Apparently the election of His Holiness Benedict XVI, the Pope with more guts than Patton, has also caused local Catholic leadership to show sudden fits of intestinal fortitude.
A controversy seems to have erupted over the graduation ceremony at Summit Country Day School, a school of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Cincinnati. Apparently, Headmaster Joseph Devlin made the decision to uninvite Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, a Summit alumnus, after previously inviting her to address the graduating class. The reason? Sebelius is pro-abortion, and the Catholic school decided that it would be inappropriate to invite someone to speak whose position is blatantly contrary to the Doctrine of the Holy Catholic Faith. It has also come to light that some "pro-choice" trustees are angry about the decision. (So what? If someone thinks killing babies should continue to be legal, they obviously aren't too Catholic are they?) However, Summit is thus far standing by their decision to uninvite Sebelius.
What prompted the sudden uninvite? Apparently, Headmaster Devlin had the foresight to inquire what Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk thought of the fact that Sebelius was coming, and would address the graduating class and receive a special award. Because Summit is run by a religious order, they are not bound by the decrees of the Archdiocese, yet Devlin sought the advice of the local Ordinary anyway. What was that advice? The Archbishop told Devlin in no uncertain terms that if Summit were an Archdiocesan school, Sebelius would not be invited, and "would not receive an award." His Grace also reminded Devlin of the U.S. Bishops' joint decree last year that people who blatantly defy the teachings of the Church should not be invited to speak at Catholic institutions. Devlin apparently took the Archbishop's advice.
What makes all of this surprising is that His Grace is, quite frankly, not known to the wider orthodox Catholic community here as a prelate with lots of intestinal fortitude. He comes across to many who meet him (including myself on several occasions), as heady and high-minded, too intellectual for his own good. It isn't so much that he is not a nice man (he is, very much so) he just often seems to be in his own little universe. I have questioned his willingness to take a public stand in the past, but he did this time, and I am very proud of him for it. You go, Your Grace!
Well, the majority of election results are in in the British Parliamentary elections this morning (what in Britain is early afternoon), and as expected, the Labour Party has squeaked by with a victory. The Conservatives have actually picked up more than a few seats from Labour, though they lost three to the Liberal Democrats, the Tories gained more from the Lib Dems than they lost, and they have a net gain of 31 seats. What's more, the Labour majority is down to just 66 seats. While it makes more sense to send a message to a corrupt Government by removing it from power, a majority of only 66 puts victory within striking distance for the Tories at the next election. In every sense, many Conservatives are considering this election as a moral victory for themselves.
Now to the part that is bizarre: In most political parties, such a strong showing after years in the political wilderness would signal that the Party Leader has a stronghold over the leadership. Not so for Michael Howard, who has volunteered that he will stand down as leader after an internal dispute within the Conservative Party over how the next Leader should be chosen is resolved. His reasoning is that by the next election he will be 67 or 68 years old, and he believes that is too old to serve a full five year term as Prime Minister. Nevermind that some of the world's greatest political leaders have come into their prime in their late sixties, Mr. Howard believes that by then he will be too much of an old geezer to "lead the party into Government." One has to wonder how much of this is Howard's personal decision, and how much of the decision was made for him by internal pressure from inside the Parliamentary Party.
An aside: The Rt. Hon. John Redwood, one of my favorite British Conservatives, has not denied that he would stand for Leadership for a third time. I have always liked Redwood because of his strong Euroskepticism (opposition to the European Union, and by implication the New World Order), and dis defense of traditional values. Perhaps if he runs this time, he just might win.
Dave, the husband of the runaway bride did take a polygraph shortly after she went missing and passed it.As soon as I heard that, I concluded, correctly, that the bride had run away.There's no such thing as coincidence in criminal matters, and for a woman to get kidnapped by a stranger on the weekend before her wedding strains credulity.
This point is duly noted. I have to admit to regular readers that I was unaware that her fiancee had taken a polygraph examination. As hard as I try to keep facts accurate on this weblog, I will occasionally make an error in fact, and I certainly don't mind readers pointing out errors in fact. In this case, as I recall, NBC originally reported that the man failed to take a polygraph examination and I based my report here on that initial report. By the time I made the post to which Aaron was responding, the story was actually several days old. I was quite unaware of the reality of the polygraph of which Aaron speaks.
Now, some of you will use my encouragement to report to me errors of fact as an excuse to treat opinion as fact and try to tell me that some opinion that I hold is wrong because you don't happen to agree with it. That would be error of opinion, not error of fact, and is a matter of opinion itself! You are certainly welcome to post disagreements with my opinions in the comments section. In fact, I welcome many comments postings and I regularly respond to them. However, keep in mind that if you are questioning an error of opinion in your comment, I can just as easily believe, as a matter of opinion, that your opinion is in error! This is most often true for liberals and others whose heads have not yet come out of the clouds.
In recent days we've been covering the Canadian and British election situation here at the World, and those with some interest know that in Canada, the election may be brought about by a vote of no-confidence in the Government there. Some have questioned whether the Conservative Party should make such a move.
New numbers show the Conservatives at 36 percent, the Liberals at 31 percent, the New Democratic Party at 17 percent, and the Bloc Quebecois at 15 percent (63 percent in Quebec). Thus, it would be to the Tories' advantage to bring the Government down immediately. The Liberals are so desperate to hang on to power that they have resorted to comparing the Conservatives to the Ku Klux Klan! What brought this comparison about?
This poster and this magazine cover, which I personally think are hilarious. According to certain Liberal ministers, the Tories are to be compared with the guys in white sheets for being seen with the magazine cover from The Western Standard, I suppose because the Conservatives are stereotyping Italian-Canadians. Of course, who they are stereotyping in reality is the Liberal Party, by enjoying the poster and cover they are essentially saying that the Liberal Party has a mafia mentality. My guess would be that the Liberals don't like it because the truth hurts...it hurts them at the polls.
The Former Leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party in Britain, Iain Duncan Smith, once famously said in the House of Commons that "nobody believes a thing he [Tony Blair] says anymore." Smith's predicessor, William Hague, referred to Labour's record of deceit as "the Great Labour Lie." Hague and Smith both believed that Blair wanted to sell Britain up the river to the Eurocrats, and they have certainly been proven right.
At issue in this vote is whether Tony Blair deceived the British public about his Cabinet's opinion over the legality of the war in Iraq. It is now coming to light that his Attorney-General and several members of the Cabinet questioned the legality of the war. The war has not been popular in Britain (whether this is due to the fact that the war was poorly planned and executed or merely because Britain has lost its bulldog spirit and replaced it with a cowardly one is an open question) and it is right that people should know when members of the Government question the very legality of some act the Government is pursuing. Point blank: Blair lied to the British people, and then used his ministers and party to cover up the lie. It has been exposed that he has blatantly lied (not changed his tune, just lied) about several other matters as well.
Now, in the civilized world, the governing persons and party would be removed from government for causing such scandal and then governing on a pattern of lies. However, if the polls are to be believed, Blair and his Labour Party will be returned to Government (albeit with a smaller majority) yet again. Many Britons argue that the Conservatives were in favor of the war too, why should they be trusted? There is a difference here: Conservative shadow ministers did not knowingly question the war's legality, and then allow their Leader, Michael Howard, to move ahead with public support of the war. Conservative support of the war was based on sheer conviction that it was the right thing to do at the right time for the right reasons, and in no way did the Tories believe the UN had any legal bearing on Britain's decision for or against going to war in Iraq. Of course, one might disagree with that reasoning, but the position was clear, plain, united, and there was no cover-up.
I fail to understand why the British (and for that matter, the Canadians) continue to elect Leftist Governments who base their philosophy of governance on moral relativism, and then watch aghast as those morally relativistic governments become mired in scandal and corruption. After the corruption is revealed, they then openly complain about the corruption of the government, before returning that same government to power at the next election. Here's a hint for those people in Britain who don't understand politics or life: Get a clue! If you want to send a message that you are tired of filth and corruption in your Government, you must remove that Government from power and replace it with another one. If the new Government doesn't do what the people would like, or proves to be corrupt itself, you have the right to replace it at the next election, just like you replaced the Government before it. If you keep the same corrupt bunch in power over and over again, this teaches them that their corruption has no consequences, and they can continue to lie, cheat, and deceive the general public.
Perhaps people in Britain enjoy corruption enough to return Tony Blair to power again. I say to those who do not: Michael Howard may not do better than Tony Blair at this point, but it is scarcely possible to do any worse. People who want corruption in Government to end need to topple corrupt Governments.
By now, I think anyone who has a nose for news has heard the more complete story of Jennifer Wilbanks, the "runaway bride" who called 911 from New Mexico claiming to have been kidnapped by a Hispanic man and a white woman who carried a shotgun and a pistol.
Wilbanks was slated to be married Saturday in her hometown of Duluth, Georgia. On Tuesday, she mysteriously disappeared after having gone jogging. I have to confess here that at first, I believed that Jennifer Wilbanks' fiancee had something to do with her disappearance, as he refused to take a polygraph examination. There also seems to be a trend over the last couple of years of women disappearing, followed by their Significant Other being exposed as the culprit in some twisted scheme to be rid of them for another woman.
Now, I repent of having believed this, all I can do is feel sorry for the poor man. While it is apparent that Miss Wilbanks committed a crime in falsely reporting that she had been kidnapped, it is still unclear whether she will be charged with a crime. What's more, authorities in Albuquerque seem to have buttered-up to the woman, giving her a teddy bear, an FBI blazer, and what amounts to the royal treatment.
I can't be the judge of this woman's character, but I do know that were I her fiancee, I'd be calling off the hitchin'.
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