Catholic Youth As the New Counterculture

Sorry for the interruption ….

The summer doldrums have hit the presidential race as scheduled. In fact, with the nation paying more attention to dropped batons, underaged gymnasts and a new Olympic demigod who’s half sturgeon, half giant and all heart, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) couldn’t pick a better time to not know how many homes he has.

However, with the approach of the conventions, interest will soon re-emerge. I was within an ace of finishing this installment when Olympic coverage was interrupted by Sen. Barack Obama’s press conference revealing his running mate: Sen. Joseph Biden (D-RI). The reasoning? Biden would connect with blue-collar workers and relentlessly attack McCain.

Within hours, the McCain campaign had a TV ad ready to roll, which showed clips of Biden the erstwhile primary candidate criticizing Obama and praising McCain. Before the sun set on his first official day as vice-presidential candidate, Biden’s tendency to talk before thinking came back to bite him on the butt.

From this moment, I’m almost 100% positive: The election is McCain’s to lose.

Compassion As Emotional Blackmail

One day last week, as I drove home from work, I tuned in to “Catholic Answers Live” on the local Catholic radio station (KATH, AM 91). It must have been Tuesday (July 1), because it was an “open forum” night; the guest, if I be not mistaken, was Tim Staples, a convert from an Evangelical background. (He has a CD set about his conversion which has a most intriguing title: Jimmy Swaggart Made Me Catholic! It almost sounds like a Watchtower headline.)

A mother handed her ten-year-old wannabe skeptic daughter’s question over to Staples to answer: “If two people love each other, and one goes to heaven and the other goes to hell, how can the person who goes to heaven be happy there?” Staples confessed that there was no set answer to the question. “Some people believe that being in the Presence of God is so wonderful that we just forget about the loved ones in hell.”

America's Calling, Harry Truman

There’s another chain e-mail floating around, the “message” type that puts things in the simplest manner possible so that issues can be misunderstood by everyone. This one isn’t too offensive. It simply asks you, “Don’t you miss Ronald Reagan?” by quoting some of his better lines—some humorous (“The most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’”) and some pretty stirring (“No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women”).

I don’t know that I can agree that we need another Reagan. Certainly we could use someone with his optimism, his humor and his simplicity. But more than that, we need someone who can be both optimistic and honest to the point of bluntness, someone who can simple without being simplistic.

Making Adultery Naïve

Dear CBS:

This is in regards to your “new hit series” Swingtown.

Certainly, after a mere sixty years of television broadcasting, I can understand that new concepts are harder to come by. Eventually, the “reality series” well, which never really succeeded in bringing anything “real” to the air, had to start running dry, which in turn meant that all the writers would actually have to begin writing dialogue again. And certainly, you’ve had to do your best to end-run the rules against full-frontal nudity and the Seven Words You Can’t Say On (Network) TV so your shows could compete against the more pornographic, foulmouthed offerings on premium cable channels.

The "New" Atheism: The Same Old Story

The cover of the November 2006 Wired issue boldly proclaimed “The New Atheism: No Heaven. No Hell. Just Science.” However, as the article’s author, Gary Wolf, readily admitted early on, atheism doesn’t have any new arguments to offer. Even the sarcastic abuse is stale.

The only thing really “new” about the New Atheism is a missionary zeal. No longer are atheists content simply to sit around university clubrooms feeling contemptuous of the ignorant, superstitious masses; they’re now on a mission from no-God to free the minds of others.