Welcome to the melting pot, professor Gates!

Well, well, whaddaya know? Harvard University's Professor Henry Gates Jr. is half Irish. But wait! There's more!

Henry Louis Gates Jr., the black professor at the center of the racial story involving his arrest outside his Harvard University-owned house, has spoken proudly of his Irish roots.

Strangely enough, he and the Cambridge, Mass., police officer who arrested him, Sgt. James Crowley, both trace their ancestry back to the legendary Niall of the Nine Hostages.

In a PBS series on African-American ancestry that he hosted in 2008, Gates discovered his Irish roots when he found he was descended from an Irish immigrant and a slave girl.

He went to Trinity College in Dublin to have his DNA analyzed. There he found that he shared 10 of the 11 DNA matches with offspring of Niall of the Nine Hostages, the fourth century warlord who created one of the dominant strains of Irish genealogy because he had so many offspring.

I should have known that this whole flap would boil down to a fight between a couple of Micks, between a Shanty Irish cop and a Lace Curtain Irish perfesser. The only thing missing is the Paddy Wagon.

This explains Gates' strange outburst when Officer Crowley responded to a routine police call. How? Gates suffers from what appears to be a particularly severe case of Irish Alzheimer's, wherein you forget everything but the grudge.

Something to keep you company while waiting for the next season of LOST

The Ben Linus bobblehead doll, complete with bloodstains and sling.

Because Ben gets his ass kicked more than all other characters combined.

Belloc Friday

About Wine
Cooling it
Do not cool white wine too much. All white wine is the better for cooling, but beyond a certain point, it kills the taste.

An excellent way of cooling white wine is this: Get a Bath oliver biscuit tin -- 2 or 3 is better than one, for you may want to have several bottles cooled, and to wait for cooling when one has begun drinking is damnable. These Biscuit tins are just the height of a bottle or a little more, and, what is their special point, a little wider. Put the bottle into the tin and pour water in till it reaches about one inch or less below the top. There is then a jacket of water all 'round the bottle. Put broken ice -- not much -- into the water at the top: not so much as to choke it, but only so much as can float in the water. This ice gradually melts, the cold melted ice sinks, and therefore very soon the whole water jacket is at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, and, being a thin layer, doesn't freeze the wine.

A good permanent instrument to have about the place is a leaden roll of this shape and size well fastened, with the handles fixed on. See that it is wide enough for champagne.

Baptizing it
All -- or nearly all -- Red wine is the better for having just one or two drops of water poured into the first glass only. Why this should be so I know not, but so it is. It introduces it. This admirable and little known custom is called 'Baptizing' wine.

Some also, on seeing a little wine left in a glass throw it on the ground or ashes of the fire, crying 'Cottabus,' KOTT and BUS; this is a superstition, but not to be despised. It is said to placate the Gods.

--Advice

Cool stories about Confession always make me cry

This one, posted today on Fr. Z's blog, involves Fulton Sheen. I think people who make use of frequent confession are some of the happiest people on earth.

Prayers for Fr. Joseph Fessio

Fr. Fessio has been sacked from Ave Maria Univesity. Again. For daring to pointing out to Tom Monaghan boot-lickers that there are grave problems in the management of the university. Again.

And without the university paying least bit of attention to due process. Again.

"Daddy, daddy, tell us a bedtime story!"

"Ok, kids. Once upon a time, a millionare founded a university."

"No, not that story, daddy! That's scary! It gives us nightmares!"

"Okay, how about this one. Once upon a time, a penniless, cripled, cloistered nun founded a Catholic cable network that grew to become one of the biggest cable networks ever."

"Oh yes, daddy! We like that story! Tell us more!"

Visit AveWatch for updates.

The Holy Mysticism of G.K. Chesterton

The Real Life of St. Thomas

Of the personal habits that go with the personal physique, we have also a few convincing and confirming impressions. When he was not sitting still, reading a book, he walked round and round the cloisters and walked fast and even furiously, a very characteristic action of men who fight their battles in the mind. Whenever he was interrupted he was very polite and more apologetic than the apologizer. But there was that about him, which suggested that he was rather happier when he was not interrupted. He was ready to stop his truly Peripatetic tramp: but we feel that when he resumed it, he walked all the faster.

All this suggests that his superficial abstraction, that which the world saw, was of a certain kind. It will be well to understand the quality, for there are several kinds of absence of mind, including that of some pretentious poets and intellectuals, in whom the mind has never been noticeably present. There is the abstraction of the contemplative, whether he is the true sort of Christian contemplative, who is contemplating Something, or the wrong sort of Oriental contemplative, who is contemplating Nothing. Obviously St. Thomas was not a Buddhist mystic; but I do not think his fits of abstraction were even those of a Christian mystic. If he had trances of true Christian mysticism, he took jolly good care that they should not occur at other people's dinner-tables. I think he had the sort of bemused fit, which really belongs to the practical man rather than the entirely mystical man. He uses the recognised distinction between the active life and the contemplative life, but in the cases concerned here, I think even his contemplative life was an active life. It had nothing to do with his higher life, in the sense of ultimate sanctity. It rather reminds us that Napoleon would fall into a fit of apparent boredom at the Opera, and afterwards confess that he was thinking how he could get three army corps at Frankfurt to combine with two army corps at Cologne. So, in the case of Aquinas, if his daydreams were dreams, they were dreams of the day; and dreams of the day of battle. If he talked to himself, it was because he was arguing with somebody else. We can put it another way, by saying that his daydreams, like the dreams of a dog, were dreams of hunting; of pursuing the error as well as pursuing the truth; of following all the twists and turns of evasive falsehood, and tracking it at last to its lair in hell. He would have been the first to admit that the erroneous thinker would probably be more surprised to learn where his thought came from, than anybody else to discover where it went to. But this notion of pursuing he certainly had, and it was the beginning of a thousand mistakes and misunderstandings that pursuing is called in Latin Persecution. Nobody had less than he had of what is commonly called the temper of a persecutor; but he had the quality which in desperate times is often driven to persecute; and that is simply the sense that everything lives somewhere, and nothing dies unless it dies in its own home. That he did sometimes, in this sense, urge in dreams the shadowy chase even in broad daylight, is quite true. But he was an active dreamer, if not what is commonly called a man of action; and in that chase he was truly to be counted among the domini canes; and surely the mightiest and most magnanimous of the Hounds of Heaven.

There may be many who do not understand the nature even of this sort of abstraction. But then, unfortunately, there are many who do not understand the nature of any sort of argument. Indeed, I think there are fewer people now alive who understand argument than there were twenty or thirty years ago; and St. Thomas might have preferred the society of the atheists of the early nineteenth century to that of the blank sceptics of the early twentieth. Anyhow, one of the real disadvantages of the great and glorious sport, that is called argument, is its inordinate length. If you argue honestly, as St. Thomas always did, you will find that the subject sometimes seems as if it would never end. He was strongly conscious of this fact, as appears in many places; for instance his argument that most men must have a revealed religion, because they have not time to argue. No time, that is, to argue fairly. There is always time to argue unfairly; not least in a time like ours. Being himself resolved to argue, to argue honestly, to answer everybody, to deal with everything, he produced books enough to sink a ship or stock a library; though he died in comparatively early middle age. Probably he could not have done it at all, if he had not been thinking even when he was not writing; but above all thinking combatively. This, in his case, certainly did not mean bitterly or spitefully or uncharitably; but it did mean combatively. As a matter of fact, it is generally the man who is not ready to argue, who is ready to sneer. That is why, in recent literature, there has been so little argument and so much sneering.

We have noted that there are barely one or two occasions on which St. Thomas indulged in a denunciation. There is not a single occasion on which he indulged in a sneer. His curiously simple character, his lucid but laborious intellect, could not be better summed up than by saying that he did not know how to sneer. He was in a double sense an intellectual aristocrat: but he was never an intellectual snob. He never troubled at all whether those to whom he talked were more or less of the sort whom the world thinks worth talking to: and it was apparent by the impression of his contemporaries that those who received the ordinary scraps of his wit or wisdom were quite as likely to be nobodies as somebodies, or even quite as likely to be noodles as clever people. He was interested in the souls of all his fellow creatures, but not in classifying the minds of any of them; in a sense it was too personal and in another sense too arrogant for his particular mind and temper. He was very much interested in the subject he was talking about; and may sometimes have talked for a long time, though he was probably silent for a much longer time. But he had all the unconscious contempt which the really intelligent have for an intelligentsia.

Like most men concerned with the common problems of men, he seems to have had a considerable correspondence; considering that correspondence was so much more difficult in his time. We have records of a great many cases in which complete strangers wrote to ask him questions, and sometimes rather ridiculous questions. To all of these he replied with a characteristic mixture of patience and that sort of rationality, which in some rational people tends to be impatience. Somebody, for instance, asked him whether the names of all the blessed were written on a scroll exhibited in heaven. He wrote back with untiring calm; "So far as I can see, this is not the case; but there is no harm in saying so."

--St. Thomas Aquinas (chap. 5)

Belloc Friday

About Wine
Warming it
Never warm Red wine. This deletrious practice is called by the vulgar 'taking the chill of.' Wine -- Red wine -- can be just as good with the chill on: especially in early Autumn when the weather is fine. Rabelais, who knew more about wine then Dionysos and Noah put together thought that, nay, affirmed it that, in Summer wine should come cool out of a cellar, and he was right. He spoke of Chinon wine, known also as Fausse Maigre, for it has more body than the first and superficial acquaintance allows it.

But if you must warm Red wine do this: Take it out some six hours before drinking it; put it on a sideboard far from any fire -- but in a room with a fire, or other heat. Take the cork out a little before drinking it -- say a half hour before -- to give it air after this slow warming. Then drink it.

To put Red wine into warm water (I mean, to put the bottle into warm water) or to put it near the fire turns it into vinegar. This is not so true of Port, which is not a wine: but it is God's truth of Claret and Burgundy, Touraine, the Rhone, the Etruscan, the Spanish and indeed the Algerian. The Rhine. All Red wines.

--Advice

(next week: cooling wine)

More on Harry Potter

First, I saw the new movie last night and it was great. I have not been a fan of the HP movies so far and up to now have been happy to dismiss them with a two-word review: they suck. But the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was wonderful, with proper measures of fun and horror. There are some missteps, and a few changes that made no sense (Dumbledore drinks the potion with a goblet, dammit, not a seashell, and the potion is supposed to be green, not clear), but I left the film feeling as if those who make these movies finally *got* Harry Potter. I have high hopes for the two-part conclusion.

Second, in the debate below, I (and others) have been able to handle most of David’s objections in the combox. But he raises one point that I’d rather deal with here. David says:

A crucial metaphysical element of the traditional tales is that the hero is an ordinary, non-magical person - a Muggle, if you will. The Cinderellas, Jacks, tailors, miller's sons, Hobbits, Lewis's Pevensie kids, and Charlie Buckets (Dahl's Chocolate Factory is in the tradition) are as ordinary as can be. They are ordinary folks encountering the extraordinary, and encounter the extraordinary only as a matter of gift - a fairy Godmother appears, a golden ticket is found in a candy bar, a mysterious stranger sells them a magic bean. They have no right to the magic realm, and they persist in it only at the pleasure of mysterious conditions and rules. Navigating the magic realm while keeping to the conditions and rules is where all the excitement is, at least as far as GKC was concerned.

Suppose, however, that the hero is not ordinary, but possesses an extraordinary magical nature that gives him entry to the magical world by right? Then his existence in the magical realm is not a gift but a debt owed him, and it will have no necessary dependence on rules or conditions. You can't put conditions on what you are owed by nature. Furthermore, we no longer have the ordinary guy experiencing the extraordinary, but an extraordinary guy experiencing a reality no more extraordinary than himself, so why should he respect its rules? Hogwarts needs Harry Potter more than Harry Potter needs Hogwarts. This, I think is the real metaphysical origin of the difference in attitude between traditional characters like Charlie Bucket and Harry Potter.

There are two problems to this. First, Harry Potter is ordinary, despite having magical abilities like all the other characters. He was raised by his non-magical aunt and uncle, so he has no more of notion of a hidden magical world than the reader does. As Harry learns about this world and his gifts, so do we. His presence in the magical world may be, in part, a debt owed to him, but it is also a gift, just as our own presence in this world is a gift that, once given, gives rise to certain rights (the debt owed us) we have by virtue of being alive.

And from this, this mystical combination of gift and rights, there naturally follows a “necessary dependence on rules and conditions.” Yes, there are conditions on what is owed us by nature. If there aren't, then there is no such thing as sin.

And that gives rise to the second problem. Harry and his friends go off to Hogwarts to learn just what those rules and conditions are. They study at Hogwarts to learn limits. The magical abilities they possess aren’t – as has been argued elsewhere, most notably by Michael O’Brien – something they acquire at Hogwarts through Gnostic dabbling in the occult. These are gifts that Harry is born with. And as such they are part of his nature.

Think of all the things that are part of our nature that, if we did not adhere to “a necessary dependence on rules and conditions,” would lead to chaos: our sexuality; our need to eat, drink, and rest, just to name a few. Ignoring proper limits in these areas leads not only to personal disorder, but to societal disorder as well. Within the context of the Potterverse, how much more disorder, both personal and societal, would result if persons with magical abilities do not learn the rules and conditions associated with those abilities? Look at the sheer debasement of Lord Voldemort, to take a primary example.

David is right insofar as noting a metaphysical distinction between Harry Potter and Charlie Bucket. But beyond that, David has it backwards. Charlie does not *really* need the chocolate factory at all, despite the deprivations of his life. Wonka needs Charlie more than Charlie needs the factory. But, given what Harry needs to learn about his abilities, he definitely needs Hogwarts more than Hogwarts needs him. Hogwarts fulfils its debt to Harry by teaching him how to live within proper rules and conditions. Harry repays the gift by giving of it freely, with Love and generosity, at the proper time.

Meanwhile, back at Hogwarts...

I got so busy having a grand argument about Harry Potter this week that I nearly forgot to mention a new book out now by HP scholar John Granger (no relation to Hermione). Order this book here. I highly recommend it. John is a topnotch scholar and, even better, a great writer. All Potter fans will learn tons, and even anti-Potterites may learn a thing or two.

Did I say the Left hates Catholics?

Sorry, I misspoke. The left hates PEOPLE:

John Holdren, Obama's Science Czar, says: Forced abortions and mass sterilization needed to save the planet.

Among the nicer things this nasty little Death Eater calls for in a 1977 book he co-authored is taking babies away from their mothers, regulating family size, mandatory birth control, and the sterilization of humans through the water or food supply, which is okay so long as pets and livestock are unaffected. And of course he would enforce all of this through an armed international police force.

Nice guy.

Yes, the Left really does hate Catholics

Lest you harbor any doubts, here is how they promote one of their own:




Read up on this here.

h/t: Mark Shea

And while we're on the subject...

The most excellent Dr. Thursday posted links to two prayers -- FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY.








One is for the Cause of G.K. Chesterton

The other seeks his intercession (Note: if you receive some favor after praying this one, then you need to keep a thorough and accurate record of it, including accounts by as many witnesses as possible. This would be the evidence of a miracle that Vatican investigators would be looking for, for the benefit of those of you who were asking about miracles).

Dr. Thursday also adds:

I think it would be outstanding to see Frances and Gilbert go in together - maybe a nice thing to have a married couple as exemplars. In fact are there any others? Hm. The only other one that comes to mind right off the top of my head is... (ahem) Mary and Joseph. In commenting on the litany of St. Joseph Fr. Jaki always said we ought to say "Holy Mary pray for us; St. Joseph pray for us - and do so together!" A brilliant insight.

This is one of those obvious insights that we never see until someone brilliant -- like Doc T -- points it out to us. To answer his question, I know that Opus Dei has been working for some time to get a Cause opened for a married couple who were both members and are now deceased. I don't know what stage that is at, however.

For the repose of the soul of Old Thunder

Hilaire Belloc died on this day in 1953, the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. As it is a day when you can gain a plenary indulgence, Jon posts in my combox a good suggestion:

Seeing that today, all of the faithful can gain a plenary indulgence by simply visiting a church (it must be a Carmelite church if one is nearby, if not, any church), saying the Creed or another prayer, and praying for the intentions of the Holy Father, I suggest that those of us who can, do so. I also suggest that those who do might offer that indulgence not for themselves, but for the soul of Old Thunder.

Surely the fellow who in life "whacked them hard, and banged them long," can do with a little relief. And if he's long past that need, imagine the prayers he'll storm the Throne with on your behalf because of your charity. ;^)

Amen. Please remember Hilaire Belloc in your prayers today.

Another call for opening the Cause of G.K. Chesterton - this time from an Italian

In an interview on ZENIT on Tuesday, Paolo Gulisano, author of the first Italian-language biography of G.K. Chesterton (Chesterton & Belloc: Apologia e Profezia, Ediciones Ancora), joins the rising chorus of people calling for the opening of Chesterton's cause.

ZENIT naturally asks, "Why a beatification of Chesterton?" Gulisano replies:

Many people feel there is clear evidence of Chesterton's sanctity: Testimonies about him speak of a person of great goodness and humility, a man without enemies, who proposed the faith without compromises but also without confrontation, a defender of Truth and Charity. His greatness is also in the fact that he knew how to present Christianity to a wide public, made up of Christians and secular people. His books, ranging from "Orthodoxy" to "St. Francis of Assisi," from "Father Brown" to "The Ball and the Cross," are brilliant presentations of the Christian faith, witnessed with clarity and valor before the world.

According to the ancient categories of the Church, we could define Chesterton as a "confessor of the faith." He was not just an apologist, but also a type of prophet who glimpsed far ahead of time the dramatic character of modern issues like eugenics. The English Dominican Aidan Nichols sustains that Chesterton should be seen as nothing less than a possible "father of the Church" of the 20th century.

"Father of the Church of the 20th century." To quote Sam Gamgee, "I like that!"

Gulisano also speaks to how Chesterton the virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity to a heroic degree, and of his skill at defending and promoting the Faith being high evidence of Chesterton's holiness, and also adds a twist, which I like very much, that Chesterton, "knew that the most harmful consequence of de-Christianization has not been the grave ethical straying but rather the straying of reason, synthesized in this critique of his: The modern world has suffered a mental fall much greater than the moral one.

Just so, and this is what has struck me deeply about Chesterton, that in all his writing, and especially in his overtly apologetical works, is that for him Christian orthodoxy is always closely linked to mental sanity. Abandoning reason, on the other hand, always leads to heresy.

In any case, read the entire interview. This is great news (and when I get time, I'll try to hunt down a link to Gulisano's biography, which also includes Belloc). Keep praying for this intention!

Iowahawk for U.S. Car Czar!

Under a cloud of corruption, Car Czar Steven Rattner has quit! The Moloch Administration wants to replace him with an even more inexperienced jerk, former United Steelworkers union official (i.e., thug) Ron Bloom.

There is a better alternative: Iowahawk for Car Czar! Start the groundswell!

Take THAT, Michael O'Brien!

The Vatican City newspaper praises good vs. evil them in the new Harry Potter film:

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The Vatican lauded the latest Harry Potter film on Monday, saying "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" made the age-old debate over good vs. evil crystal clear.

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano even gave two thumbs up to the film's treatment of adolescent love, saying it achieved the "correct balance" and made the stars more credible to the general audience.

The books have always made the "age-old debate" crystal clear, something anti-Potterites might see if they ever took the time to actually read them. True, many of the "good guys," including Harry Potter himself, have some problematic moral shortcomings. But that only makes them human, particularly as they grow in virtue, and it always struck me as woefully dishonest for people to hold book characters to a standard that they themselves cannot meet. Or as Chesterton wrote in an excellent bit of literary criticism, "If the characters are not wicked, the book is."

The holy mysticism of G.K. Chesterton

The Real Life of St. Thomas (excerpt)

At this point, even so crude and external a sketch of a great saint involves the necessity of writing something that cannot fit in with the rest; the one thing which it is important to write and impossible to write. A saint may be any kind of man, with an additional quality that is at once unique and universal. We might even say that the one thing which separates a saint from ordinary men is his readiness to be one with ordinary men. In this sense the word ordinary must be understood in its native and noble meaning; which is connected with the word order. A saint is long past any desire for distinction; he is the only sort of superior man who has never been a superior person. But all this arises from a great central fact, which he does not condescend to call a privilege, but which is in its very nature a sort of privacy; and in that sense almost a form of private property. As with all sound private property, it is enough for him that he has it, he does not desire to limit the number of people who have it. He is always trying to hide it, out of a sort of celestial good manners; and Thomas Aquinas tried to hide it more than most. To reach it, in so far as we can reach it, it will be best to begin with the upper strata; and reach what was in the inside from what was most conspicuous on the outside.

The appearance or bodily presence of St. Thomas Aquinas is really easier to resurrect than that of many who lived before the age of portrait painting. It has been said that in his bodily being or bearing there was little of the Italian; but this is at the best, I fancy an unconscious comparison between St. Thomas and St. Francis; and at worst, only a comparison between him and the hasty legend of vivacious organ-grinders and incendiary ice-cream men. Not all Italians are vivacious organ-grinders, and very few Italians are like St. Francis. A nation is never a type, but it is nearly always a tangle of two or three roughly recognizable types. St. Thomas was of a certain type, which is not so much common in Italy, as common to uncommon Italians.

His bulk made it easy to regard him humorously as the sort of walking wine-barrel, common in the comedies of many nations: he joked about it himself. It may be that he, and not some irritated partisan of the Augustinian or Arabian parties, was responsible for the sublime exaggeration that a crescent was cut out of the dinner-table to allow him to sit down. It is quite certain that it was an exaggeration; and that his stature was more remarked than his stoutness; but, above all, that his head was quite powerful enough to dominate his body. And his head was of a very real and recognisable type, to judge by the traditional portraits and the personal descriptions. It was that sort of head with the heavy chin and jaws, the Roman nose and the big rather bald brow, which, in spite of its fullness, gives also a curious concave impression of hollows here and there, like caverns of thought. Napoleon carried that head upon a short body. Mussolini carries it today, upon a rather taller but equally active one. It can be seen in the busts of several Roman Emperors, and occasionally above the shabby shirt-front of an Italian waiter; but he is generally a head waiter. So unmistakable is the type, that I cannot but think that the most vivid villain of light fiction, in the Victorian shocker called The Woman in White, was really sketched by Wilkie Collins from an actual Italian Count; he is so complete a contrast to the conventional skinny, swarthy and gesticulating villain whom the Victorians commonly presented as an Italian Count. Count Fosco, it may be remembered (I hope) by some, was a calm, corpulent, colossal gentleman, whose head was exactly like a bust of Napoleon of heroic size. He may have been a melodramatic villain; but he was a tolerably convincing Italian--of that kind. If we recall his tranquil manner, and the excellent common sense of his everyday external words and actions, we shall probably have a merely material image of the type of Thomas Aquinas; given only the slight effort of faith required to imagine Count Fosco turned suddenly into a saint.

The pictures of St. Thomas, though many of them were painted long after his death, are all obviously pictures of the same man. He rears himself defiantly, with the Napoleonic head and the dark bulk of body, in Raphael's "Dispute About the Sacrament." A portrait by Ghirlandajo emphasises a point which specially reveals what may be called the neglected Italian quality in the man. It also emphasises points that are very important in the mystic and the philosopher. It is universally attested that Aquinas was what is commonly called an absent-minded man. That type has often been rendered in painting, humorous or serious; but almost always in one of two or three conventional ways. Sometimes the expression of the eyes is merely vacant, as it absent-mindedness did really mean a permanent absence of mind. Sometimes it is rendered more respectfully as a wistful expression, as of one yearning for something afar off, that he cannot see and can only faintly desire. Look at the eves in Ghirlandajo's portrait of St. Thomas; and you will see a sharp difference. While the eyes are indeed completely torn away from the immediate surroundings, so that the pot of flowers above the philosopher's head might fall on it without attracting his attention, they are not in the least wistful, let alone vacant. There is kindled in them a fire of instant inner excitement; they are vivid and very Italian eyes. The man is thinking about something; and something that has reached a crisis; not about nothing or about anything; or, what is almost worse, about everything. There must have been that smouldering vigilance in his eyes, the moment before he smote the table and startled the banquet hall of the King.

--St. Thomas Aquinas (chap. 5)

(I apologize for this being a day late.)

Belloc Friday

After the horrors of Justice Ginsberg, an antidote...

The Morning Mass

In the first village I came to I found that Mass was over, and this justly annoyed me; for what is a pilgrimage in which a man cannot hear Mass every morning? Of all the things I have read about St Louis which make me wish I had known him to speak to, nothing seems to me more delightful than his habit of getting Mass daily whenever he marched down south, but why this should be so delightful I cannot tell. Of course there is a grace and influence belonging to such a custom, but it is not of that I am speaking but of the pleasing sensation of order and accomplishment which attaches to a day one has opened by Mass; a purely temporal, and, for all I know, what the monks back at the ironworks would have called a carnal feeling, but a source of continual comfort to me. Let them go their way and let me go mine.

This comfort I ascribe to four causes (just above you will find it written that I could not tell why this should be so, but what of that?), and these causes are:

1. That for half-an-hour just at the opening of the day you are silent and recollected, and have to put off cares, interests, and passions in the repetition of a familiar action. This must certainly be a great benefit to the body and give it tone.

2. That the Mass is a careful and rapid ritual. Now it is the function of all ritual (as we see in games, social arrangements and so forth) to relieve the mind by so much of responsibility and initiative and to catch you up (as it were) into itself, leading your life for you during the time it lasts. In this way you experience a singular repose, after which fallowness I am sure one is fitter for action and judgement.

3. That the surroundings incline you to good and reasonable thoughts, and for the moment deaden the rasp and jar of that busy wickedness which both working in one's self and received from others is the true source of all human miseries. Thus the time spent at Mass is like a short repose in a deep and well-built library, into which no sounds come and where you feel yourself secure against the outer world.

4. And the most important cause of this feeling of satisfaction is that you are doing what the human race has done for thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years. This is a matter of such moment that I am astonished people hear of it so little. Whatever is buried right into our blood from immemorial habit that we must be certain to do if we are to be fairly happy (of course no grown man or woman can really be very happy for long--but I mean reasonably happy), and, what is more important, decent and secure of our souls. Thus one should from time to time hunt animals, or at the very least shoot at a mark; one should always drink some kind of fermented liquor with one's food--and especially deeply upon great feast-days; one should go on the water from time to time; and one should dance on occasions; and one should sing in chorus. For all these things man has done since God put him into a garden and his eyes first became troubled with a soul. Similarly some teacher or ranter or other, whose name I forget, said lately one very wise thing at least, which was that every man should do a little work with his hands.

Oh! what good philosophy this is, and how much better it would be if rich people, instead of raining the influence of their rank and spending their money on leagues for this or that exceptional thing, were to spend it in converting the middle-class to ordinary living and to the tradition of the race. Indeed, if I had power for some thirty years I would see to it that people should be allowed to follow their inbred instincts in these matters, and should hunt, drink, sing, dance, sail, and dig; and those that would not should be compelled by force.

Now in the morning Mass you do all that the race needs to do and has done for all these ages where religion was concerned; there you have the sacred and separate Enclosure, the Altar, the Priest in his Vestments, the set ritual, the ancient and hierarchic tongue, and all that your nature cries out for in the matter of worship.

--The Path to Rome

Justice Ruth Ginsberg: Roe v. Wade was for "populations that we don’t want to have too many of."

Absolutely stunning. The legacy of Margaret Sanger lives on.

In an interview with the New York Times Magazine that will be published Sunday, but which is online now, Justice Ruth Ginsberg free admits that when Roe v. Wade was decided, she thought it was about the control of "undesirable populations."

To wit:

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often.

Q: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.

No follow-up on whether Ginsberg, a Jew, thinks it is good or evil to want to control undesirable populations, or what her criteria is for who may undesirable.

Read the full NYT piece.

There is a good analysis at WorldNetDaily.

Fr. Z fisks it also.

What? You thought I'd forget?

It happened today and will never happen again. I think.

12:34:56 on 07/08/09

The 2009 English Chesterton Conference

The July 4 Chesterton conference held in Oxford, England "went very well indeed," Martin Thompson of the English Chesterton Society tells me. Attendance was roughly eighty to one hundred, he said, which is pretty good, trust me -- the lack of attention paid to Chesterton in England underscores the truth of Christ's words, "A prophet is not without honor except in his own country."

As I previously reported, the purpose of this conference was to discuss Chesterton's holiness -- with an eye toward eventually, some day, maybe even in our lifetimes, opening his Cause for sainthood. This idea is not without controversy, as I've also reported. Aware of this, "We decided(wisely I think) not to make it a debating forum at the conf.," Martin says. "It was strictly an academic investigation. The next step will be for the speakers and other theological heavyweights to compile a letter to the Bishop asking for a meeting."

The papers deliverd at the conference are going to be compiled and published in a book. Cool! Check the English Chesterton Society webpage for updates on that.

Also, you can read William Oddie's opening remarks here.

An excerpt:

Chesterton’s intellect was entirely suffused by his faith; his heart was filled by a hope that welled up from his unfailing gratitude for the gift of life. As for his charity, we can say that Schopenhauer was one of the very few exceptions that prove the rule: nowhere in general do we see it more clearly than in his love for his intellectual opponents. He was, as I have said, like the saints of the early Church, a controversialist. He was a controversialist because he hated heresy: but he had an extraordinary capacity for loving the heretic: he might have come to love Schopenhauer if they had actually met, as he did frequently meet Shaw and Wells: he might even have cheered him up. In controversy, no matter how fierce, as Belloc wrote after his death, “...he seemed always to be in a mood not only of comprehension for his opponent but of admiration for some quality in him.... it was this in him which made him, with other qualities, so universally beloved.”

Amen. Keep praying for Chesterton's Cause.

Caritas in Veritate

Pope Benedict's new encyclical is available now on the Vatican website.

INTRODUCTION:

1. Charity in truth, to which Jesus Christ bore witness by his earthly life and especially by his death and resurrection, is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity. Love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace. It is a force that has its origin in God, Eternal Love and Absolute Truth. Each person finds his good by adherence to God's plan for him, in order to realize it fully: in this plan, he finds his truth, and through adherence to this truth he becomes free (cf. Jn 8:22). To defend the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity. Charity, in fact, “rejoices in the truth” (1 Cor 13:6). All people feel the interior impulse to love authentically: love and truth never abandon them completely, because these are the vocation planted by God in the heart and mind of every human person. The search for love and truth is purified and liberated by Jesus Christ from the impoverishment that our humanity brings to it, and he reveals to us in all its fullness the initiative of love and the plan for true life that God has prepared for us. In Christ, charity in truth becomes the Face of his Person, a vocation for us to love our brothers and sisters in the truth of his plan. Indeed, he himself is the Truth (cf. Jn 14:6).

2. Charity is at the heart of the Church's social doctrine. Every responsibility and every commitment spelt out by that doctrine is derived from charity which, according to the teaching of Jesus, is the synthesis of the entire Law (cf. Mt 22:36- 40). It gives real substance to the personal relationship with God and with neighbour; it is the principle not only of micro-relationships (with friends, with family members or within small groups) but also of macro-relationships (social, economic and political ones). For the Church, instructed by the Gospel, charity is everything because, as Saint John teaches (cf. 1 Jn 4:8, 16) and as I recalled in my first Encyclical Letter, “God is love” (Deus Caritas Est): everything has its origin in God's love, everything is shaped by it, everything is directed towards it. Love is God's greatest gift to humanity, it is his promise and our hope.

I am aware of the ways in which charity has been and continues to be misconstrued and emptied of meaning, with the consequent risk of being misinterpreted, detached from ethical living and, in any event, undervalued. In the social, juridical, cultural, political and economic fields — the contexts, in other words, that are most exposed to this danger — it is easily dismissed as irrelevant for interpreting and giving direction to moral responsibility. Hence the need to link charity with truth not only in the sequence, pointed out by Saint Paul, of veritas in caritate (Eph 4:15), but also in the inverse and complementary sequence of caritas in veritate. Truth needs to be sought, found and expressed within the “economy” of charity, but charity in its turn needs to be understood, confirmed and practised in the light of truth. In this way, not only do we do a service to charity enlightened by truth, but we also help give credibility to truth, demonstrating its persuasive and authenticating power in the practical setting of social living. This is a matter of no small account today, in a social and cultural context which relativizes truth, often paying little heed to it and showing increasing reluctance to acknowledge its existence.

3. Through this close link with truth, charity can be recognized as an authentic expression of humanity and as an element of fundamental importance in human relations, including those of a public nature. Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity. That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity: it grasps its meaning as gift, acceptance, and communion. Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love. It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word “love” is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite. Truth frees charity from the constraints of an emotionalism that deprives it of relational and social content, and of a fideism that deprives it of human and universal breathing-space. In the truth, charity reflects the personal yet public dimension of faith in the God of the Bible, who is both Agápe and Lógos: Charity and Truth, Love and Word.

4. Because it is filled with truth, charity can be understood in the abundance of its values, it can be shared and communicated. Truth, in fact, is lógos which creates diá-logos, and hence communication and communion. Truth, by enabling men and women to let go of their subjective opinions and impressions, allows them to move beyond cultural and historical limitations and to come together in the assessment of the value and substance of things. Truth opens and unites our minds in the lógos of love: this is the Christian proclamation and testimony of charity. In the present social and cultural context, where there is a widespread tendency to relativize truth, practising charity in truth helps people to understand that adhering to the values of Christianity is not merely useful but essential for building a good society and for true integral human development. A Christianity of charity without truth would be more or less interchangeable with a pool of good sentiments, helpful for social cohesion, but of little relevance. In other words, there would no longer be any real place for God in the world. Without truth, charity is confined to a narrow field devoid of relations. It is excluded from the plans and processes of promoting human development of universal range, in dialogue between knowledge and praxis.

5. Charity is love received and given. It is “grace” (cháris). Its source is the wellspring of the Father's love for the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Love comes down to us from the Son. It is creative love, through which we have our being; it is redemptive love, through which we are recreated. Love is revealed and made present by Christ (cf. Jn 13:1) and “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5). As the objects of God's love, men and women become subjects of charity, they are called to make themselves instruments of grace, so as to pour forth God's charity and to weave networks of charity.

This dynamic of charity received and given is what gives rise to the Church's social teaching, which is caritas in veritate in re sociali: the proclamation of the truth of Christ's love in society. This doctrine is a service to charity, but its locus is truth. Truth preserves and expresses charity's power to liberate in the ever-changing events of history. It is at the same time the truth of faith and of reason, both in the distinction and also in the convergence of those two cognitive fields. Development, social well-being, the search for a satisfactory solution to the grave socio-economic problems besetting humanity, all need this truth. What they need even more is that this truth should be loved and demonstrated. Without truth, without trust and love for what is true, there is no social conscience and responsibility, and social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power, resulting in social fragmentation, especially in a globalized society at difficult times like the present.

6. “Caritas in veritate” is the principle around which the Church's social doctrine turns, a principle that takes on practical form in the criteria that govern moral action. I would like to consider two of these in particular, of special relevance to the commitment to development in an increasingly globalized society: justice and the common good.

First of all, justice. Ubi societas, ibi ius: every society draws up its own system of justice. Charity goes beyond justice, because to love is to give, to offer what is “mine” to the other; but it never lacks justice, which prompts us to give the other what is “his”, what is due to him by reason of his being or his acting. I cannot “give” what is mine to the other, without first giving him what pertains to him in justice. If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them. Not only is justice not extraneous to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel path to charity: justice is inseparable from charity[1], and intrinsic to it. Justice is the primary way of charity or, in Paul VI's words, “the minimum measure” of it[2], an integral part of the love “in deed and in truth” (1 Jn 3:18), to which Saint John exhorts us. On the one hand, charity demands justice: recognition and respect for the legitimate rights of individuals and peoples. It strives to build the earthly city according to law and justice. On the other hand, charity transcends justice and completes it in the logic of giving and forgiving[3]. The earthly city is promoted not merely by relationships of rights and duties, but to an even greater and more fundamental extent by relationships of gratuitousness, mercy and communion. Charity always manifests God's love in human relationships as well, it gives theological and salvific value to all commitment for justice in the world.

7. Another important consideration is the common good. To love someone is to desire that person's good and to take effective steps to secure it. Besides the good of the individual, there is a good that is linked to living in society: the common good. It is the good of “all of us”, made up of individuals, families and intermediate groups who together constitute society[4]. It is a good that is sought not for its own sake, but for the people who belong to the social community and who can only really and effectively pursue their good within it. To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity. To take a stand for the common good is on the one hand to be solicitous for, and on the other hand to avail oneself of, that complex of institutions that give structure to the life of society, juridically, civilly, politically and culturally, making it the pólis, or “city”. The more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbours, the more effectively we love them. Every Christian is called to practise this charity, in a manner corresponding to his vocation and according to the degree of influence he wields in the pólis. This is the institutional path — we might also call it the political path — of charity, no less excellent and effective than the kind of charity which encounters the neighbour directly, outside the institutional mediation of the pólis. When animated by charity, commitment to the common good has greater worth than a merely secular and political stand would have. Like all commitment to justice, it has a place within the testimony of divine charity that paves the way for eternity through temporal action. Man's earthly activity, when inspired and sustained by charity, contributes to the building of the universal city of God, which is the goal of the history of the human family. In an increasingly globalized society, the common good and the effort to obtain it cannot fail to assume the dimensions of the whole human family, that is to say, the community of peoples and nations[5], in such a way as to shape the earthly city in unity and peace, rendering it to some degree an anticipation and a prefiguration of the undivided city of God.

8. In 1967, when he issued the Encyclical Populorum Progressio, my venerable predecessor Pope Paul VI illuminated the great theme of the development of peoples with the splendour of truth and the gentle light of Christ's charity. He taught that life in Christ is the first and principal factor of development[6] and he entrusted us with the task of travelling the path of development with all our heart and all our intelligence[7], that is to say with the ardour of charity and the wisdom of truth. It is the primordial truth of God's love, grace bestowed upon us, that opens our lives to gift and makes it possible to hope for a “development of the whole man and of all men”[8], to hope for progress “from less human conditions to those which are more human”[9], obtained by overcoming the difficulties that are inevitably encountered along the way.

At a distance of over forty years from the Encyclical's publication, I intend to pay tribute and to honour the memory of the great Pope Paul VI, revisiting his teachings on integral human development and taking my place within the path that they marked out, so as to apply them to the present moment. This continual application to contemporary circumstances began with the Encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, with which the Servant of God Pope John Paul II chose to mark the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Populorum Progressio. Until that time, only Rerum Novarum had been commemorated in this way. Now that a further twenty years have passed, I express my conviction that Populorum Progressio deserves to be considered “the Rerum Novarum of the present age”, shedding light upon humanity's journey towards unity.

9. Love in truth — caritas in veritate — is a great challenge for the Church in a world that is becoming progressively and pervasively globalized. The risk for our time is that the de facto interdependence of people and nations is not matched by ethical interaction of consciences and minds that would give rise to truly human development. Only in charity, illumined by the light of reason and faith, is it possible to pursue development goals that possess a more humane and humanizing value. The sharing of goods and resources, from which authentic development proceeds, is not guaranteed by merely technical progress and relationships of utility, but by the potential of love that overcomes evil with good (cf. Rom 12:21), opening up the path towards reciprocity of consciences and liberties.

The Church does not have technical solutions to offer[10] and does not claim “to interfere in any way in the politics of States.”[11] She does, however, have a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance, for a society that is attuned to man, to his dignity, to his vocation. Without truth, it is easy to fall into an empiricist and sceptical view of life, incapable of rising to the level of praxis because of a lack of interest in grasping the values — sometimes even the meanings — with which to judge and direct it. Fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom (cf. Jn 8:32) and of the possibility of integral human development. For this reason the Church searches for truth, proclaims it tirelessly and recognizes it wherever it is manifested. This mission of truth is something that the Church can never renounce. Her social doctrine is a particular dimension of this proclamation: it is a service to the truth which sets us free. Open to the truth, from whichever branch of knowledge it comes, the Church's social doctrine receives it, assembles into a unity the fragments in which it is often found, and mediates it within the constantly changing life-patterns of the society of peoples and nations[12].
______________
Read the whole enclyclical and try to avoid dumbed-down analyses from the secular media as well, which will mine it for what it thinks are policy initiatives, never realizing that Popes write from first principles and do not mandate specific policies. In fact Pope Benedict specifically states in paragraph 6, "Every society draws up its own system of justice." No one in the secular media will really understand what that means, however.

The numbers in brackets are footnotes, all of which can be found here.

G.K. Chesterton round-up

Three cool Web items you might like:

First, Dave G. at Happy Entanglements reviews Chesterton's book on Aquinas. If he's this enthusiastic while still on Chapter 1, I can't wait to see his impressions once he's read the whole book.

Second, this blog has a very positive review of the first installment in Paul Nowak's The Inconvenient Adventures of Uncle Chestnut series. I first blogged on this series, including ordering information, here. I'm getting some very positive feedback on this.

Finally, Chesterton is nothing but timely, as usual. Here, he explains why we should talk about economics.

Happy reading!

Should Catholic pro-lifers 'tone it down'? No!

Fr. Z explains why.

I'm sure a lot of you out there, like Fr. Z, like me, have gotten a lot of flack from your liberal Catholic friends, who get oh so squeamish about your statments and arguments on why voting for the Moloch Messiah, or Notre Shame awarding him an honorary doctorate -- and in LAW, of all things -- constitutes high treason against the Mystical Body of Christ.

And for pointing out the obvious, we are called counter-productive, divisive, spiteful, uncharitable, and so on. We're "single-issue voters" who don't care enough about other social issues, like the poor, justice, peace, and so on.

When I get into surly moods, my main reaction is that I don't really think that liberal Catholic Obama supporters give two shits for the plight of the unborn. They shed more tears for Tiller the Killer than for the babies he ripped to pieces, and tore from their mothers' wombs.

And when I'm not surly, I think pretty much the same thing: liberal Catholics who have no qualms about supporting the most pro-abortion president in American history really do not in the slightest care about the plight of the unborn.

So like Fr. Z, I'm not going to tone it down. Fr. Z's reasons are good enough for me:

First of all, there’s history. No matter how earnestly these Catholic friends of mine insist that they oppose abortion, when I think about what they want us not to do, I am forced to conclude that they just don’t see the symmetry between the abortion issue and other moral tragedies in recent history, such as the Holocaust and racial segregation.

My second reason for not toning down the rhetoric on abortion follows from the first. When and why did the abortion issue cease to be a “justice and peace” issue? Answer: when it became a women’s issue.

My third reason for not wanting us to tone down the rhetoric is a sense I have, a feeling not easy to pin down.

I am sensing a kind of Zeitgeist in the air which censures the use of “harsh rhetoric.”

Fr. Z goes into what he thinks the Zeitgeist is. I am not going to speak for him, but for me, the Zeitgeist adds up to, liberal Catholics who support Obama don't give two shits for the plight of the unborn, and hate it when the rest of us remind them of it. What else can you say about gasbags like Fr. John Jenkins, who blather about "responsible and reasoned dialogue," but who let 80-year-old priests get dragged off on handcuffs just for pointing out (a) the hypocricy of Fr. Jenkins and his ilk, and (b) the tacit support they give to the shattering crime of abortion.

John Cleese explains how science explains it all

That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States

In Congress, July 4, 1776...



The full text:

Belloc Friday

The Chanty of the Nona
I
Come list, all ye Cullies and Doxies so dear,
You shall harken to the tale of the bold Mar-i-neer,
That took ship out of Holy-head and drove her so hard
Past Bardsey, Pwll-hel-i, Port Madoc, and Fishguard,
Past Bardsey, Pwll-hel-i, Port Madoc, and Fishguard.

II
Then he dropped out of Fishguard on a fine summer's day,
Past Strumbles, St. David's and across St. Bride's Bay,
Circumnavigating Skomer that island around,
With the heart of a Lion he threaded Jack Sound,
With the heart of a Lion he threaded Jack Sound.

III
Then from out the Main Ocean there rolled a great Cloud;
So he clawed into Milford Haven, by the fog-blast so loud,
Until he dropped Anchor in a deep wooded bay,
Where all night with old Sleep and quiet Sadness he lay,
Where all night with old Sleep and quiet Sadness he lay.

IV
Next morning was a Doldrum, and he whistled for a breeze,
Which came from the N.N.W.-wards all across the high seas;
In passing St. Govan's lightship, he gave them good-night;
And before it was morning he raised Lundy Light,
Before it was morning he raised Lundy Light.

V
Then he rolled for twelve hours in that horrible place,
Which is known to the Mariner as the Great White Horse Race,
Till, with a slant about three bells or maybe near four,
He saw white water breaking over loud Appledore,
He saw white water breaking over loud Appledore.

VI
The Pirates of Appledore, the Wines of Instow,
But her nose is for Bideford with the tide at the flow;
Rattle anchor, batten hatches, and falls all lie curled;
The Long Bridge of Bideford is the End of the World,
The Long Bridge of Bideford is the End of the World.

Real man alert

Tip your hard hats, one and all, to a real man doing real man stuff. This construction worker rescued this woman from a dam in the Des Moines River on Wednesday. Hopefully he won't be harassed by scolds for undermining the woman's dignity, as if he'd just opened a door for her or some other dastardly thing.


Full story here.

I think he's being generous

Anglican bishop Paul Richardson gives the Church of England thirty years to live. I think it's done now, and that it's all over but the crying.

To the rank-and-file faithful of the Anglican Communion (all two of you), we welcome you with open arms on this side of the Tiber. In fact it was for you that Pope John Paul established the Anglican Use liturgy.

To the institutional Church of England, good freaking riddance. Your "church" exists only because an English king could not keep his libido in check. So don't let the door slam you on your way out, jerks. Oh, and if you aren't going to be using our churches any more, we would like them back, please. Granted, it will take us some time to fill them with people again -- we have had our own problems with secularism, after all, including the evils of contraception -- but that will just give us time to clean your filthy whitewash from the interiors, exposing the beautiful frescoes beneath, some of the most glorious art in Christendom before you went and covered it up. Bye, jerkwads!

h/t: Mark Shea

Say a prayer for your pal...

From the Washington Post:

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan, July 2 -- Thousands of U.S. Marines descended upon the volatile Helmand River valley in helicopters and armored convoys early Thursday, mounting an operation that represents the first large-scale test of the U.S. military's new counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

The operation will involve about 4,000 troops from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which was dispatched to Afghanistan this year by President Obama to combat a growing Taliban insurgency in Helmand and other southern provinces. The Marines, along with an Army brigade that is scheduled to arrive later this summer, plan to push into pockets of the country where NATO forces have not had a presence. In many of those areas, the Taliban has evicted local police and government officials and taken power.

Once Marine units arrive in their designated towns and villages, they have been instructed to build and live in small outposts among the local population. The brigade's commander, Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, said his Marines will focus their efforts on protecting civilians from the Taliban and on restoring Afghan government services, instead of mounting a series of hunt-and-kill missions against the insurgents.

Or as Marines said in World War II:

Say a prayer for your pal
He's on Guadalcanal.

What would we do without Gwyneth Paltrow?

Why, without this Historian Barbie, we'd never know that it's okay to turn off your Blackberry or that buildings in Spain are "years and years and years old!"

"It's incredible!" she said. Hey, thanks, Gwyneth!

Harve Presnell, R.I.P.

I mean, even though Harve Presnell did absolutely nothing to break down racial barriers or change his race, though he never had a single plastic surgery depsite that schnozz being way out of porportion to his face; and though he spoke in a deep, manly baritone and never wore just one glove; and despite the fact that Al Sharpton will most likely not do the bump-and-grind at any of his memorial services, despite all that, Harve Presnell still deserves our prayers.