...he confided to her during his standoff with the Soviet Union that “I’d rather my children red than dead.”Or in other words, it seems that Kennedy would rather have surrendered the United States to communist rule than to risk war. If this lack of resolve was known by his Soviet adversaries, things could have gone very badly for our nation. Instead, the crisis was resolved peacefully, with both sides backing down to the status quo.
That quote was taken from this news article: JFK intern Mimi Alford discusses affair with the president. This is simply more evidence that sin can make you stupid.
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
ReplyDelete“Go, and sin no more."
ReplyDeleteSo how do you feel about Newt's Catholism.....is he stupid?
ReplyDeleteBack in the ‘90s I thought that Newt was one of the more intelligent national politicians, and I did like his coherent policies in opposition to the Clinton administration. Please note that modern politicians generally aren’t known for their intellect, but rather their strong will, and unfortunately, strong passions such as my Kennedy example. I haven’t been following politics too much these days, but I do know that Newt lately gave a rather non-Catholic explanation of embryology and he ought to have known better, and that led to a drop in support for him among practicing Catholics who follow such matters.
ReplyDeleteAmong the practicing Catholics I know, currently they tend to support Santorum and Paul, are lukewarm on Newt, dislike Romney, and despise the Obama administration. Among younger Catholics, I don’t see many dyed-in-the-wool Democrats anymore, but I do see many fence-sitters, which is entirely appropriate, considering the positions of the political parties.
Certainly the big issue of the day is Obama’s healthcare initiative. If he continues in his course, Obama will have Hell to pay, figuratively, or God forbid, literally. I find it interesting that V.P. Joe Biden, trained by the Jesuits, was against the current HHS mandate. As far as I know, no one has proposed real alternatives, so I came up with one myself:
http://www.romeofthewest.com/2010/03/health-care-alternative.html
or a shorter and more coherent version:
http://www.romeofthewest.com/2010/10/universal-health-care-alternative.html
The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street crowds actually have common cause, although I doubt that they see it. They both don’t like the concentration of money and force, nor do I.
Valid points, however I suspect the number of practicing Catholic women who are or have used birth control is far larger than the offical church is willing to accept........the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Streeters have actually been reading the same book by one Saul Alinsky, who Newt likes to vilify! Subversively hoping that the mans very name sounds foreign and therefore sinister.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn’t be surprised at that, for she is a church that only rarely even ejects great public sinners. I’m sure there are plenty of Catholics who reject the social doctrine of the Church because they think that it is too liberal. But don’t we live in a secularized and Protestantized culture, which is propagandizing us continuously? If Catholics even bother to show up to Sunday Mass, one hour per week of church is hardly enough for good formation.
ReplyDeleteSo do you like or reject Alinsky? Regarding Obama, he seems to be filled with a great sense of self-hatred which is common among revolutionaries. Self-hatred, please recall, is the opposite vice to xenophobia, and leads the policies of abortion and euthanasia among other things.
Oh, back to my original point. Consequences of sin, for the person committing them, are a darkening of the intellect, increasing disunity between body and soul, and a weakening of the will.
ReplyDeleteI know this from personal experience.
And in communal situations and social structures, such as the United States of America, the sins of our leaders have wide-ranging consequences for us all.
Kestral, I accidentally deleted your last comment. I pressed the wrong button on my touch screen; “publish” is only a fraction of an inch from “delete”.
ReplyDelete"I have not studied Alinsky enough but I would tend to accept his populist views and rejection of powerful monied elite both Conservative and Liberal.
"Protestantized! exactly, I have said for years that we ultimately have an American Catholic Church and not a Roman one. Popes and current Bishops try to keep us in tow but the cause is lost to the American Myth particularly among white second and third generation Catholics who have climbed the economic and social ladder.
"Evangelicals will vote for a Santorum or Gingrich Catholic because they have successfully watered "us" down!”
Alinsky was certainly a populist, and I am rather surprised that many Tea Party types are taking up his teaching. The strange thing was that once Alinsky was successful, his own clients then risked becoming oppressors. People who become ‘empowered’ often become monsters, as we are seeing in the current political regime, most particularly in the life issues of abortion and euthanasia. Oddly enough, Alinsky himself recognized this. In the forward of his book Rules for Radicals, he praised Satan; now Alinsky was a lapsed Jew and presumably a disbeliever, but certainly his tactics taken to their ends would be a war of all against all, and work towards the disunity and ultimate dissolution of society, which is indeed Satanic.
Alinsky’s tactics certainly ‘work’. But they are repugnant and hateful, and tend to prove the lack of character of those who practice it. Nuclear weapons and concentration camps also ‘work,’ and Alinsky failed to recognize that means are ends in themselves. I saw his tactics in action when Abp. Burke was in Saint Louis -- he was the “frozen target,” and a few people were clearly running an operation against him by organizing dissident catholics in this area. After Burke was recalled to Rome, the media outed a number of these people for wrong-doing, but it was clear that the reporters knew about these for a long time and instead sat on the information until the damage was already done.
You can only have a good society if the members of society are good. No system of organization can do otherwise.
One of Bugnini’s personal goals in the reform of the Catholic liturgy was to split off the various national churches and have them go in their own separate directions away from Rome. He seems to have been fairly successful. Too many American Catholics, such as the Kennedys, were so tired of being marginalized from the mainstream of American politics that they were willing to compromise the Faith in exchange for power, as many Catholics in the Roman Empire burned a pinch of incense to Caesar. That’s very sad, and the cure is to drink deeply from the wellspring of the Faith and to dismiss current fads as the passing and transient things that they are. What is up to date will soon be out of date.
One of the good fruits of the era after the Second Vatican Council is that many faithful Protestants have taken the time to learn just what it is that Catholicism actually teaches, and no longer see the Church as a distorting evil, but rather as representing the authentic and historical teaching of Christ. They haven’t swum the Tiber yet, but we can hope. And so many faithful Protestants would not hold Catholicism against a politician, especially if he appears to be faithful.