Walter Williams, insightful as always, writes in “Not yours to give” about using public funds for charitable causes. No matter how laudable, it is not the role of the government to give this money, nor is it efficient. Rather than spending this money in this way, return it to us, and we, who are consistently proven some of the most generous people on earth, can then give more of our time and money directly, without the overhead of IRS, the rest of the Treasury (is that a second DOT, or is it the Treasury Department, or is it part of some other Department?), Congress, or any other civil servant to drain some percentage out. Interestingly, he quotes a number of public officials from our history who have agreed: Tennessee Rep. Col. Davy Crockett, President Grover Cleveland, President Franklin Pierce, Virginia Rep. William Giles, and President James Madison all come down against public charity.

“Defining monstrosity down” is a really interesting piece. Rather bluntly, which I like, Jonah Goldberg says that some acts are monstrous, some people are monsters, and we need a way, a word with which, to call them that. Which raises the question, as Goldberg notes, what’s up with friendly characters like Sesame Street or the Muppet’s being “monsters?” Not that it does a huge amount of harm, as he writes:

But, you know, it’s funny. I think we want - and need - a word for monsters. For example, my 2-year-old daughter has never seen a film or a book that would give her the impression monsters as a group are evil, while she’s been inundated with the notion that they’re good and friendly. And yet this lover of “Sesame Street” is still afraid of monsters. She will use the word and ask me to scare them away.

Still, one wonders…

Okay, so I was mistaken about there not being anything particularly note worthy today. While not hugely significant, I realized as I was inserting this into the previous post that I have more to say than I’d initially thought, and thus that it should be in its own post so that I can cleanly refer back to it if I want to.

“Dozens of Episcopalians Follow Leader into Catholic Church” and “Married Priests? The English Experience” are a pair of articles from the National Catholic Register on married priests in the western or Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Much food for thought, I can’t quite make out where the first article is coming from, the second one I think the author is reluctantly coming down against it. This is one of the more controversial topics in the Church right now, and it kind of relates to Ederlyn’s “Attempted virtue is its own punishment, I think..” Specifically she links to “What Is the Vatican Saying About Women?” which is an odd run down of some of the things the Vatican is currently saying about women. I have no clue how accurate it is, so I’ll take it at its word for the most part for now. But towards the end I do take issue with it, and thus with the one line of comments on Ederlyn’s post. There seems to be a prevailing thought that Pope John Paul II’s apostolic letter, “Ordinatio Sacerdotalis,” is not in fact the final word on the subject of the ordination of women, but is only the final word of Pope John Paul II’s pontificate. I suppose people either have trouble grasping the idea of infallibility, which I could sympathize with, or they find the language at the end of the letter to be less than the bar for infallibility to be invoked. I’m really rather curious which is the case, but not sufficiently so to come out and ask directly. It seems rather to make the doctrine meaningless to require more than he has said:

Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.

And I know that there is a tendency to raise the bar so high it cannot be met, in part because of our own unwillingness to accept it, and in part to make reconciliation with the protestants easier. For they should have no trouble accepting a doctrine that in practice never comes into play. And how much easier it would be to invent our own morality, to decide for ourselves what is right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable, possible and impossible, if there is no one who can absolutely say “this is what is.” Not that I think such thoughts are in the forefront of people’s minds when they ignore infallibility or make it impossible to invoke, I doubt they are consciously denying the existence of absolute right and wrong at all. Rather, I would tend to think they are simply subconsciously denying their own error, and thus if they are not in error, the contradicting statement must be.

All of this most likely sounds incredibly haughty on my part, as if I were full of myself and my own correctness. I do not, however, mean to sound that way. Perhaps it is I who am wrong, and the bar to infallibility really does require more. If so, I’d question why our Holy Father worded his statement the way he did, but there could be other reasons for having done so. Perhaps the Holy Spirit intervened so far and no further, a just-enough intervention. It is certainly one conceivable explanation. Perhaps it is a bad translation, or my own misuse of language that leads me to read an absolute meant as such in that paragraph. I do not think so, but I accept the possibility, and if you want to argue otherwise, I’d be curious to hear your rationale (so long as it is rational ;-). I promise to try my best not to bite your head off if you, whoever you are reading this, choose to email me over it.

Nothing particularly caught my eye in this morning’s news, but the following are worth taking note of, if not sufficient to cause a post of their own.

“Bad news really can break hearts” describes that stressful events can cause symptoms similar to a heart attack.
“House Immigrants Bill Gets White House OK” brings some changes to the way immigrants are handled. They can’t use state driver’s licenses for some things like boarding planes or entering federal buildings, and they can be deported more easily. I’m not sure what I make of it; the ID changes are most likely good, the deportation changes I’m less sure of.
“GUESS WHO’S PAYING FOR IT…” is rather disturbing I think. While I tend to sympathize with the judge, I can see this sort of precedent being far too easily abused.

“Earth Gets a Warm Feeling All Over” has some interesting implications that I’d missed, but Vincas was quick to point out. They are claiming to have data since 1900, satellites have only really been available post-Sputnik, and not in any density for years after that. Just what did they do to record average temperatures across the oceans and in the Arctic and Antarctic between 1900 and 1960(ish)? Are we saying that the odd boat crossing, the couple explorations and research centers, and similar are sufficient? If so, what does that mean about the quality of their later measurements? If they were gathered with that standard in mind… ;-) However, for all I know the later measurements might even be trust worthy; still, can we really base climatology off of 40 years (or less) of data?