Summum Bonum

The relevant quotes from this NYT piece on Berlusconi’s antics, which are finally raising  eyebrows even in Italy:

In what many see as a sign of Mr. Berlusconi’s grip on the levers of power in Italy and the Vatican, the Italian Bishops Conference this week essentially gave him a pass, or at least a no comment, calling for “adult behavior,” but saying that each person’s conduct was a matter “of individual conscience.”

“ ‘Things are completely turned upside down,’ said Gianluca Nicoletti, a commentator for Il Sole 24 Ore radio. ‘Those who always represented the family and faithful couples are happy to justify hanky-panky,’ he said. While some on the left, ‘which always professed a belief in total sexual freedom, are now like inquisitors with their fingers wagging.’ ”

You have to consider the source of these judgments. Still, Berlusconi might partly explain why L’Osservatore Romano finds it so easy to praise Obama: 1) He compares favorably to Berlusconi; 2) The Vatican hasn’t exactly bent over backwards condemning European politicians, either.

Total taxpayer indebtedness to date, according to USA Today:

“The latest increase raises federal obligations to a record $546,668 per household in 2008, according to the USA TODAY analysis. That’s quadruple what the average U.S. household owes for all mortgages, car loans, credit cards and other debt combined.

‘We have a huge implicit mortgage on every household in America — except, unlike a real mortgage, it’s not backed up by a house,’ says David Walker, former U.S. comptroller general, the government’s top auditor.”

 –And rising.

Christopher Caldwell on fear masquerading as tolerance.

From the NYT, the news that the feds will soon own 70% of GM:

“…with $30 billion invested in G.M. and Chrysler thus far, would the government tip the scales in favor of those companies when buying vehicles for its fleets? Will Ford find itself at a disadvantage, since it has turned down federal money?”

If I were Ford, I would start planning ads that include subtle derogatory references to “government cars” right now.

Ford might want to allude to the government’s decision to mandate digital TV. It actually degraded picture quality for many instead of improving it, and forced most to get cable or dish TV at greater cost.

The incidents include shootings, arson, beatings, and gangs sweeping Israeli goods off market shelves. The French response? A Gallic shrug.

A NYT piece on alleged depths of anger in England underneath the Parliamentary expenses scandals.

“Even as he has rejected calls to sack ministers caught up in the expenses scandal, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has enlisted himself in the reformers’ ranks, telling a news conference that he wants an end to the functioning of Parliament as ‘a gentlemen’s club’ that makes its own rules on members’ benefits, as well as wider changes that would make Parliament and the government ‘more accountable to the people.’ Similar commitments have been made by David Cameron, the Conservative leader, who could be prime minister himself after the election that must be held sometime in the next 12 months.”

We can only hope that whatever anger there really is here will lead to a broader awakening in Britain (and Europe) of the way that liberties have been surrendered to an arrogant political class.

Good review in the New Statesman of the new book, God Is Back: How The Global Rise Of Faith Is Changing the World, by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge.

“If there is any trend that can be discerned in the parts of the world that are most rapidly modernising [sic], it is that secular belief systems are in decline and the old faiths are being reborn.”

Of course, that does NOT mean that an “American” model is necessarily conquering the world.

Parenthetically, we have found the whole “new atheist” debate boring and have mostly stayed away from it. It’s mostly secularist ideologues talking to others like themselves and trying to buck each other up in the face of the trends noted by Mickethwait and Wooldridge. The level of thought and argument in the best-selling “new atheist” books has not been high, as even secular reviewers who would like to be sympathetic have been unable to refrain from pointing out.

Michael Novak is restraining himself here in his NR column about the Vatican paper, which persists in fulsomely praising Barack Obama even as the president directly attacks Catholic teaching on human life.The situation is serious.

On one level, it exposes the European attitude toward politics and politicians, an attitude that appears to have influenced some in L’Osservatore Romano, and perhaps in the Vatican as well. This attitude assumes that all politicians are corrupt and that all political goals (and legal standards, for that matter) are ideal goals, from which all fall short.That’s why Europeans are not surprised about revelations about their politicians (even though they like to read about them), although they are always surprised by “moralistic” Americans. Imagine impeaching Clinton for something as humdrum as an intern!

But it goes beyond that. It shows that the culture wars extend into the highest levels of the Vatican. This is the pattern seen in many U.S. dioceses; “personally orthodox” bishops whose staffs undermine and isolate them at every turn.We will personally be disappointed in Benedict if he does not see these editorials as a direct challenge to his teaching authority and act accordingly.

But perhaps we shouldn’t be. When he was elected, Benedict protested: ” ‘I am not a man of governo, of governance,’ he said, in each of the half-dozen languages he speaks fluently.”

Peter Steinfels in the NYT on looming possibilities for lawsuits on protections from gay marriage requirements for religious believers.Freedom of conscience is specifically protected by the First Amendment, while the “right” to gay marriage exists nowhere in the Constitution except by tortured inference.

But the track record of the homosexual movement whenever it has acquired police or judicial powers has not been encouraging to date. Think Ake Green or Canada’s Human Rights Commissions.In public, gay marriage advocates try to downplay the possibilities of conflict, but they are real and difficult. What about the religious believer who is also a government official, for example?

The net effect of gay marriage might be to drive believers out of government, which would be an outcome the gay marriage folks would probably welcome.But before that happens, a lot of First Amendment cases will make it to the Supreme Court. We as a society may have to decide which we want: gay marriage or the First Amendment. We can’t have both.

Ex-Archbishop Rembert Weakland makes his bid for faux-”victimhood” in the friendly pages of the New York Times.

An early excerpt of his memoir (courtesy of the Catholic Herald):

“On every ad limina trip without exception, I noticed that I would be singled out (the other bishops were never aware of this) and told to meet with Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio in the Congregation for Bishops (or later with his successor Cardinal Bernardin Gantin in that same congregation) and then with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” Archbishop Weakland writes. “Upon arrival in their offices, I would be presented with a list of complaints. These were actions or decisions of mine that seemed to irritate the pope and members of the curia.”

Milwaukee Auxiliary Bishop William Callahan says he is “surprised” by Weakland’s “revelation,” despite having known him for years, and despite the revelations in 2002 of Weakland’s payments to a former male lover, Paul Marcoux.

Weakland is the same Archbishop who declared in 1988: “Not all adolescent victims [of molestation] are so innocent. Some can be sexually very active and aggressive and often quite streetwise.”

Among other actions, Weakland made a deal with a Wisconsin judge that allowed thousands of records regarding incidents of priestly misconduct to be destroyed.

When Archbishop Dolan arrived in Milwaukee to take Weakland’s place, one letter-writer to the National Review wrote that a burden had been lifted from the shoulders of the faithful.

But as far as I can tell from Milwaukee informants, Archbishop Dolan, despite his undoubted personal orthodoxy, made not the slightest attempt during his Milwaukee tenure to disturb the homosexual subculture that came to dominate archdiocesan affairs and the seminary during the Weakland years. Enrollment in the seminary remains near zero. Perhaps Dolan was unable to do much, given that he was faced with wholesale opposition among priests, who doubtless had the power to threaten still more revelations.

Even today, a substantial proportion of Milwaukee priests continue to pray for “Rembert, our bishop” during Mass. Many Milwaukee priests deliberately cut back on their Mass schedules, then tell any parishioners who complain that it’s the Church’s fault for not ordaining women priests.

In the last paragraph of his memoir, Weakland predictably invokes his “victimhood” while ambiguously expressing regret for his actions during the scandal:

“If I have any sadness, it is that we have made too little progress in understanding and helping victims regain a full life. Too many seem to be left in anger. I also regret that, although we have made headway in delineating the profile of the perpetrators, we have made little progress in detecting this addiction early on and then seeking some sort of cure or humane control. We all are, in that sense, victims of the times we live in and have to accept those limitations, hoping and praying that the next generation will do better than we did. For these reasons, I am at peace with my God, with my Church, and with myself.”

But as Rod Dreher aptly said in 2002, “Neither Weakland nor the money-grubbing Marcoux are victims. The Catholics of Milwaukee are.”