Read any good SF books lately?

Tell me about it. I am hoping to compile a list of speculative fiction (science fiction) books that express a Catholic understanding of human nature. Drop me a line (email address is on the left). Here is my original post on the topic.

'Tis the season to be jolly? 'Tisn't!

We are rapidly approaching Advent, which is viewed by many as a time to put plastic Santas on the lawn, to start playing Christmas carols, and to buy lots and lots of stuff. It is not enough that we celebrate Christmas by celebrating excess, but we also celebrate it much too early. The Advent season is not an extended Christmas, but is a time of preparation. The recent Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy says that

Popular piety perceives that it is impossible to celebrate the Lord's birth except in an atmosphere of sobriety and joyous simplicity and of concern for the poor and imarginated. The expectation of the Lord's birth makes us sensitive to the value of life and the duties to respect and defend it from conception. Popular piety intuitively understands that it is not possible coherently to celebrate the birth of him "who saves his people from their sins" without some effort to overcome sin in one's own life, while waiting vigilantly for Him who will return at the end of time.

Don't prepare for the coming of the Lord by merely preparing your front lawn with big plastic reindeer; prepare your soul for His coming through an effort to overcome sin. I have some suggestions for how to do this, taken from my parish bulletin:

1. Fast: you could join Eastern Catholics in the Phillip's fast, which says not to have meat or dairy products on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday until Christmas. Think how good that Christmas dinner would taste! Of course, you could just make sure you follow the current Latin rite rule for the whole year, which is no meat on Fridays or some equivalent penance.
2. Go to confession.
3. Ten minutes of silence each day.
4. Mute the commercials from the television, or turn off the TV entirely.
5. Listen to classical music rather than top-40.
6. Pray the rosary, the divine office, or perhaps the Jesus Prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. Repeat ad libitum.)
7. Read the bible every day. If you want "Christmasy" stuff, read Isaiah.
8. Read spiritual books. I recommend Frank Sheed, St. Josemaria Escriva, lives of the saints (try the DeWohl novels), the Philokalia, and in general anything from Ignatius Press. If you are one of the many Catholics who disagrees with some doctrinal teaching of the Church, take the Advent season as an opportunity to study that teaching--don't disagree blindly, but rather give the Church the benefit of the doubt. You owe Christ that much.
9. Heal or improve relationships with family or friends.
10. Give to the poor. Perhaps rather than giving that fourth or fifth toy to a child, you and the child could give the money to the poor?
11. Support your church. Lots of people have used the scandal as an excuse to quit giving to their parishes. Why not make up the slack, since someone has to?

If you make some effort to get your soul ready for Christmas, the real season to be jolly, the twelve days from Dec 25th to Jan 6th, will be much more jolly.

Maybe this kind of stuff plays well in France

I just got done watching a movie called The Brotherhood of the Wolf, which is about one hour's worth of decent action film plus eighty more minutes of absolute silliness. Here's the plot: there is some sort of beast terrorizing the French countryside in 1764, somewhere near Avignon, a fact that has symbolic importance. A renowned naturalist cum martial arts expert is summoned to deal with the beast. After many plot twists and turns, the beast turns out to have been created by the evil Brotherhood of the Wolf, a group created by the pope in order to spread supernatural terror throughout France, thus scaring people back into the arms of religion. The good but whoremongering naturalist eventually dispatches the evil papist brotherhood, along with the poor tortured beast.

The movie is clearly propaganda, since Rome stands for fear, ignorance, torture of animals, and just plain evil. It is no accident that the action takes place near Avignon, which I take it is a symbol of popery dominating the French.

Ordinarily I would let this last detail pass, but since the movie is so repulsive, I must mention one more flaw. In pursuit of the beast, the naturalist and his Indian guide make traps out of bamboo. Bamboo! In Southern France!

A wonderful reflection on why one should be Catholic

Go look at Zorak, the Embittered Mantis's reflection. It is very good.

Note to Nihil Obstat: how does one do the possessive in a case like the above? Is it Zorak's, the Embittered Mantis, reflection? Or is it Zorak, the Embittered Mantis's reflection? Or perhaps should I drop the commas: Zorak the Embittered Mantis's reflection? Do tell.

I teach the Church's position on contraception in my ethics class, and

nobody complains. Yes, believe it or not, when we discuss natural law ethics, I use the Church's prohibition of contraception as my example. I show how Aquinas proceeds: there is the first object of practical reason, which is the good, and then the first indemonstrable precept, that good is to be done and evil to be avoided. Then arises the question "What is good?" At this point one needs to examine human beings to decide what human goods are. It is not a simple matter of taking a poll on what humans like, but rather a matter of finding out what the real goods are that contribute to human flourishing. Just as if in a plague 51% of the people with the illness wouldn't make the illness health, so also if 51% of humans think that fornication were right, it would still be wrong, because fornication doesn't help humans to flourish.

So far, so good. We have a sketch of how natural law theory works. But how do we figure out particular precepts of the natural law? I use contraception as an example. We take a good hard look at the nature of the human person and of the sexual act. Sex is an act that by its very nature includes the gift of self to another, a total gift of the whole person to the other person. If its procreative dimension is taken away, the act becomes false, a restricted and shallow use of another for pleasure rather than a self-gift of love.

We then look at it more concretely. I draw a circle on the board to represent a woman. In the circle I place the various elements that contribute to the whole that is woman. So, it looks like this: (intelligence, judgment, wisdom, humor, love, sexual organs and attributes.) This represents the whole woman. I then draw another circle representing a man: (sexual organs.} I point out that if sex is open to the gift of life, the man needs to consider the entire woman, for she could be the mother of his child. If the sexual act is sterilized, the man no longer needs to consider the whole woman, but can just consider (sexual organs.) The woman becomes nothing other than a tool to be used for pleasure. Evidence that this is the case can be seen in the desperate things that women do to fight to stay sexually attractive, from botox to fad diets, from breast implants to mutilating their faces in plastic surgery. Look at what Joan Rivers has done to herself in a futile attempt to remain "sexy." Further, look at what happens to the man: because of contraception, the man is able to live his life like a fifteen year-old boy would like to live, full of sex without consequences. Once a student asked me when men grow up, and I said "Only when they have to." If men can have sex without consequences, they will never grow up. Thus men become incapable of being good husbands and fathers, since they never had to, because of
contraception.

I ask the students to answer if they think, honestly, that contraception leads to human flourishing: "Umm, no." I then say "If that is the case, then is the Church correct that it is a bad thing?" "Yes." Perhaps it is a result merely of my wonderful teaching abilities or commanding personality, but as of yet no-one has disputed me on the conclusion.

The moral of the story? The teaching on contraception hasn't been rejected as much as it has never been taught. It can be taught in a way that allows the students to come to the correct conclusion on their own. I appeal to all of you to teach the Church's teaching on the Gospel of Life--it can be effectively taught for the simple reason that it is true. Teach it!

Science fiction friendly to religion?

Recently I complained that in Star Trek, the only races to have any sort of religion were the Klingons, and theirs was a primitive warrior cult. A friendly reader pointed out to me that the Bajorans from Deep Space Nine also were religious. I apologize for my error. I never quite had time to keep up with DS9.

But the letter got me thinking: what novels or movies in the field of speculative fiction are most congenial to religious belief, and specifically to a Catholic understanding of human nature? (I prefer the name "speculative fiction" rather than "science fiction," since often the subject matter has little to do with science. Lord of the Rings is certainly speculative fiction, but not at all science fiction.)

So I want to start a bit of a contest: send me your list of the best Catholic speculative fiction. After a week or so I will publish the top ten, if I get that many responses. Keep in mind that we want good books, and that the books need not be overtly Catholic. Walker Percy points out that if a novel is perceived to be a religious novel, it probably isn't a good novel; the novelist must be tricky, a master of deception, so that themes of God and salvation are absorbed, but not perceived. These books should be good, first of all, and Catholic second. Further, The Lord of the Rings are in my opinion the most Catholic of all novels, and there is not one bit of Catholic doctrine in the books. They are Catholic because they show a Catholic understanding of sin, grace, and redemption. Note further that I say Catholic mostly to keep out the Left Behind garbage; otherwise, non-millenialist Christian novels will be accepted.

I'm interested to read your responses, so send me a list, with some explanation, of the best and most Catholic novels in the genre of speculative fiction. I will print names when I post the results unless you specify otherwise.

Dear Readers

If you come upon this blog, could you spare a minute to say a prayer for me and my wife? Nothing is wrong, but we pray for you, and turnabout is fair play!

"The first and greatest duty of the bishops

is the promotion of holiness." So says the papal nuncio to the US. Holiness will rebuild the Church, and will call people to faith and conversion.

Bishop Gregory says they must not allow people to exploit the scandal

There are those who have used the admitted weakness of the shepherds to advance their own agendas. Gregory says that the Church cannot and will not change her teachings on these matters. False prophets work by the strategy: "Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will scatter." More applause.

Applause at the USCCB!

Bishop Gregory is calling for the overturn of Roe v. Wade, calling it a disastrous decision justified by bad logic. The bishops burst into applause.

God help them

The US bishops are meeting today. You can access the coverage through EWTN. I will be watching much of the meeting, and will blog such things I find blogworthy.

Just remember as you watch: rule of the Church by bishops is the absolute worst way to run a church, except for all the others. And as bad as you think the bishops are, the laity in the US are worse. Most of us, after all, believe that there is nothing wrong with contraception or even abortion, which, if engaged in, are mortal sins. Consider this: since 90% of Catholics engage in the practice of artificial contraception, then 90% of Catholics in the US are potentially in a state of mortal sin. We truly have the bishops that we deserve.

You are an act of God

Recently I was involved in some debates about politics and abortion rights. A GOP political operative complained that if the Republicans ran pro-life candidates in the Northeast, they would lose, because the battle has been lost. New Jersey and states like it are thoroughly secular, he said, and there is no hope, short of an act of God, for them ever to change their minds on abortion.

It would certainly be nice if God were to do something extravagant and miraculous. Perhaps Mary could appear atop the statehouse, imploring all who entered to respect life. Or perhaps there could be a plague of locusts, or the rivers could run with blood. I doubt that these miracles would be any more effective than they were with Pharoah; belief has to do with the will, and no number of miracles can change a human will.

What can change a will? Reason and charity. We need to explain the gospel of life. It is not that there has been a debate between life and death, and death won, but rather the debate hasn't happened. Abortion is accepted as a fait accompli, contraception is thought to be a natural and normal as sunrise, and casual sex is the rule, not the exception. The opponents to the culture of death have left the battlefield. We have left it unopposed from fear of being rude. This cannot continue. Those of us who recognize the true dignity of human life must speak up. If we don't engage the enemy, who will? Waiting around for God to solve the problem with a miracle ignores an obvious fact: You are a miracle. God created you, calling you by name into existence. Everything you do that is good is an act of God. You have a mind, and you have a voice, created by God for a purpose. Perhaps your purpose is to proclaim the Gospel of Life. If your voice speaks the truth and your life bears witness to the love of God, hearts may be opened and minds may be changed.

God rebuilt his Church in the twelfth century not through miraculous signs, but through the human miracles Francis and Dominic. It is certain that he is calling you and me to do the same in the twenty-first century.

I visited some of my favorite people last weekend.

I was attending the yearly meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. I enjoy the ACPA meeting because it is a group of generally like-minded people, where one can talk of such things as being, goodness, beauty, and truth. Particularly I enjoy attending Mass at the conference: it is quite moving to see a room full of extremely smart, well-published, and tenured academics who are also pious Catholics.

Conventional wisdom says that religious people are not intelligent. Religion is a superstition that one grows out of. You can see this conventional wisdom on television, since religious characters are most often portrayed as villians or as idiots. In Star Trek, for example, Klingons are the only species that has any residual religious belief, and that is a primitive warrior cult; everyone else has evolved beyond religion. (This is one of many reasons why Babylon 5 was much better than Star Trek.) The ACPA meeting shows how false this view is. I am proud to be a member, and look forward to next year's meeting.

I'm quite pleased

with the results of the election.

Vote!

Please vote. Vote pro-life wherever possible. If your parish didn't give you a voter's guide, here is a simple rule: the Democrats are almost 100% pro-abortion, and those who aren't have no power or influence.

If you live in Illinois, vote often!

Say a prayer for good results tonight.

Hermeneutics, Shermeneutics

Locdog has published a treatise on biblical interpretation, and for the most part his Eight Rules are fine. However, there is a difficulty with Rule Six: Precedent. Locdog thinks that the Bible must be interpreted according to the Bible. In other words, one passage should be interpreted in light of other passages. So far, so good. Now we get to the difficulty: the "explicit" sense of scripture trumps any sort of doctrinal precedent. In other words, even though the Church has taught for two thousand years that Mary is ever-virgin, since the text says "brothers", it must mean "brothers," even though the word could mean "cousins." Locdog says if there is ever confusion of the sort where an implied teaching appears to contradict an explicit teaching, deference is shown to the explicit.

According to Locdog's rules, he is required to accept the Catholic teaching on the Eucharist: "This is my body" (Matt 26:26)and "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you shall not have life within you" (John 6:53) are pretty obviously explicitly teaching exactly what Catholics believe. It takes hermeneutical gymnastics to make the text mean what Protestants generally take it to mean, that the bread and wine are some sort of symbols or memorial. No. The text is clear: we are called to eat the body and drink the blood of Christ. Follow your own principles, and accept what Jesus explicitly says.

There is a further difficulty in his assertion that the text trumps doctrine. Not all doctrines are created equal. Certainly if some sect claims that the bible says something it doesn't say, the bible should rule. But the Catholic Church is not a sect. It is the historical Church, and the bible is the Church's book. The collection of the books of the old and new testaments was done by the Catholic Church, which therefore precedes the bible. If the Church teaches something, and the text of the bible appears to contradict Church teaching, deference should be paid to the Church, since the bible comes to us from the action of the Holy Spirit in that Church. We all read the bible from within a community of interpretation, and this colors what we think the "explicit" meaning of the text is. If you are a Protestant, you likely think Matthew 26:26 is explicitly metaphorical, because your community of believers thinks that way. But what if another group thinks differently? How can we adjudicate different readings of the explicit meaning of the text? Here is the answer: find out which Church Christ founded, and then read the bible in the light of Christ's Church.

One must be Catholic to read the bible correctly.

I'm going to Cincinnati

tomorrow morning, for the annual meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. I won't be back until Sunday night, and probably will not blog until then. You could say a prayer for my safe travels, if you have a moment.

This weekend is extremely important

You will probably spend time with friends and family this weekend. Be sure to remind them that there is an election on Tuesday, and that they have a moral obligation to vote for the pro-life candidate. It will probably take a breach of good manners to bring up politics, but you could make a difference by doing so. Speak quietly and with charity, but forcefully.

Remember, we are one senator and one Supreme Court justice away from being able to legislate for the protection of children in the womb. This election is crucial.

Rousseau was an idiot.

I've been reading the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, and have been tempted to throw the thing across the room. His deduction of the state of nature is so riddled with errors that I don't see how the book passed the laugh test. Of course, the book has been tremendously influential, most notably on Kant and Heidegger. Never have so many intelligent people been adversely influenced by something so stupid.

Good. I feel better now.

Contra Locdog

There is a Protestant blogger who occasionally slums in Catholic blogland, by the name of Locdog. Yesterday he posted a list of thoughts on Catholics. The list is quite long, so I am only going to focus on one or two things.

4. rome isn't the great whore of babylon those of you who've read chick tracts know what i mean. those of you who haven't are probably better off that way. actually, some of his older ones are great, but he seems to have gotten more dogmatic with the years and his dogma has gotten more and more bizarre. the theory is that the whore talked about in Revelation is actually the roman catholic church, who will eventually succumb to ecumenical currents and dilute the message of the gospel to accommodate all other faiths. the unitarian/universalist crowd is doing that right now. maybe it's them. rome denies no essential of the Christian faith and as long as that's the case then we should look for whores elsewhere. times square around midnight would be a good place to start.

I am somewhat disappointed that Locdog doesn't believe I belong to the great whore of Babylon. I think that if one is going to be a Protestant, one needs to have a good reason not to be Catholic. The supposed apostasy of the Catholic Church would be a good reason. Without such an apostasy, I think you need to be Catholic. I think every Protestant should have to re-enact the Reformation in his own mind and decide if it was justified. Here's why:

The Catholic Church is clearly the Church founded by Christ. If you look at history, no matter how far you go back, you find the Catholic Church, complete with bishops, priests, deacons, Marian devotion, the Eucharist, and intercessory prayer. If you believe in the Trinity as described by the Nicene Creed (God from God, Light from Light, etc.), you should know that everyone at the council of Nicea was Catholic. They were bishops of the Catholic Church. This is a historical fact. So if you believe in the Trinity, you get it from us.

Look further back, in the writings of Ireneaus and Clement and Justin Martyr, and you will find again that these Apostolic fathers are Catholics. They too were members of a Church complete with bishop, deacon, priest, and the Eucharist. Justin gives a description of the liturgy of the Christians in the second century that is almost identical in its details to that which Catholics celebrate every day. As far back as we can go, to about thirty years after the New Testament was written, we find only Catholics.

So, but for that thiry year gap, there is clear historical continuity in doctrine and practice from the ancient Church to the current Church. If I were to be a Protestant, I would have to come up with some time or some incident that made the Catholic Church an apostate, satanic Church. We must have gone terribly wrong at some point; otherwise, why aren't you a Catholic?

There is a myth, current even in Catholic circles, that there was a pure community of believers in New Testament times, a pure church that has been covered over by all sorts of ecclesiastical accretions. But if you study history, you will find that there is no evidence of such a church. No matter where you look, there is the Catholic Church. So either come up with a plausible apostasy and betrayal, or join us!

P.S. Locdog, the correct term is Catholic, not Roman Catholic. The Catholic Church contains about 21 individual churches, such as the Ruthenian, Ukrainian, Melkite, Maronite, Chaldean, and Roman churches, all in communion with the Pope. "Roman Catholic" refers only to one of the 21 churches.

Modern Scripture Scholarship takes on Winnie the Pooh

Courtesy of Catholic Light: check out this historical-critical deconstruction of the Pooh books.

If you know me at all, you should know I am rolling on the floor laughing.

More on evangelization

The Mighty Barrister has written a reflection and extension on my remarks of yesterday. Go here to read it.

Do we evangelize?

My pastor gave a wonderful homily this weekend on the duty that Catholics have to the world. We Catholics are truly blessed; we have been given the Truth. Members of other religions or those who practice no religion may indeed have some part of the truth, but we have the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No other religion has been given this great gift. What are you doing about it?

For example, Catholics are the only people who have been given the Gospel of Life in its entirety. We not only know that the child in the womb is an image of God, an immortal soul destined for life with God, but we are also the only people who have clarity on the meaning of marriage. We know that marriage is an image of the Trinity in the world, ordered towards the creation of new life, and that the love of husband and wife is a mirror of the relationship of Christ to his Church. We know, based on our understanding of marriage, that contraception is a great evil. We know that following the teaching of the Church makes one's life better, since it is only the teaching of the Church that respects the full human dignity of each person.

So, have you shared this great gift with anyone else? Do you proclaim the Gospel to all nations? How about your friends and coworkers? To my shame, at a recent family gathering, I kept my mouth shut when one of my relatives discussed with approval a friend who had undergone in vitro fertilization. Rather than using the opportunity to teach ("Did you know what they do with the excess embryos? They kill them!"), I cowered behind the shield of good manners. I should have spoken up. Woe to me if I am ashamed of the Gospel. Do you proclaim what you believe? Why not?

This is election season, and so proclaiming the Gospel of Life is very important. I have blogged a bit about abortion in recent weeks, and probably will a bit more. I imagine that most readers of my page are substantially in agreement with me; we St. Blog's readers are a self-selecting group. Please, if you find any of my arguments persuasive, use them. Print them out, share them with others. We must be the light of the world and the salt of the earth. We have been given a priceless gift, and we must share it, as Jesus commands: "Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations; baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you. And know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time." (Matt 28:19-20)

A rare non-churchy post

I must say that I am extremely pleased with the quality of Notre Dame's football team this year.

God help them

Apparently the Chechen Muslims are slaughtering the hostages in that Russian theater.

If you are tempted to vote for a candidate who supports abortion,

you need to go read this. In fact, you need to become intimately familiar with all the horrible details of what goes into the lovely procedure of the "termination of pregnancy."

"But Karl," you may say, "abortion is always going to be legal. We don't have any hope of changing the law, so can't I just vote for my favorite Democrat?" No, you may not. Your first premise is false. It will not always be legal because it is contrary to the law of God, and God always wins. In addition, we are exactly one senator and one Supreme Court justice away from having good legislation in this country.

You wouldn't want to be standing before Christ at the last judgment and have to say to him, "When did we tear your living body piece by piece from the womb, Lord?" "Whenever you failed to protect the least of my brethren from being slaughtered in the womb, you did it to me." (Adapted from Matthew 25:31ff.)

Some good news in Detroit

According to Doug Sirman, one of the Gang of Four has disassociated himself from the letter that appeared in the Detroit Free Press saying, in essence, that abortion was just peachy. Fr. Kaucheck now claims that the letter was distorted and edited by the newspaper, which certainly happens, and also claims that he completely supports the position of the Catholic Church on life issues.

I'm happy that he has retracted, but I doubt his claim that the Free Press distorted the letter. I don't see how those offending sentences and paragraphs could have been extracted from a non-offensive letter, unless everything that the FP published was preceeded by "Opponents to the Church's position say this: __________."

Don't Forget!

Luminous mysteries of the Rosary today. BWATE: Baptism, Wedding, Announcing the Kingdom, Transfiguration, Eucharist.

Blogging will be light in midweek

since I have to teach. Perhaps tomorrow I will blog longer. In the meantime, you could say a prayer that the sniper has been caught.

Wondering what evil is really like?

Evil is often cloaked in reason, with sweet-sounding arguments. Think of the idiot letter of the four evil Detroit priests. Evil is calm and speaks with a quiet voice. But take a look at what evil is in its pure form. In Matthew 8:28-34, we have the story of the Gadarene demoniacs. The demons beg Jesus to send them into the herd of pigs. What do they do once they are in the pigs? "Behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and perished in the waters." Once the demons have free reign, they kill.

St. Peter Chrysologus explains it this way: "The foul-smelling animals are delivered up, not at the will of the demons but to show how savage the demons can become against humans. They ardently seek to destroy and dispossess all that is, acts, moves, and lives. They seek the death of people. The ancient enmity of deeprooted wrath and malice is in store for the human race."

(Chrysologus quote courtesy of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture.)

Why would they do this?

The new Christina Aguilera video, which is nothing but pornographic, apparently has some posters in the background promoting the child sex trade in Thailand. Here is the story.

Now that I have calmed down a bit,

A few words about the Gang of Four in Detroit (see my previous post). I was going to go through a point by point refutation of the idiocy of their letter, but Amy Welborn and Kevin Miller have done my work for me. But I want to add something. It is my contention that these men must be removed from the active ministry. I don't know if canon law allows them to be laicized or excommunicated for this evil act, but they can certainly be removed from their positions as pastors. There are two reasons why this must happen:

1: For the sake of the souls of their parishioners. Consider if a young couple went in to talk with one of these priests. "Father, we've got a problem: my wife is pregnant, but we don't have enough money to support the child. What should we do?" The priest then gives a highly nuanced, precisioned, and completely bogus answer: "Church teaching is ambiguous on this topic [it isn't], and reasonable people have the right to follow their consciences when they disagrees with Church teaching [they don't--disagreeing with Church teaching is evidence that one's conscience is incorrectly formed]. So you do what you think is right." The couple then goes out and aborts the child, putting their souls at risk, since abortion is a mortal sin incurring automatic excommunication.

2. For the sake of the souls of the priests themselves: Jesus says "whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea." (Matt 18:6) If the priest through his teaching contributes to the fall of any of his parishioners, he is responsible. Ezekiel 33:6 is equally clear: the pastor who fails to warn the people of the wickedness of deeds will be guilty of the act himself. If these priests cause anyone to choose to sin by their squishy and evil teaching, the priests are responsible. They are digging themselves holes straight down to Hell.

A good shepherd (Note to Cardinal Maida) would quickly remove these men for the sake of the faithful, and for the sake of the men themselves.

Is killing children worse than raping them?

If so, Cardinal Maida must show zero tolerance to these four evil priests in his diocese:

The Rev. Paul Chateau Pastor, Our Lady of Fatima Oak Park

The Rev. John Nowlan Pastor, St. Hilary's Detroit

The Rev. Dr. Kenneth Kaucheck Pastor, St. Anastasia Troy

Dr. Anthony Kosnik Professor Emeritus, Ethics,

They wrote a letter to the Detroit Free Press, available here, where they use sophistry to claim that one can be a Catholic and support the murder of life in the womb. May God have mercy on their souls.

If you want to know what the face of evil looks like, go see either of these four men.

I can't write anymore, I am so upset. Go visit Victor Lams on this: he has their home addresses and the phone number for Cardinal Maida. These four men should be laicized and excommunicated. Failure to do so will cause Catholics to believe that they are free to disregard Church teachings that they don't find "convincing." Excommunicate them!!!!