Jesus before the Sanhedrin, yet another kangaroo court

Christ before Pilate, Tintoretto

Here is a working translation of the statement on Jesus Christ, given to the press today by a spokesman of Peter, Prince of the Apostles:

***

Peter agrees with the statements issued by the other followers of Jesus regarding the sentence of guilt in the first instance passed by the Sanhedrin.

This is painful news that, as we are well aware, has shocked many people, not only in Jerusalem. As already expressed on other occasions, we have the utmost respect for the judicial authority of the Jewish high priests.

Out of this respect, we await the outcome of the appeals process before Pontius Pilate, recalling that Jesus has maintained his innocence.

While awaiting the definitive judgement, we unite ourselves with all those feel victimized by his hard sayings, and reaffirm our commitment to do everything possible to provide a safe home for all, especially those who may feel unduly singled out by the challenge of Jesus' words and deeds.

In order to ensure the course of justice, Peter has confirmed the precautionary measures which all the followers of Jesus have already taken in fleeing the scene of his arrest in the Garden at Gethsemane. That is, while awaiting the definitive assessment of the facts by Pontius Pilate, as is the norm, Peter , like all the other followers of Jesus, is prepared to deny any connection to Jesus repeatedly, even as many as three times.

***

The above satire attempts to follow line-by-line the antiseptic, lawyerly statement from the Vatican following a conviction of Cardinal Pell earlier this week of the sexual abuse of minors. It was a conviction based on evidence so flimsy that even Pell's enemies can't figure it out. My post yesterday was a lament: the bishops are so utterly cowed by the magnitude of the sexual abuse crisis that they can't speak up for one of their own. Where are the prayers for Pell?

***

The Vatican's real statement on Pell: 

Here is a Vatican-working translation of the statement on Cardinal George Pell, given today in the Holy See Press Office, by its Director “Ad Interim”, Alessandro Gisotti:

***

The Holy See agrees with the statement issued by the President of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference regarding the sentence of guilt in the first instance concerning Cardinal George Pell.

This is painful news that, as we are well aware, has shocked many people, not only in Australia. As already expressed on other occasions, we have the utmost respect for the Australian judicial authorities.

Out of this respect, we await the outcome of the appeals process, recalling that Cardinal Pell maintains his innocence and has the right to defend himself until the last stage of appeal.

While awaiting the definitive judgement, we unite ourselves with the Australian bishops in praying for all victims of abuse, and reaffirm our commitment to do everything possible so that the Church might be a safe home for all, especially for children and the most vulnerable.

In order to ensure the course of justice, the Holy Father has confirmed the precautionary measures which had been imposed by the local Ordinary on Cardinal George Pell when he returned to Australia. That is, while awaiting the definitive assessment of the facts, as is the norm, Cardinal George Pell is prohibited from exercising public ministry and from having any voluntary contact whatsoever with minors.

Where are the prayers for Pell?

The Vatican Press Office's response yesterday to Cardinal George Pell's conviction -- which he is appealing -- was terse and very carefully worded, reading that the verdict "shocked many people, not only in Australia," and expressing unity with the Australian bishops in "praying for all victims of abuse."

The thought that I haven't been able to put out of my mind as I read and then reread the statement: Where are the prayers for Pell?

Image from WikiCommons

I know, I know. Even if Cardinal Pell has maintained his innocence, and even if both his friends and even his enemies are scratching their heads and trying to figure out how on earth he could have been convicted -- even then, the Vatican's response needed to be very, very carefully modulated. The Church can't be seen as taking the side of a priest or even an archbishop and a cardinal just because he is "one of their own." Such optics would be devastating to the argument that the Church is fully committed addressing the institutional cronyism that led to the shuffling around of abusive priests and the turning of a blind eye to the flagrant abuses of power of the likes of now-Mister McCarrick.

As much as I am eager to see the Church's swamp cleared and her wound cauterized, I am deeply fearful of the collateral damage being wreaked on the faithful clergy in the trenches. In my mind I'm thinking, what if he's innocent? To repeat, even Pell's enemies can't make sense of how the evidence has been twisted into anything plausible. So in my mind I'm imagining an elderly man who has given his entire life to the service of Christ being remanded today into police custody for the sort of heinous crime of child sexual abuse that, ironically, he was among the first in Australia to recognize as a major problem.

Pell's going to jail is bad enough, especially when Mr. McCarrick remains free and clear with no chance of doing jail time. My cri-de-coeur today, however, runs deeper. It seems to be that the anger of faithful Catholics at this despicable mess has run so deep that bishops and clergy are now too cowed to express any sort of solidarity with their own who stand among the accused. Again, I understand the rock-and-a-hard-place situation that generated the Vatican's terse statement. I understand the blow-back that any sort of expression of solidarity would have evoked. But the Vatican's statement reeks of lawyer-like risk management, not Christian compassion.

I met Cardinal Pell just one time when I was a seminarian studying in Rome. It was at one of the Lenten station churches, an early morning Mass. Maybe I served that Mass, or maybe I was just in the right place at the right moment as he headed into the sacristy, but I distinctly remember shaking his hand and wishing him a good morning. He's a towering figure, not only in his blunt rhetoric, but in his six-foot, three-inches stature. The point is, whether he's far away in Australia or not, Cardinal Pell is not an abstract idea to me. When I think of him being taken into custody, I'm thinking of a real person, and I'm thinking that I'd like him to know that I'm praying for him.

In sum, there's something unchristian about the way the Church has found it necessary, in this sex abuse crisis, to wash her hands of her own when they become a liability, at least publicly. Cardinal Pell is a particularly glaring case because the general consensus is that there is a miscarriage of justice occurring right now in Australia. Laypeople like myself and George Weigel, whose article is linked above, can say so openly. But not a brother bishop. Search around the news sites for any Australian bishops, many of them proteges of Pell, who, despite the improbability of the charges, have publicly stated that they're praying for their elderly confrere. I haven't found a single one.

I want the swamp cleared as much as any Catholic layman. But our leaders in the faith have been utterly cowed. I see bishops quickly washing their hands of their accused priests, their co-workers in the vineyard who have placed their hands in the hands of their bishop and promised obedience for life; I see bishops, who are successors of the apostles, washing their hands of their accused brethren, at least publicly. Browse around and read the antiseptic, lawyerly statements if you don't believe me. What have we brought about by means of our righteous anger?

The danger of the double income

Yesterday I wrote about our culture's separation of work from the home environment ("The home is the woman's place, and the man's too"). A wife may feel, and rightly so, that there isn't a challenge fully worthy of her dignity in the dusting, the mopping, and the diapering. And a husband may come home after a hard day's work tired out and all too often failing in his obligations to the family other than financial provision. My argument, in short, is that the sharp division of work from the home has the potential to strain family unity by making it harder for both the husband and the wife fully to participate in all aspects of the "making" of the family.

None of this is intended to demean the hard work of men and women in situations where the financially remunerative work is wholly separate from the home environment. There are plenty of households, for example, that require extremely intensive management due to medical issues. There are homeschooling mothers who juggle the education of children on multiple grade levels all the while managing the day-to-day affairs of the home. On the other end, there are plenty of men who put in a full day's work at the office or the construction site only to come home, roll up their sleeves, and pitch in heroically in whatever way they're needed. For better or for worse, work these days most often occurs outside the home. It's simply the culture in which we live.

For all the heroism in the trenches, though, my unfashionable argument is still that shared, financially remunerative labor between husbands and wives is a strong familial "glue" that, though a radical exception in today's culture, has historically been the norm. Arguments to the contrary notwithstanding, the natural candidate for the most valuable contribution to the making of a family is financial provision. Without some sort of remunerative labor--that is, something that brings in the money to pay for the food, the mortgage or rent, the health insurance, the car payment, the utilities--there simply cannot be a family. In the strictest sense, every other contribution is secondary to the making of money. A maid could be hired to clean the house, the children could be sent to school. Only money is sine qua non; everything else is "extra," or a matter of choice or conviction. Note the cultural ennui in the late 40s through the late 50s with the introduction of washing machines and dryers, refrigerators, vacuums, and other time-saving gadgets. No need to wash the dishes when they could simply be put into the dishwasher; no need to grow a garden and preserve food for the winter when these things are readily available in the store. If these things are done, they're a matter of lifestyle choice, not of necessity.

So even if the woman is working heroically at home, and even if it's a matter of conviction that the family educate its own children, raise its own food, etc., etc., there may very naturally be an undercurrent of an idea that the wife's work is secondary to her husband's. This is the point I was trying to make yesterday in saying that women are not meant to be second-class citizens to their husbands. A woman needs work that is equal in dignity and just as necessary as her husband's. Again, I think this is what drives some women to seek employment outside the home. It's not a universal rule, and there are manifold reasons a woman may desire to work outside the home, but surely the underlying fact that the making of money is that without which a family cannot be a family is one of those reasons.

So the family becomes "dual income." At which time it likely becomes clear that all those seemingly secondary roles that the woman played in the home were very important after all. Everybody I know in a dual-income family readily admits that it's a struggle simply to be a family. Yes, a family needs to sit down to meals together. But who prepares those meals, and how do we manage to fit them into competing work schedules? Whose job brings in more income and takes priority when children need to be taken to appointments, school functions, etc.? The problem is not solved but rather intensified by the woman leaving the home. Again, I hasten to add that I am not demeaning those who are heroically living the "dual-income" reality, sometimes out of real necessity. I am simply pointing out the challenges that are likely to face a great many married couples who choose that difficult route.

To reiterate yesterday's point, I firmly believe that history gives us a real solution in shared, financially remunerative labor. I held up the idea of the small family farm--the route that my wife and I chose for ourselves. But obviously not everybody is called to be a farmer, and there are other challenging forms that the shared labor can take. I'm thinking, for example, of the husband and wife of a large homeschooling family I know that a number of years back opened a restaurant. From the sidelines I've watched as they've weathered the financial storms of starting a business from scratch. But they've also testified as to how they've had to weather those storms together, and how they've been brought closer as a family.

Does this mean that every husband who works outside the home needs to quit his job and start a farm or partner with his wife to open a restaurant? No, probably not. My purpose in writing these reflections is mainly to show how the separation of work from the home weakens one of the major bonds that, historically, has held families together. It's something to be aware of, for it's only when we've recognized an issue that we can identify whatever remedies may help, in our many and various family circumstances, to address that issue and strengthen our family situations as best we can.

The home is a woman's place, and a man's too

The tired, old comment came up in conversation recently about a woman's place being in the home. It's a comment that has always made me a little uncomfortable. To the casual observer, my wife and I are on the traditional end of the spectrum. Rosemary is a "home-maker," to use the term commonly employed on credit card applications. It's a pejorative title to our broader secular culture, or, alternately, an unquestionable good and a sine qua non to more traditionalist folks. But again, the comment has always made me uncomfortable. The reason? I think both camps fail to see the bigger problem.

The Cranberry Harvest, Nantucket Island, by Eastman Johnson

I am convinced that our society has gotten the whole work-home thing dreadfully wrong since at least the Industrial Revolution. My unfashionable idea is that home life and the family began to disintegrate when men became paid laborers in factory environments wholly separate from their home and the local community. In medieval society, work much more often occurred in and around the home. Living quarters were often above or the back of family-owed workshops. Children played an active role to whatever degree made the most sense given their age. While I don't want to paint any of this as idyllic, the fact is that one's living and one's family were significantly more bound together in previous times than they are today. The result was that men and women alike were necessarily involved in the work and in the more important familial decisions.

Whereas previously women were very close to the major decisions, it became much less so when work, and the men who worked, became wholly separated from women and the home environment. A woman's place may be in the home, but not in a home that is merely the sweeping of floors and the changing of diapers. The Catholic Church teaches that men and women are equal in dignity. Women are not "second-class citizens"; they're not meant to be relegated, so to speak, to rocking the cradle of the next generation of men who will rule the world. Men and women alike yearn for an active role in the making of a family unit, which is the basic building block of the wider society. The problem, therefore, is that we now live in a society where a major component of the home life--work--is something wholly separate from the home.

This is the reason for women who sacrifice their natural desire for a family in order to have a career. Perhaps more under the radar, it is also the reason there are so many men who, though they provide for their families financially, often fail to be involved in the other aspects of managing a household. My argument is that work--shared, economically meaningful work--is the glue that holds a family together. It gives the wife a stake in the family's financial future and therefore a greater sense of ownership. It keeps the husband from being absent from the home and gives him a greater role in the formation of his children. As for the children, it gives them the example of a father at work and caring for his family. And when the children work too, it also gives them a real stake and ownership in the enterprise that is their family. Again, work is the glue that holds a family together.

One of the few remaining bastions where work and home life go hand-and-hand is the small family farm. Philosophically speaking, this is one of the biggest reasons that Rosemary and I made the decision to start farming a few years ago. While our shared work has exposed plenty of rough edges, it has also brought us closer together. We are both deeply invested in the decisions that drive our family's success--the economic decisions, the practical farming decisions, and the decisions regarding the rearing and education of our children. Equally so, I know that my boys feel that they are participants in the creation of this success. Our home, in other words, is not something that we come to at the end of a long day because we're tired, and that we escape from the next day in order to go to work, to school, or to play. Rather, it's everything. It's our center-point and our economic lifeblood.

In conclusion, I have no pretensions to reclaiming some falsely idyllic medieval synthesis of family life and work. But I am convinced that the place of a woman in a home separated from a major part of what makes it a home is demeaning. I wholly understand why, in a society where the home is merely a place to be kept clean, a woman would rather make a career for herself. Yet I am equally convinced that the answer is not "emancipating" women from the home. Rather, the answer is that society find a way to recover the home as a woman's place, and a man's too.

Abuse crisis unrelated to homosexuality, prominent cardinal says*

By GSM News Staff

Vatican City, February 22, 2019 - Despite acknowledging that more than 80 percent of the sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has involved clerics abusing teenaged boys, Chicago's Cardinal Blase Cupich said that he is absolutely certain that "homosexuality is not a cause."

Image from LifeSiteNews.com

Cardinal Cupich was speaking at a press conference Feb. 18 alongside Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta as a weeklong Vatican summit on sexual abuse got underway. The two prelates faced a barrage of questions from members of the press as to why the summit was not exploring how the clergy's undisputed homosexual subculture may be related to the church's sexual abuse crisis.

"All you've done is point to a correlation between homosexuality and sexual abuse," Cardinal Cupich explained. "We clerics are well trained in philosophy, and we know that correlation does not equal causation. Ergo, it makes no sense for us to be exploring whether there's a causal connection."

Cardinal Cupich added, "Plus, both the John Jay School of Justice and Australia's Royal Commission have already indicated that there's no causal connection between homosexuality and sexual abuse. And with our intensive training in philosophy, we clerics know that citing an authority is the strongest form of argumentation. I know that Aquinas says  an argument from authority is the weakest form of argumentation, but we've ensured that nobody reads Aquinas in the seminaries anymore."

When pressed that other studies have pointed to a causal link between homosexuality and sexual abuse, Archbishop Scicluna quickly doubled down. "Let me say it emphatically, homosexuality is not something that predisposes one to sin," Archbishop Scicluna said, "Yes, yes, I'm aware that the Catechism teaches that homosexuality predisposes a person toward sinful forms of sexual pleasure. But that doesn't mean that homosexuality predisposes a person to sinful forms of sexual pleasure."

Facing a skeptical follow-up from the press corps that referenced the principle of non-contradiction, Archbishop Scicluna was left scratching his head. "I may have overslept the morning that was covered in my philosophy classes," he admitted.

Cardinal Cupich quickly took the mic from the flummoxed archbishop. "Let me conclude this press conference by emphasizing that we shouldn't inflate our expectations by thinking this summit is actually going to accomplish anything," he said.

_______________________________
*Because humor is what makes sense right now

Another serious note, this one about Hagedorn

Last week I satirized the Wisconsin State Journal's hit piece on conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brian Hagedorn. The gist of their article was that Hagedorn helped to found a Christian school a few years ago that requires its teachers, students, and parents to adhere to basic Christian teaching about human sexuality. Or, as translated by the sensational title of the hit piece, Hagedorn "helped found academy that bans LGBT teachers, students."

The implication, in any case, is that Hagedorn holds such radical positions that he could not possibly be impartial on the state's high court. Never mind that most Christian schools have morality clauses at least for their teachers, including every single diocesan Catholic school. And never mind that the legality of these clauses has been upheld again and again by the courts. The tongue-in-cheek title of my satire? "Breaking News: Court candidate founded a Christian school that required teachers and students to be Christian." Imagine that! 

If there were any mud to rake up about Hagedorn's tendency toward bias, surely the Journal would have exposed it. But of course there is no evidence to be found. So my thought last week was, okay, the Journal is a liberal news organ in the state's liberal enclave. Some editor probably saw the similar smear pieces in the Huffington Post and New York Times about Karen Pence, wife of Vice President Mike Pence, returning to teach at a school with a similar policy and thought, hey, I'll bet that we could run an article about Hagedorn along the same lines that would be well received by our liberal readership.

Naive me, I thought that it was "one and done," a single act of irresponsible journalism, and I had a little fun satirizing it. But this week the Wisconsin State Journal ran a second hit piece, this time picked up from the Associated Press. This week's crime du jour? Apparently Hagedorn delivered a few paid speeches at events for law students organized by Alliance Defending Freedom, which has, according to the article, "supported criminalizing sodomy, likened homosexuality to pedophilia and argued in favor of sterilizing transgender people."

Okay, maybe I'm getting tired of satire, but this is now officially an ongoing smear campaign with such obvious bias and such blatant virtue-signaling that it makes me want to retch. ADF is a highly respected legal organization that has done more than any other conservative group to defend religious freedoms in the courts in recent years. Notably, ADF lawyers have won all nine cases they've argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. They're the firm that won Hobby Lobby an exemption from Obamacare a few years ago. But from the latest hit piece, you'd think that they were an anti-intellectual fringe hate group. After all, that's how the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled them.

The substance of the SPLC's designation of ADF as a "hate group," by the way, comes from the legal work of ADF's international sister organization, not the work of its lawyers here in the United States. A number of European Union countries had required, on medical grounds, sterilization for the recognition of a person's gender transition. ADF's international organization was involved in the support of the laws on the books, and somehow that support has morphed, in the eyes of the SPLC, into ADF being a "hate group" crusading to sterilize transgender people. It's a designation that has been useful in smearing the work of the ADF, and now it's apparently useful in smearing Hagedorn's campaign. All because he was paid a grand total of $3,000 over the course of a few years for career advice he gave to law students at ADF gatherings.

Maybe we've gone too far down the path of opinions masquerading as balanced journalism for anybody to get up in arms about this. But still, it's so blatant, and so obvious, that the Wisconsin State Journal is out to "get" Hagedorn that I am wondering why there's even an attempt to make these pieces look like journalism. To be clear, I know nothing of Hagedorn. I haven't even done enough reading about him to know whether he'd win my vote. But I do know a little about journalism. And this isn't it.

A serious note on Ocasio-Cortez

These past few days I've pinioned the newly minted U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with satirical pieces ("Area dairy cows offended by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's 'farting cows' remark" here; "29-year-old Ocasio-Cortez gifted with 'infused knowledge,' liberal theologian argues" here). Today, however, I wanted to offer a few serious reflections.

Ocasio-Cortez's politics trouble me first of all because I'm not a socialist. Although I may resist political affiliation as a matter of principle, I have always been skeptical of ever-increasing

entitlements. I don't think, for example, that a "basic income" would be helpful to solving lower-income folks' economic woes, and I don't think a total government takeover of medical insurance is the answer to our current broken system. But we've lived with socialist politicians in the past, and we're living with them in the present (God forbid a Bernie Sanders presidency, though!), and if all Ocasio-Cortez had were socialist aspirations, I'm sure her aspirations could be tempered when they meet the hard reality of the facts on the ground. That's what politics is about, after all: The Democrats want something, and the Republicans want something else, and they wrangle it out with a compromise that, while it makes nobody happy, does leave the government intact.

In her temperament, however, Ocasio-Cortex shows little inclination toward compromise, and her rhetoric in particular is consistently inflammatory and over-the-top. While campaigning in Kansas, for example, she made an analogy between Kansas voting to join the union as a free state in 1861 and their need to elect the Democrat she was campaigning for instead of his Republican opponent. Later, when members of her own Democratic party sought to block Pelosi's election to the House speakership, she accused them of doing so because they are white and male. She has compared the combatting of climate change to the Allies' fight against Hitler in the Second World War. The list could go on and on.

On the one hand, Ocasio-Cortez's radical temperament is easy to dismiss. Some will say that she is new to politics, and that when she encounters her first real political road-blocks, she'll be forced to tame her rhetoric and learn the art of compromise. That's what has happened to most of the "tea party" Republicans elected a few years ago, at least the ones that survived. Despite his own inflammatory rhetoric, even our current president is usually kept in check--his creative use of executive orders and emergency declarations notwithstanding--by the limits that our Constitution places on the power of the executive branch of government.

Yet, if I am reading the political tea leaves better than Ocasio-Cortez's incumbent opponent did in the Democratic primary, the new congresswoman is wielding a great deal more power than her lowly position as a first-term legislator would suggest. Like the "tea party" Representatives before her, Ocasio-Cortez was swept into office by a wave of public frustration. But unlike the members of the "tea party," whose momentum largely fizzled when it met the impenetrable wall of entrenched career politicians in their own party, Ocasio-Cortez seems to have the Democrats in her pocket. Put simply, they're afraid of being the next Joe Crowley.

We often think of the United States as a democracy, and that is, of course, partially right. But the beauty of a representative democracy is that legislative decision-making occurs at some distance from the back-and-forth waves of public opinion. The biggest problem with Ocasio-Cortez, I think, is that in her very personality she has brought the immediate public discontents directly into House chamber. That in itself isn't the problem, though. The real problem is that her lack of knowledge and her unwillingness to compromise means that whatever she puts forward--however radical, however ill-advised--is going to have a greater chance than it should of actually making it into law.

I recognize that there is very little chance that Ocasio-Cortez will, for example, bring the aviation industry to its knees in a decade, or, for that matter, eliminate "farting cows." But I'm afraid that whatever she manages to craft legislatively is going to be very much of the confrontational, "us-versus-them" variety. It will most certainly go beyond what the prudence of our representative democracy would ordinarily countenance.

The saddest thing, I think, is that there are very real reasons for the public discontent that thrust Ocasio-Cortez into office, and that what we really need right now is a politician who not only "gets' the public's anger, as Ocasio-Cortez clearly does, but who also has the prudence and the wisdom to broker deals and get laws passed that actually help get our nation back on the right path. My assessment, in short, is that Ocasio-Cortez clearly lacks that sort of prudence and wisdom, and that, with the power she's already wielding, there is little incentive for her to grow in these virtues.

29-year-old Ocasio-Cortez gifted with 'infused knowledge,' liberal theologian argues

By GSM News Staff

Washington, D.C., February 19, 2019 - Two months ago Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a 29-year-old mediocre cum laude college grad and a barista in the Bronx struggling to make ends meet. Today she is an elected member of Congress hailed by liberal pundits as an expert in everything from economic strategy to foreign relations and climate change policy.

How to explain Ocasio-Cortez's sudden intellectual transformation? It's a clear case of "infused knowledge," argued the Rev. Joseph Josephson, S.J., of the left-leaning Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, Calif.

"The way it works," Rev. Josephson explained, "is that when a charismatic, young politician enters the fray, there is a sudden infusion of knowledge. It doesn't matter that she doesn't know that our bicameral Congress has two chambers, not three, or that she doesn't know that to pay for $40 trillion in entitlements you have to raise, well, $40 trillion. All that matters is that she's young, charismatic, and liberal. That makes everything she says absolutely brilliant."

"This sort of 'infused knowledge' only works for the liberals," Rev. Josephson was quick to add. "It doesn't work for conservatives. With an ignoramus like Trump, for example, it's okay to laugh and ridicule the missteps. But when Ocasio-Cortez can't string together coherent sentences, it's like poetry. She may not be factually right, but that's okay because she's morally right. She's, um... 'aspirational.'"

For evidence of Ocasio-Cortez's sudden infusion of political savvy, Rev. Josephson pointed to her bold "New Green Deal." "Seriously, how else could she have come up with the idea that providing basic income for people who are 'unwilling to work' would be the boon for the U.S. economy that is so clearly is?" he asked.

"All you have to do is look at the countries that provide a basic income to know how well it works," Rev. Josephson added. "France, Finland, Bulgaria -- these are the type of places that are sparking true innovation and entrepreneurism right now. Sure, we have Amazon, Google, Space-X, etc., in in the United States. But Bulgaria has... well... Okay, let me think for a moment"

Rev. Josephson resumed after a pause, "Now remember: It's less about the facts and more about the aspirations. Surely you can see how aspirations, not dollars, drive the economy."

Rev. Josephson deftly turned the interview to Ocasio-Cortez's amazing ability to build consensus. "I mean, how better to get farmers and the folks in the aviation business on your side than to say that you hope to shut down their industry within ten years?" he said. "And if you can't convince the backward rubes in flyover country to stop eating hamburgers made from 'farting cows,' then you could always send them off to reeducation camps to receive their own infusion of knowledge."

Indeed, true consensus-building, as Rev. Josephson explained, is telling the folks who raise the food you eat that you are going to make doing so as hard for them as possible. And if you want to build the cross-isle bridges that are necessary to get things done in Congress, then surely the best strategy is telling Kansas voters that electing a Republican these is akin to voting to be a slave state in 1861.

"Ocasio-Cortez has a bright future in Congress," Rev. Josephson concluded. "Her bull-in-the-chinashop approach will surely get so much accomplished. Really, all she has to do is continue accusing her fellow Democrats of basing their decisions on being white and male to win them over to her side. It's an absolutely brilliant strategy."

Area dairy cows offended by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's 'farting cows' remark

By GSM News Staff

La Crosse, Wis., February 18, 2019 - Dairy cows here in Wisconsin and throughout the nation were quick to condemn U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's call last week for the elimination of "farting cows."

Image from Wikicommons

"This has really affected our moo'd," said Bessie, an offended La Crosse-area dairy cow.

Ocasio-Cortez, a 29-year-old, newly minted Democratic congresswoman from the Bronx unveiled a "New Green Deal" that was received enthusiastically by many left-of-center pundits and politicians. Among other radical proposals, Ocasio-Cortez's plan calls for "net-zero" carbon emissions within ten years. An accompanying "talking points" that has since been deleted elaborated, "We aren't sure that we'll be able to get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast."

"Thank goodness for that," said Bessie. "I really don't plan to become hamburger quite that fast. I'm always telling the humans to 'eat mor chickin.'"

Although Bessie readily acknowledged the science indicating that cows emit more methane than humans, she was adamant that there is more to farts than methane. "Do you know of anyplace on earth where more hot air is produced than Washington, D.C.?" Bessie asked.

The rest of Bessie's herd was unanimous that the days when the wind blows from due east are by far the stinkiest. "Just read the latest Farm Bill, and you'll know what I mean," said Buttercup.

"I may emit seven pounds of methane per day, but I'm also producing 70 pounds of milk," Buttercup said. "In her proposal Ocasio-Cortez wants to provide 'economic security' to those who are 'unwilling to work.' Does she know what happens to those who are unwilling to work around this place?"

Bessie chimed in, "Maybe in the Brox they're sent to Congress, but not around here!"

Breaking News: Court candidate founded a Christian school that required teachers and students to be Christian

By GSM News Staff

Madison, Wis., February 15, 2019 -- Local experts and Madison area residents alike are expressing shock at learning that Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brian Hagedorn, a committed Christian, helped to found a Christian school that actually requires teachers and students to be Christian.

Image from https://www.judgehagedorn.com/

According to a Wisconsin State Journal exclusive, Hagedorn and his wife Christina helped to found Augustine Academy, a private K-8 school in Waukesha County in 2016. The school's code of personal conduct bans "immoral sexual activity" by teachers, staff, parents and students, which it defines as "any form of touching or nudity for the purpose of evoking sexual arousal apart from the context of marriage between one man and one woman."

Tyler Hendricks, the spokesman for Hagedorn's opponent, suggested that Hagedorn's radical beliefs may influence his judicial decisions. "Wisconsinites will need to decide whether Brian Hagedorn can set aside his personal partisan views and be a fair, impartial judge on our state's highest court," he said.

Wilber Wilberson, of Madison, said she was shocked by the report. "Is someone with a point of view that is different from mine even allowed to run for public office?" she asked. "How could he possibly be an impartial judge if he has strong opinions that are different from my strong opinions?"

UW-Madison political scientist Dr. Scott Scottie said that even if Hagedorn can set aside his beliefs, the candidate's political philosophy is troubling. Hagedorn is a constitutional originalist, or textualist, Dr. Scottie said, a judicial philosophy holding that the Constitution should be interpreted as originally written. So even if Hagedorn doesn't let his own Christian beliefs influence his decisions, Dr. Scottie argued, he may inadvertently let the Founders' Christian beliefs do so.

"This is very dangerous," Dr. Scottie said. "We need to have justices who will ensure that the Constitution is interpreted according to the prevailing opinion, and the Founders' views on marriage, for example, or abortion, or pretty much any of these hot-button social issues are decidedly not the prevailing views here in Madison."

Martha Marthowski, also of Madison, said the solution is to pass a law banning public officials from having any opinions of their own at all. "We simply can't have people with beliefs in public office right now," she said. "With so many unenlightened rubes and rednecks still against gay marriage outside of our enlightened Madison enclave, it's just too dangerous."

Scholars unanimous that St. Valentine would have approved of Valentine's Day

By GSM News Staff

Washington, D.C., February 14, 2019 - Reflecting on the 3rd century martyr Valentine, prominent scholars of early Church history unanimously agreed that he would have approved of our Valentine's Day celebrations.

"Having $150 bouquets of artificially grown, chemical-laden roses and overpriced boxes of saccharine-sweet milk chocolate delivered to somebody you're romantically involved with -- yes, that's surely the best way to commemorate the life of someone who was beaten with clubs and beheaded because he wouldn't renounce his faith," said Dr. William Williamson, PhD, of Harvard University.

Dr. David Doolittle of Stanford concurred. "I mean, folks can't muster the commitment actually to tie the knot these days. But why not celebrate our lack of commitment by celebrating the life of a celibate priest whose commitment to the faith was so strong that he'd die for it?"

The Roman martyrology actually mentions three Valentines. At least one was a bishop; all three suffered horrific deaths because they wouldn't deny their faith during a period of intense persecution of Christians under the Roman Emperor Claudius II.

According to some accounts, Valentine healed the blindness of his jailer's daughter. She converted to Christianity, and before his martyrdom he wrote her a note urging her to stay strong in the faith. He is said to have signed this letter, "Your Valentine."

"He's a celibate priest about to be beaten and beheaded, and he's sending a note to a girl who has likely committed herself to a life of virginity and is probably soon to share his fate." said Dr. Williamson. "Doesn't that just make you want to buy somebody some chocolate?"

Having been beheaded some 1,700 years ago, St. Valentine couldn't be reached for comment.

Reaction mixed to priest's advice not to be like Mother Teresa*

By GSM News Staff

Washington, D.C., February 13, 2019 - Reaction was mixed in response the advice of Jesuit Father James Martin, who last week published a spiritual reflection at America Magazine advising readers that "to be a saint, just be who you are."

Father Martin pointed to the example of St. Teresa of Calcutta, noting that few people are called to work with the poorest of the poor in the slums. "You're not supposed to be Mother Teresa," he wrote. "As the Trappist monk Thomas Merton said, 'For me, to be a saint means to be myself.' So maybe it's time to stop trying to be someone else. Stop looking at someone else's roadmap to holiness."

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Many contacted by GSM News were quick to praise the prominent Jesuit priest's advice to "be who you are," including Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who executed more than a million of his own citizens; Mao Zdung, whose "Great Leap Forward" killed tens of millions of Chinese; and Pol Pot, whose Khmer Rouge regime murdered nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population.

"He spoke right to my heart," said Adolf Hitler, German Führer from 1934 until his suicide at the conclusion of the Second World War. 

Others, however, found Father Martin's words troubling, most prominently the apostle Paul, who wrote rebuttals of Father Martin's advice in letters to the Christian communities he had founded in Galatia and Corinth. 

"I have been crucified with Christ," St. Paul wrote to the Galatians, who had turned from the Gospel to be themselves. "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me."

St. Paul similarly advised the Corinthians to keep trying to be someone else, going so far as to hold himself up as their roadmap to holiness. "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ," he wrote.

The reaction from Pope Francis was also swift. In his 2016 homily at the canonization Mass for Mother Teresa he flatly contradicted Father Martin, telling the faithful to take the newly minted saint as their model: "Today, I pass on this emblematic figure of womanhood and of consecrated life to the whole world of volunteers."

"May she be your model of holiness!" the Holy Father concluded.

Being his typical self and not engaging his critics, Father Martin could not be reached for comment.


_______________________________
* Because right now, humor is the only thing that makes sense.

McCarrick's laicization a great honor for the laity, Vatican official says*

By GSM News Staff

Vatican City, Feb. 12, 2019 - Speculation is building that former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick could be laicized as soon as tomorrow. And while many consider laicization to be a severe penalty for McCarrick, an anonymous source has asserted that it's a great honor for the laity.

"You have to see both sides of the coin," said GSM News' anonymous source, who works for the Vatican's Dicastery for the Laity and Family. "It's been centuries since a Cardinal--albeit a former one--has rejoined the ranks of the laity. So what an honor for them."

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

Credible allegations surfaced in June, 2018, that McCarrick, the powerful former archbishop of Washington, D.C., had sexually abused a 16-year-old minor in the 1970s. Two more allegations of the sexual abuse of minors also quickly surfaced, as well as claims that the archbishop regularly made sexual advances on seminarians while heading the Newark archdiocese from 1986-2000.

The Holy See swiftly removed McCarrick from public ministry and then from the College of Cardinals. The verdict of the canonical trial that could laicize him is expected ahead of a Vatican summit on sexual abuse scheduled to begin later this week.

The anonymous Vatican official from the Dicastery for Laity and the Family credited his belief that McCarrick's laicization would be a boon for the laity to Jesuit Father Antonio Spadero, a confidant of Pope Francis, who famously tweeted last year that theology is not mathematics, and that in theology two-plus-two sometimes equals five.

"It may look like an insult to the laity to give them McCarrick when we clergy don't want to be associated with him anymore," the official said. "But it's all a matter of perception. And the laity really need to perceive it as a great honor for them to be able to claim a Prince of the Church as one of their own."

Reacting to the Vatican official's comment was Joe Schmo, an average layman. "The Second Vatican Council sought to elevate the vocation of the lay faithful," he said. "But returning McCarrick to the lay state as a punishment demonstrates the very clericalism that Pope Francis has been decrying. I just don't understand it."

When asked about Schmo's statement, the Vatican official replied, "Really, the answer here is five, not four. So tell Schmo and all those other schmucks to pay, pray, and obey."


________________________________
* Because right now, humor is the only thing that makes sense. For a more serious personal reflection of mine on the fall of McCarrick, see my post from last year: Cardinal McCarrick and the Church's Continued Dark Night.

Cardinal Kasper says the Nicaean Creed spreads 'confusion and division'*

By News Staff**

Munich, Germany, Feb 11, 2019 – German Cardinal Walter Kasper has responded critically to a “Manifesto of Faith” released by the bishops who were meeting in Nicaea. He said that the bishops' manifesto, which they are calling their “creed,” contains many statements that are so heavy handed that they could lead to division in the Church.

Kasper said that while the Nicaean creed “contains many statements of faith that every upright Catholic can wholeheartedly affirm,” some of the truths in it “are pointed out so pointedly that it fades out the other half.”

Imagine from WikiCommons

For their part, the bishops said they were meeting at Nicaea because of “growing confusion about the nature of the relationship between the Father and the Son in the Holy Trinity.” Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, had argued that the Son is “consubstantial with the Father.” Arius, a priest of Alexandria, countered that the Son is not fully divine but merely an “inferior God.”

After being convened by Emperor Constantine, the Nicaean council was led by the imperial legate Hosius, bishop of Cordova. The 200-plus bishops were able to address all the disputed areas of Catholic doctrine. Particular emphasis was given to the divine processions and the hypostatic union.

In their manifesto, the bishops came down strongly on the side of Alexander, noting that the Son proceeds from the Father and is “true God from true God.” They add that “those who say: there was a time when He was not... or that the Son of God is created, or mutable, or subject to change, (them) the Catholic Church anathematizes.” They also reiterate the Church's longstanding belief in the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

Kasper, who has been an outspoken advocate for dialogue, accused the council fathers of making “unacceptable blanket statements,” such as the assertion that the Second Person of the Holy Trinity is “God from God, light from light, true God from true God.”

“It is undoubtedly true that Jesus is divine,” Kasper charged. “But how does this leave room in the Church for faithful priests like Arius? Are there not similarities between the beliefs of Alexander and Arius that would leave room for them both?”

He also said he was “totally horrified" to read the bishops' statement that the “Catholic Church anathematizes” those who fail to acknowledge that the Son is consubstantial with the Father.

Kasper suggested that the Nicaean fathers were following the dangerous path of St. Paul, who rebuked St. Peter at the Council of Jerusalem: “They rightly advocated for reforms in the Church but wanted to pursue their reforms behind the pope's back and enforce them in opposition to him.”

Kasper concluded, “What will happen the next time the bishops meet at Constantinople? Before you know it, they will be saying that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. This can only lead to confusion and division. That could unhinge the Catholic Church.”

___________________________

* Because at this point, humor is the only thing that makes sense.
** Catholic News Agency has contributed to this report. Sort of.