander calls “a new kind of war,” one that called on new tactics to replace those perfected during the Napoleonic Wars.

Jackson,not Lee, understood this, imploring Confederate President Jefferson Davis to wage war on the civilian population of the North on the one hand and beseeching Lee to outflank Union forces on the other.

Even three brutal years into the war, Lee was ignoring Jackson’s advice; witness the folly of Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg.

The textbook for the new kind of war was laid out by Jackson in his masterly Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1862, characterized by skilled deception and troop movement.

...In Alexander’s estimation, “War is fundamentally a struggle between two intellects rather than a conflict of masses.” And Jackson was a great general because “great generals avoid battles whenever they can.”

But avoidance is unheroic, and stealth in war unmanly.

“Our language reflects how strongly we feel about this — ‘stab in the back,’ ‘backbiter’ and ‘blindsiding’ are all pejorative terms,” Alexander writes. “Reflecting the human tendency to be direct rather than devious or circuitous, most generals throughout history have been unsubtle warriors who attacked the enemy right in front of them.”

Unfortunately, Jackson was a reluctant chronicler of his theories about warfare, and they mostly died with him after the battle of Chancellorsville.

Lest we think too harshly of our Civil War generals, it is important to remember that half a century later, during World War I, the preferred method of battle was the frontal attack.

The warriors had learned little from America’s bloodiest confrontation.

And, an excerpt of poem about Ulysses S. Grant in National Review titled "GENERAL GRANT":

It is not hard to admire him.
There is always something in Grant
that speaks of simple dignity
along the lines of Rembrandt’s self-portraits,
without the overtones of glory
that the champions of Southern history
seek so avidly for their heroes:
The shattered petals,
the blood across the peach blossoms — Shiloh,
where modern war
broke upon the world.
They are part of the reason.
So is the grinding, war-weary attrition,
dragged from the Wilderness
to the siege of Petersburg,
taking all summer and winter,
into the spring.

To find no glory in any of it is to
overspeak the truth,
as is the invocation of duty,
self-sacrifice and commitment,
as an explanation, complete.

On any canvas worthy of the paint
there is no such thing;
although at the distance
of almost a century and a half,
I would be remiss
in not siding with those
who call him
America’s greatest soldier.

Much of the rest is elusive,
and as far from his impressive resting place
as is the ribbon of a distant river
disappearing into a distant forest.

— WILLIAM W. RUNYEON

Evolving Views of Christ's Baptism

I'd long been interested in the "pyrotechnics" associated with the Baptism of Jesus, such as the dove appearing and the Father's voice saying, "This is my beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased. Listen to Him."

This seemed like too much fuss. Why would the Father say to the Son that He was proud of him, pleased by him, at that moment? This was not an especially service-oriented, like healing someone. Nor was it self-sacrificial in the way that the Crucifixion. So why was the Father pleased by the Son in such a seemingly minor act?

My evolving view is not "either/or" but "and/all three" of the following:

1980s: My view was limited such that the supernatural events occurred only in order to encourage us to be baptized too. The Father was attaching great significance to this event so that we would believe in the efficacy of Baptism of the New Covenant (and thus by extension all the sacraments). What happened to Jesus at his baptism in a visible way would happen to us invisibly during our Baptism.

1990s: Over time I began seeing the Father's approbation due to Christ humbling himself, that the Father was pleased because Jesus was fulfilling all righteousness as an example to us. As John the Baptist said, the baptism should be the other way around, and so how pleased the Father was by this show of humility.

2000s: I began to see it as symbolic of much more. The reason the Father was so pleased by this act was that it meant Jesus, who had no need for baptism since he hadn't sinned, was making the decision to take on our sins. This was something that would lead to Calvary, the ultimate sacrifice and ultimate act of love, and so no wonder the Father was pleased!

Keeps on Rollin'

She rolls along like ol' (mrs.) man river, she does, my favorite cashier.

She wasn't always my favorite, seeming brusque and reserved in the beginning, but over time I recognized she was the quickest and most efficient so I started gravitating to her line. I never said much to her other than to occasionally describe the contents of a "to go" container.

But I thought it funny that she had a jealous streak. I went to another cashier, a couple lines over and I wasn't sure what was more remarkable: that she had the eagle eye (while counting cash and putting money into the drawer and eyeballing customer selections) to notice someone a couple lines over, or that she would amonish me for it. For the next day she said something to the effect of being disappointed in my going to another cashier as if I'd cheated on her.

Thereafter I went to her line most days and we'd joke about my large lunches ("that should hold me until this afternoon," I'd say, when actually I was buying dinner too) and she'd try to save me money by saying things like, "If you get chips with that I can combo it". We'll notice the vacations of the other: "Hey, where were you yesterday!?" or "Where were you last week?"

Usually I time my lunchtimes to when there is almost no line but today I was waiting awhile. And I discovered that the banter and "special relationship" I have with this cashier turns out to be what she has with, well, everyone in her line. We all feel special.

I guess that's sort of like how it is with God. Special, yes; exclusive, no.

Divine Mercy Excerpt

God is my Father and so I, His child, have every claim to His divine Heart; and the greater the darkness, the more complete our trust should be.

I do not understand how it is possible not to trust in Him who can do all things. With Him, everything; without Him, nothing. He is Lord. He will not allow those who have placed all their trust in Him to be put to shame.

During one of the adorations, Jesus promised me that: With souls that have recourse to My mercy and with those that glorify and proclaim My great mercy to others, I will deal according to My infinite mercy at the hour of their death.

My Heart is sorrowful, Jesus said, because even chosen souls do not understand the greatness of My mercy. Their relationship [with Me] is, in certain ways, imbued with mistrust. Oh, how much that woulds My Heart! Remember My Passion, and if you do not believe My words, at least believe My wounds.

[#357-358, 379 The Diary of St. Faustina]

Calling All My Norwegian Readers!

And what a large contingent you are! Help me identify the girl at left in photo below. Happened across this picture of my penpal from Odda, Norway. We corresponded back in the 1970s. I'm curious what she's doing now but have lost her letters and can't recall her name:

The Green, Green Grass of Oxford

"Even I, ignorant of Shakespeare and baseball, could see this was wonderful." - J. Gonic

As a totem of my youth, the yellowed, clipped article gives a pleasing sense of the passage of time. For years it was locked in the wooden safe made for me by my grandfather when I was a child but I've since re-located it for fear that I'll forget the safe's combination. (Simply writing down the combination never seems to have occurred to me, or rather it would seem to be cheating.)

The article dates from the mid-'80s, back to the Fertile Crescent Era, the land of time & plenty immediately after college when I used to consume the Sunday New York Times for brunch. Wistful I am for a time when a conservative could read the Times without vomiting!

One Sunday I came across a long column that hit the sweet spot of romance and literature that so greatly appealed to me at the time. It was full of the glamour that I imagined the intellectual life held; I read transfixed, intoxicated by the author’s account of summer school at Oxford University and rooming in a five hundred year old building.

All the ingredients were there so it isn't a surprise I’d saved the clipping these twenty+ years, and it's all the more precious for not being found on the NY Times archives (not everything has been cheapened by easy availability). The author, Jean Gonic, wrote of Shakespeare and George Eliot, the differences between men and women, of the green and glamorous Oxford campus and literature as medicine. She spoke with that sophisticated familiarity of the classics that I envied and to which I aspired. (The Internet age has its magical applications; I Googled and found out more about her than I know about most of my relatives, including that she’s been dating a born-again Christian cowboy for the past seven years who won’t marry her despite her frequent requests. The more things change...?)

Under the intoxicatingly romantic conditions she described circa 1985, it’s no surprise she wrote of a crush between her and a fellow Oxford summer student, a Bardophile. It was stereotypical: men are from Mars and Shakespeare; women from Venus & Jane Austen. He was simple and happy and liked baseball, she was complicated and obsessed with relationships and (thus?) despairing.

"'Does Dorothea Brooke rise about her inherent moral stupidity?' our brilliant, patient tutor would ask us. Ah, moral stupidity! What is better than discussing moral stupidity in medieval quarters? The euphoria we felt when she read aloud to us in her warm, well-paced tones was stronger than opium."

Oh how I ached then not just to visit that ancient English campus but to stay there awhile, to dwell in those classrooms, to sit in the seats where students far brighter than me once studied! Travel depends on that, doesn’t it? Sightseeing relies on feelings of awe, which is why it is best done by the young for whom awe is more easily summoned. And where that awe can be more easily applied to self, in the form of self-aggrandizement.

"'Love is fine as long as you don't expect reciprocity,' I announced at my bon voyage lunch with the girls. 'These books are so contemporary it scares me.'"

Travel depends on a reverence for history and relics, for the capacity to be astounded merely by knowledge of your location: I recall amazement at awareness of being so physically close to the remains of Stonewall Jackson on a visit to Virginia. The old Confederate general was impossibly removed from me physically in terms of time and geography and so it was like time travel to be where he’d been and where his bones now lay.

I suppose it’s the idea of pilgrimage. Who or what you honor – as I did the life of the mind, and Stonewall Jackson – is where you want to be. If it’s not so much about relics and the material then travel becomes more about meeting glamorous people. If you’re fit and 20 and shallow, then night clubs acquire that glamour. But what happens when the definition changes for you? When it becomes less about intellect or beauty and more about sanctity? And when you begin to suspect that glamor can’t be transferred? (The killer phrase in John Updike’s memorial of Ted Williams is “But immortality is nontransferable.”)

Immortality is nontransferable except through God and ultimately all travel is a longing for God even if we don’t recognize it as such. But since He isn’t limited by location, time or space where does that leave travel? Would Paul Theroux still do what he does if he discovered God? A part of me that thinks we should tread carefully lest we outgrow the lesser enthusiasms, the sports or ethnic pilgrimages, which are real and good in themselves if not "originally" real but only derivatively so.

"I liked Stuart's regard for the Bard. Most men I knew held more regard for the Porsche. Wouldst that he lived on the West Coast and were unattached, I thought. Ah well - show a little forbearance - make Jane Austen proud of you. Be happy you met a 20th-century gentleman and warm your heart with a cup of hot tea."

My Over-Simplified Theory of What Went Wrong

We started to unravel during the '50s. What happened? Here's a short, ten-second theory:

American Catholicism had been invigorated and revitalized and dominated by a diaspora of devoted Irish priests who came to America in the years during and after the Great Famine. The famine had helped trigger a "devotional revolution" in Ireland. By the 1950s, the influence of that devotional revolution had abated; the "spiritual capital" had been spent.

CONSIDER MY URGENT REQUEST.

Bill Luse's recent foray into responding to solicitous emails (a new form of blogger comedy?) "inspires" this post.

I received this Yahoo! calendar invitation recently:

By your host: Melo Ibrahim

Message: DEAR FRIEND,

I AM MELOIBRAHIM. I WORK IN THE FOREIGN REMITTANCE DEPARTMENT, BANK OF AFRICA(BOA) OUAGADOUGOU BURKINA FASO.

I HAVE A BUSINESS WHICH WILL BE BENEFICIAL TO BOTH OF US. THE AMOUNT OF MONEY INVOLVED IS ($8.5 MILLION US DOLLARS) WHICH I WANT TO TRANSFER FROM AN ABANDONED ACCOUNT TO YOUR BANK ACCOUNT, ALL TO MY FINANCIAL BENEFIT AND YOURS TOO ALSO 100% FREE RISK.

BEST REGARDS, meloibrahim

Date: Sunday March 30, 2008
Time: 3:00 am - 4:00 am

To which I reply:

Dear Mr. Ibrahim (may I call you Melo (yellow)?),

I see you are involved in the Foreign Remittance Department and as I am a foreigner I see I qualify. You've certainly come to the right person as I like remittances to me as much as the next guy.

However I do have a few concerns, chief of which is the meeting time: 3 AM....8.5 Million dollars.... 3 AM....8.5 million dollars.

Nah, I can't see getting up at 3am for 8.5 million "US" dollars, whatever those are. I'm sure you understand.

Now with that vulgarity out of the way allow me segue to my own fictional offering. I'm going to try this off-the-cuff, with no cutting and pasting from previous efforts so bear with me (though be assured by that I did not mean to imply that you cut and pasted your fine writing sample):

There once was a man from Nantucket...

Oh, let me start over. A do-over we call it here in the States, or alternatively a mulligan, which is named after a young man named "Mulligan" who made a goof (that's my guess; don't quote me):

There was a cottage by the sea, where all fine cottages ought be, and the wind and waves were lapping each other in a game of friendly tag.

There a gladsome little girl lived, with her family of course, for how sad a gladsome girl be, without her fam-i-lea!

Her needs were simple, her cares light, she fished for salmon until the night.

She memorized sea books full o' agate print, or took out a canvas and painted a tint.

Sometimes she swam with the seals off the coast, her own legs turned to scales and fins - no boast!

All the best, TSO

Personal Devotions

Maureen on personal devotions:

When we Catholics say people have a devotion to some aspect of God, or some saint, or some useful practice, it basically means that they love it and they persevere in working with it. They’re devoted to it. They have a devotion.

Or… maybe I need an example. Okay, say you meet some people in a Precious Blood order, and shortly afterward, you come across that verse from Peter about the Precious Blood. You start thinking about that verse a lot, and its implications. You start running into other mentions of the Precious Blood, maybe find a book about it or a holy card. It starts to be one of the primary ways you meditate about salvation, and the more you get into it, the more you seem to understand what’s going on, and the more depths open up to you. Then maybe you learn a prayer about it, or find out what other people in the past were interested in this. Maybe you get some prayers granted, or maybe you just learn to carry your own cross a bit better. Probably you talk to people about Jesus’ Precious Blood whenever it comes up — and probably it comes up more often than you’d expect. After a while, you realize you’ve got a devotion to the Precious Blood...

As Adoro points out, there is a certain element of personal devotion that seems to be part of Providence and the mysterious unity of the Body of Christ. Sure, sometimes people just like something, for conscious or even frivolous reasons. Sometimes, though, a saint or an aspect of the faith seems to find you and haunt you, until you finally start paying attention to God’s obvious will in the matter.

My own instincts are to suppose that many leaders of such mainstream Catholic organizations do not hold fully Catholic views concerning sexual morality, do not possess sufficiently clear vision to persuasively articulate the benefits of living by Catholic principles, or do not have the courage to advance these principles against the prejudices of the larger culture. When that is the case, policies will often fall short of what they should be even if the policy-makers are trying to avoid a formal breach with Catholic teaching. We see again that the Church is in the midst of a long and painful institutional renewal. It is no surprise that Catholic Relief Services must be added to the list. - Jeff Mirius of "Catholic Culture" website, regarding this

A society and a humanity will not long endure in which persons in service careers -- in hospitals, for instance -- no longer find meaning in their service [because it is not intellectual]... God's revelation was to the simple -- not out of resentment against the great, as Nietzsche would have it -- but because they possess that precious naivete that is open to truth and not subject to the temptations of nihilism. This should be the foundation of the great respect the Christian should feel to those who are simple of heart. - then Cardinal Ratzinger

When you rock her to sleep, sing Ave Marias, Jesu Bambino, and other lullaby-like tunes. If you can't carry a tune, turn on the stereo. Frequent talk about God is always permissible because, unlike adults, children are not horrified by it. When you tell a little girl that you thank God every day for her, she knows what you mean. The idea of the unseen Maker of All and Giver of Gifts recommends itself to her uncluttered mind. The Christmas story will dawn upon her consciousness like the happy ending she'd been expecting all along. God came down from heaven? As a baby? Of course He did. What would you expect? Later, she will ask awkward questions (look for this around 6 years of age) without hindering her faith. The invisible world is to her just another of the neat things about being alive. - William of Apologia, with tips for new fathers of baby girls

Fifty years ago, Detroit was one of the world’s greatest cities, and now it’s been a sociological and economical crater for over thirty years. Though African-Americans under the racist Coleman Young deserve some blame, there’s plenty of blame for whitey, too. The federal highway system tore apart the old ethnic neighborhoods, many of them Catholic parishes. Urban renewal demolished ethnic neighborhoods like Corktown. Once the federal government and urban planners had killed all the neighborhoods and parishes, there was only one thing left: The State. There were no mediating institutions between The State and individuals, and the individuals were crushed . . . and continue to be crushed. Get rid of The State in Detroit, and maybe Detroit could return to a somewhat-livable city. It’s just a theory, but Detroit’s current reality is a damning indictment of every aspect of 20th-century American political practice. - Eric of "The Daily Eudemon"

I made a custom book stand that I use in my bathroom (a.k.a. library) and I bet I have read more books in bathrooms than many people have read in their whole life. In fact I think I have read more books in chow lines aboard ships than many people have read in their lives. - Jeff Miller of "Curt Jester"

My main complaint is that his music has become such a standard and quite over used. It just does not deserve the "pride of place" it has received. It is not the writers of music that are at fault really, it is those who continue to promote inferior pieces of sacred music. Even the Saint Louis Jesuit's never intended that there music would be used at Mass. - Curt Jester on Marty Haugen's music

I love reading and writing polemics, and engaging in public discussion and debate... Yet I'm finding that I'm coming to the age in which the idea of going to the party and being nice to everybody is sounding more and more appealing...I used to know a political journalist who, in a discussion about arguing and sociability, said something that has come to strike me as profound: "You get to an age when you just want to go to the party and be nice to everybody." - Rod Dreher

Bill Buckley and Charlton Heston within about a month of each other. As Lord Escher wrote almost a hundred years ago, "All the old buoys which have marked the channels of our lives seem to have been swept away." - Recta Ratio on the death of Charleston Heston

One of the things that's been striking me as very odd...is Obama's tendency to talk about his mother and grandmother as being of another race, and thus not fully understanding him. Now clearly, he's half Kenyan, and they're not, but I still can't help finding it rather odd that he in some ways seems to place more of a premium on his skin tone than his ancestry -- especially given that his father abandoned the family when Obama was two...African ancestry has traditionally been cause for incredible amounts of discrimination and oppression in the US -- though I think one is justified in saying these have got much better over the last 40 years. So I can certainly see how Obama might well feel that he's faced challenges due to his skin color that his mother and grandmother did not face. But at the same time, consistently referring to your parent and grandparent -- who were the ones who actually raised you -- as "someone of another race" seems very odd to me. - Darwin Catholic

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind. - Shakespeare

I was beginning to learn about the farmers and what I found I liked. They had a toughness and philosophical attitude which was new to me. Misfortunes which would make the city dweller want to bang his head against the wall were shrugged off with "Aye, well, these things happen." - From "All Creatures Great and Small" via Jim of "Bethune Catholic"

Literature is an artificial construct devised by the pale penile patriarchy to confuse, oppress, and otherwise disenfranchise people of color, women, extraterrestrials, animals, and microbiota. Its sole purpose is a form of intellectual terrorism that will weed out the haves from the have-nots and inculcate and continuing world order of imperialism, capitalist hegemony, and patriarchal condescension. Anyone in disagreement obviously needs to reread their Paul de Man, Jacques Lacan, and Judith Butler. - Steven Riddle joking on Bill Luse's blog

We are not perfect, and yet we hope to enter the Kingdom of God. Therefore things which enter the Kingdom of God do not cease to be, but are perfected. Furthermore, life without jest and beer is less perfect than life with them. In Heaven there is no Milwaukee's Best.> - Zippy of Zippy Catholic on whether there is irony (and beer) in Heaven

It's 3AM...Phone Rings in the Oval Office...

Who do you trust to handle that prank call?

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