Summum Bonum

In the past few days, Cardinal Stafford’s November 13 lecture at the Catholic University of America on the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae (for the John Paul I has created quite a media stir.

I suppose it’s a good sign that the secular media are paying some attention, even despite Wolf Blitzer’s comments that some Catholic commentators called distortions.

Cardinal Stafford has been one of the American Church’s most outspoken prelates in defense of life, for which I honor him. I applaud the Cardinal for forthrightly standing up for life in a public forum–something that will become increasingly costly for Catholics to do in an Obama administration.

The phrases most quoted by the secular media are actually quotes by others, applied by Stafford to Obama. The line about Obama’s being “aggressive, disruptive and even apocalyptic” was a quote from Anglican theologian Graham Ward’s about 1920’s modernism, although Stafford did apply it to Obama.

Ditto the line about “tautness of will, the clenched jaw” which was taken from a Francois Mauriac quote about another author.

I do have a few questions of my own about the lecture. I hope they don’t sound like quibbles.

Was it necessary for the good Cardinal (or whoever helped him write this lecture) to quote Martin Heidegger at such length and quite so enthusiastically? Given Heidegger’s questionable relationship to Nazism, do Catholic prelates really need his support to make a pro-life point? Should they even desire it?

The same for the citations of Catherine Pickstock.  I know this Anglican philosopher has taken parts of the Catholic world by storm.

This is unfortunate, in my opinion. Pickstock is an Anglican philosopher/theologian who tries to appropriate the postmodern critique of reason to defend religion and the liturgy. Leaving aside her high-Anglican propensity to consider herself fully Catholic with no further ado, her famous book “After Writing” makes historical mistakes and betrays at points an irrationalist romanticism that attacks, not just abuses of reason, but reason itself, even in its legitimate manifestations, and tends to put Catholicism and Protestantism on the same side of the historical ledger in its agenda of presenting Anglicanism as a tertium quid  between the two.  I take special exception to Stafford’s remark that Pope Benedict XVI “echoes what is partially anticipated by Pickstock.”

Again,  I support Cardinal Stafford’s central prolife point, and I think he is probably right about Obama. Obama’s administration will indeed be a Gethsemene for Catholics and prolife people, unless he has a radical chagne of heart.

But do we really need a Nazi apologist and an Anglican philosopher on our side to make these points?

TIME magazine’s Mark Halperin acknowledges the obvious at a media conference.

And why? Because media people are so-o smart!

At least, that’s the story according to “New York magazine’s John Heilemann, one of Halperin’s co-panelists, [who] offered another reason for all the positive press coverage Obama received.

‘The biggest bias in the press is towards effectiveness,’ said Heilemann, who is authoring a book on the 2008 race along with Halperin.

‘We love things that are smart.’

Because Obama’s campaign was generally so well run, he argued, the press tended to applaud even his negative tactics.

‘We’ll scold you for being negative,’ Heilemann said, ‘but if it seems to be working, the tone of your coverage becomes more positive.’ ”

Oh right, remember  all those adulatory MSM articles about Karl Rove when his tactics worked? Neither do I…

Kathleen Pender on how the government is doing more to incentivize irresponsibility.

“The streamlined process looks only at income, not assets. If you refinanced your home to buy a Mercedes or own another home, you won’t be expected to sell them to pay your mortgage.Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, predicts that many homeowners who have little or no equity will stop paying their mortgage and then reduce their income to get the biggest payment cut possible. They could stop working overtime or, if two spouses work, one could quit. After the modification, they could try to boost their income again.

‘This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,’ Schiff says. ‘People are going to feel like complete morons if they don’t participate. The people getting punished are the ones who never made an irresponsible decision to buy a house they couldn’t afford.’

The government is offering loan servicers $800 for every homeowner they get into the plan.

Schiff predicts that loan agents ‘will be cold-calling people trying to get them into it. Just like they encouraged people to overstate their income to get a bigger loan in the first place, now they will encourage them to understate their income to qualify for a smaller loan.’ ”

Ya think?

Here’s Maria, cool with being Catholic.

Except for, you know, the Catholic part.

She does like the Oprah part, though, about “being yourself.”

Charles Krauthammer’s post-election post-mortem is pretty accurate–except for his assessment of Palin:

“The choice of Sarah Palin was also a mistake. I’m talking here about its political effects, not the sideshow psychodrama of feminist rage and elite loathing that had little to do with politics and everything to do with cultural prejudices, resentments, and affectations.

Palin was a mistake (“near suicidal,” I wrote on the day of her selection) because she completely undercut McCain’s principal case against Obama: his inexperience and unreadiness to lead. And her nomination not only intellectually undermined the readiness argument. It changed the election dynamic by shifting attention, for days on end, to Palin’s preparedness, fitness, and experience — and away from Obama’s. “

How can you call a governor of a state “inexperienced”?

And those “sideshow” issues Krauthammer dismisses so easily will come back to haunt–and affect–later elections. Because Palin will be back on the national stage.

Proposition 8 seems to be passing in California–despite the prejudicial and dishonest efforts of judges and Attorney General Jerry Brown. If it passes (and it’s looking that way), it’s more evidence that Obama doesn’t have a mandate to begin taking up the culture wars, as some of his supporters would like him to.

Yes, it’s a historic moment. I heard college students on our street whooping the moment the election was called.

Around the world, Obama’s election probably will do the U.S. a lot of good, for reasons that have nothing to do with his character or policies but with what he represents. He’s been a screen on which millions of people around the world have projected hopes and dreams, many of which can never be fulfilled by any elected official.

On the other hand, look at the electoral map.  Look at how close the popular vote was–even after the credit meltdown, without which, it is now clear, Obama would not have won. The “healing” and “unity” Obama regularly invoked has not come close to beginning. We’re just as divided as ever.

I hope Obama will be less of an ideologue than was Bill Clinton, whose very first act in office was to restore abortion funding and end the “Mexico City” policy. Despite the goodwill he has from around the world, I hope he recognizes the extent of Ameirca’s ongoing division and will act accordingly.

But I have to tell you, I’m afraid. He is surrounded by people who have been champing at the bit for eight years or more.