Thursday, April 5, 2012

"The zone of the soul and the purview of conscience"

Here are some paragraphs from an article with which I agree:

Frankly, it is bizarre to see presidential candidates—men and women campaigning for the right to serve and guide the broad national agenda—talking at some length about the issues of contraception, pornography, sin, Satan, and sex. Those issues, which are matters of great importance to the goodness and wholeness of a person, belong to the zone of the soul, reside in the purview of conscience, and should be worked out in the realm of civil society. On the whole, these are matters that are to be handled by parents, priests, preachers, friends, and family, not by presidential candidates. Certainly a president needs to be a man of character, but the fact that government has grown so large and invaded every aspect of life explains why presidential candidates are talking, or are feeling forced to talk, about these personal topics, rather than those that pertain to the public issues that constitute the national agenda.

Conservative candidates for president need to be focusing on the size and scope of a government that has breached its constitutional boundaries and exceeded its fiscal possibilities. This abuse occurred due to a lack of constitutionally conservative government and profligate spending designed to subsidize and buy off larger portions of the populace. Those issues are within the purview of the political. One quick way to begin defusing the culture wars is to put government back within its constitutional boundaries and focus on restoring civil society to its proper—and indeed, larger—place it must occupy if America is to remain the free, virtuous, and authentically pluralistic place it has been in the past.

My faith teaches me to convince others of the validity and goodness of certain truths, person to person, forming a culture that leads to a moral consensus. That is where the true morality of a nation is formed, not in the electoral or political sphere. Until Leviathan is slain, we will continue to see presidents and presidential candidates acting as preachers, proclaiming their morality, and continue to wonder at the sight of preachers talking politics from the pulpit. Perhaps due to the unwholesome reality created by American’s present cultural, moral, and political disorder, such a chaotic mixing of roles and issues is necessary, but I can’t shake the feeling that it is a bad idea for the civil society, personal conscience, and the public square.

Wow. The author must be a secularist, or a fiscal conservative, or—horrors—maybe someone from the Mitt Romney campaign. Oh, wait...

Fr. Phillip W. De Vous is the pastor of St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church in Crescent Springs, KY

Sorry, my bad.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Pantone Numbers

Here's an idea just in case you have to make a 911 call because you are being attacked. If you carry around Pantone color gauges like this one you can just give the 911 operator the Pantone color code for your attacker's skin color. That way when the media replays the 911 tape it will sound sort of like this: "Skin color is PANTONE 18-1142, or maybe closer to 18-1140." That way you can identify the perps coloration in a precise manner without using any language which could be construed to be racial or racist in any way.


Just saying.

The original "come at me, bro"

...can be found in today's reading. "He is near who upholds my right; if anyone wishes to oppose me, let us appear together. Who disputes my right? Let him confront me. See, the Lord GOD is my help; who will prove me wrong? Lo, they will all wear out like cloth, the moth will eat them up."

Except it's more like "Come at us, bro. You moth-eaten piece o' garbage.".


Alright, get out the heresy meter.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

"Congresswoman, here's the problem: WE LIVE HERE!"

Doug McIntyre is not some kind of fire-breathing right winger, so Debbie Wasserman Schultz probably wasn't expecting him to speak the truth about Antonio Villaraigosa, LA's thug mayor. But what good is there to say about him?



"We got a big chuckle." I love this interview. McIntyre shows good will throughout. Some great pregnant pauses here by Wasserman Schultz who obviously isn't used to tougher questions than "Merlot or Cabernet?"