He's not dying, Jim.

You know you’re a Trekkie when reflecting on some social phenomenon makes you say, “Y’know, this reminds me of that episode when Kirk and Spock ….”

“The Mark of Gideon”: Instead of politely asking Capt. Kirk for a sample of his blood, the leaders of the insanely overpopulated Gideon cook up a bizarre scheme to expose a beautiful girl (was there ever any other on that show?) to a deadly disease (Vegan choriomeningitis) Our Hero carries. You see, sterilization doesn’t work, and they hold love and the creation of life sacred (so birth control isn’t an option), and they live in a germ-free environment that gives them long lives. As a result, they must reintroduce disease to their planet, so they can naturally reduce the population and shorten life spans. After Kirk grumps a bit about being used as a pawn, the beautiful girl’s life is saved … so she can return to the planet as a 23rd-century Typhoid Annie.

Third season? How did you guess?

Get over yourself

“Here I am, Lord; is it I, Lord, who was bringing up three very lovely girls?”

Up to that point, I’d been listening to the “Gather Hymnal Redux” parody with a mixture of amusement and concern. Mildly funny, okay, but didn’t this verge on blasphemy?

But until now—and I’m ashamed, ashamed! to admit it—I’d never heard the melodic similarity between “Here I Am” and the Brady Bunch theme. Now that I’d just been smacked in the face with it, I finally laughed. And when the crooner got to “We remember what you told us, that one time, And it was awesome and we should have wrote it down,” I was howling.

Is my house on fire?

One sure way to bring out the trolls: Give your post a triumphalist title.

Simcha Fisher had a wonderful reflection on a recent study done by Florida State, showing that: 1) there is a causal connection between a woman’s fertility peak and men’s perception of her as attractive; and 2) men already in a romantic relationship with another woman don’t find her as attractive as do unattached men. With her impish sense of humor, Simcha titled the post “New Study: The Church Is Right About Everything”.

It wasn’t long before “Wayne” showed up with: “Yes, the catholic church is right about everything. Limbo, purgatory, paying to out of purgatory. My fave is; there is no salvation outside of the catholic church. The billions payed [sic] out in lawsuits proves that. Another fave of mine is[] that catholic priests are little Christs. Well, the billions in payouts testify to that.” And again: “When in the coffer a coin rings /out of purgatory a soul springs.”

Simcha and another commenter tried to respond; I simply said, “Please don’t feed the trolls.” Their responses got lengthy, semi-coherent jeremiads. I got: “Anthony, if your house was on fire and you were asleep, wouldn’t you was [sic] someone to beat on the door and wake you up?”

Closing the Catholic "debate" on same-sex marriage

Thomas Peters (the American Papist) grumped yesterday, “It’s extraordinary to me how, in a Catholic community which has debated endlessly the morality of LiveAction’s use of false statements in exposing Planned Parenthood …, that there has not been more effort to condemn the claim of pro-SSM Catholics that the debate over marriage is closed.”

Funny. I just wrote about gay marriage the other day. I didn’t realize I needed to mention pro-SSM Catholics. I was hoping to leave the topic alone for awhile.

Frankly, I was a little taken aback. Peters generally has his finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the blogosphere; he should know as well as I that there’s been quite a bit in recent weeks for everyone to chew over. It’s not like we Catholic bloggers are all tied into a central system to get our orders: “Okay, today’s topic will be Planned Parenthood!” Don’t ask me to explain the dog pile over Lila Rose yet again; if you feel like you lost, Tom, don’t worry … we’re still with you on so many other things.

This fit of high dudgeon was brought on by a guest post in the WaPo “on Faith” blog by Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministries. New Ways, if you’ll recall, is the “gay-positive ministry” that Cdl. Francis George of Chicago blasted last February for its criticism of Church teaching, saying that, “like other groups that claim to be Catholic but deny central aspects of Church teaching, New Ways Ministry has no approval or recognition from the Catholic Church and that they cannot speak on behalf of the Catholic faithful in the United States.”

Another gloomy analysis

The last three posts or so have been pretty depressing. So I stepped away from the word processor, did some things around the house, went to Adoration. When I came back, I was going to write a post full of sweetness and light.

Then I read Msgr. Charles Pope’s piece from Monday on Europe's inability to deal with Islamic demands for Shariah law within their enclaves. I also read Abp. Charles Chaput’s address to the Berkley Center for Peace, Religion and World Affairs at Georgetown U … reminding that think-tank that the American concept of ordered peace and justice directly depended on Christian humanism, a humanism based on a particular view of the human being and his relationship to God.

Recently, in Detroit, there were conflicts as the police arrested a couple of Christian missionaries who had gone to an Islamic festival, although they were observing city law while doing so. And now the ACLU has undertaken to represent another enclave in LA who wants to implement Shariah within their boundaries, cheerfully ignoring the fact that Shariah has some direct conflicts with women’s civil rights. (That’s what the ACLU desperately needs … A CLU.)

So much for sweetness and light.

Get a job!

I love blogging. This is what I was meant to do.

Unfortunately, to keep doing it, I need to eat and pay bills.

So for the next couple of days, I'm going to take a "blog break" to concentrate on getting a job that pays. From here on out, don't expect Monday posts from me unless I can write them on Sunday. But keep tuning in to here and The Impractical Catholic as I continue to laugh, rage, despair, rejoice and pray over the insanity we call Western civilization ... which, as Gandhi said, would be a good idea.

How the next civil war will begin

On April 12, 2011, it will be 150 years since the opening shots were fired on Fort Sumter, marking the beginning of the bloodiest conflict in American history—the Civil War.

Today we stand poised on the brink of an even greater disaster. For over forty years, the pro-life movement has largely defined itself in its opposition to abortion, although a host of other issues have come in its wake, issues the movement was prepared to fight: euthanasia, assisted suicide, eugenics, in vitro fertilization, fetal stem cell research. But it appears now that the knock-out punch, the key victory the “culture of death” needs to reign triumphant, is going to come from the direction we were least prepared to fight.

That issue is gay marriage.

So just how far have we progressed?

Thursday, I ended my post with the example of Caesar’s wife. This morning, after a night of simmering and fretting over the not-distant-enough collapse of Western civilization (God, I would love to be Chicken Little rather than Cassandra!), I started thinking of the conditions that obtained in 59 BC, when Julius Caesar, having finished a frustrating and not entirely successful consulship trying to work around his obstructive junior consul Marcus Bibulus—people would end up joking about events taking place “in the consulship of Julius and Caesar”—rode off to Gaul and his destiny.

The day he left, the Roman Republic had only fifteen years to live.

Sticking a fork in Virginia's abortion industry

Rock and a hard place. Devil and the deep blue sea. Hobson’s choice. Use whatever cliché expression you will—that’s where the pro-abortion forces find themselves in Virginia.

In chess, the knight is a particularly useful piece because of a placement called the “fork”. In a knight fork, the knight is placed so he can attack two or more of the opponent’s pieces—say, a rook and a queen, or the king and a bishop—simultaneously, forcing the opponent to save one and lose the other. This is particularly effective when one of the pieces being forked is the king, due to the priority of check: because the knight is so difficult to block, the king has to move.

On Thursday, the Virginia legislature approved a measure that would require abortion clinics to meet the same minimum health and safety standards required of a hospital. According to AP reporter Dena Potter, this would force seventeen of the state’s twenty-one clinics to close. Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, and Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, whose Catholicism Potter found some obscure reason to mention, will sign the bill into law.

Here’s the fork: Do abortion advocates promote safety at the risk of losing access, or promote access at the cost of appearing to not much care about unsanitary clinics and women damaged by the procedure?

Lies and Lila: Caesar's wife

The opening volleys of the “Lies & Lila” battle were almost deafening. Now, it’s settled down to riflemen in single-shot mode, with the occasional rattle of a machine gun. But it’s still a battle—worse, it’s a blue-on-blue incident.

Last Friday, Mark Shea titled his second National Catholic Register blog entry on the controversy “Last Comments on Lying for Jesus”. Then, he felt compelled to make additional remarks on Sunday (“Faustian Bargains”), and again on Wednesday (“Augustine vs. the Priscillianists”). So one of his respondents on the latter’s combox accused him of lying on Friday.

This issue has gotten touchy enough that even a lightly flippant remark can spin off into a round of squawking and squabbling. For all that we’re supposed to practice Christian charity in our remarks, some of the defenses on both sides have become rather acidic — and, by the way, I repeat my apology for my impatient and unjust treatment of Dr. John Zmirak’s argument in defense of Lila; it has since been corrected. Shea, who can be rather snarky to people whom he’s arguing with, senses this, and has toned down his rhetoric … to not much effect.

Satan must be laughing his ass off right now.