Yeah, this job's hard all right...

difficult to overcome your humanity when you do this work.

I noted:

not every one could do what we do.

It isn't a compliment. Not everyone can be a hitman, if you think of it.

Khatami and Pope seem not too happy with each other

In other news, China boasts about effectiveness of national suicide in reducing greenhouse gases.

The kicker in the China article:

Demographers predict that there will be 40 million unmarried men in China by 2020 and the situation is already creating a dramatic rise in prostitution and the buying and selling of women.

Nobody saw that one coming!

Doing one's duty can be a real pain.

Let us be glad that the boundless ingenuity of statesmen help them make strident attacks upon that which the American state is intended to protect.

Namely, the rights and dignity of man (including his right not to be muzzled by the government when he protests its actions).

And did I mention the government's duty to not contradict the natural law, explicitly or implicitly?

Too true, too true.

This is why big families are a good thing.

Consider that the Bible rarely fails to mention "abundant descendants" as God's blessing to the just.

"We want people of faith, but we don't want them making decisions based on their faith."

Somebody is in deep denial.

A Marxist will make decisions based on his Marxism, even on things unrelated to Marxism; he might not wear tennis shoes because capitalists made them.

An animist will also make decisions based on animism, but unrelated to animism, like not eating 'sacred' animals.

And Christians - specificially Catholics in this instance, but "people of faith" always refers to Christians - will make decisions based on Christianity that are unrelated to Christianity per se, like not voting for abortion.

Goes to show...

Popularity ain't worth a darn if it's coming from the wrong folks.

WHO CAN LEARN FROM THIS: Anyone who has a job in America, Catholic bishops, Catholic politicians.

H/T: Provoking the Muse.

Monsters under the bed? That's so 20th Century.

Nowadays, we need mass murderers, abductors, global warming, and nuclear bombs under the bed.

On a brighter note: SCIENTISTS FIND MOST EARTHLIKE PLANET YET!

I await eagerly Gliesian messages: "Greetings to earth! We have come to drop off huge spaceship for HISTOR THE WISE to fly around in and blow our enemies up with."

TV and Cultural Chicken

In the May issue of First Things, there's an article by Ross Douthat on modern TV shows and their spiritual elements - spiritual in the sense of relating to morality, religion, and virtue.

He opens by summarizing the condition of 1950s film culture: two fairly small groups repeatedly clashed over morality in movies.

Certain directors would introduce profanity or other objectionable things, certain "conservative Christian" groups would protest, and the resulting fuss would drive up movie sales. Next time, the directors would introduce worse profanity, or a little nudity - anything to annoy the "conservative Christians."

Douthat doesn't say it, but I will. This was just another version of "Chicken," where winning depends on scaring the opponent. The directors risked financial ruin; the religious groups, the downfall of public morality. In each film, they charged at each other, risking collision to get what they wanted.

Take a look at TV Guide and you'll see who lost the game.

Take my word for it:

Racism is going to make a comeback in this century.

It and Western culture are like Smaug and Peeps in combat.

Like this:

St. George's feast day was just the other day. So don't feel down, folks.

When is St. Bilbo's feastday? Or St. Bard the Bowman's?

Now I'm talking like a real Lord of the Rings nut. Darn.

"Terrorism with a human face"

Or, to be exact, Satan with a human face.

In Middle Eastern cultures, where nonviolence is not valued but honor is, Satan encourages suicide bombers and a culture that approves of it.

In Western cultures, where nonviolence is valued but fortitude is not, Satan encourages abortion, euthanasia, and a culture that approves of neither.

Then he sics them on each other.

Read what Rod Dreher had to say about the VA Tech murders.

And what I have to say about it is:

The murderer lost his mind. We don't know why. For an unknown reason, God let him shoot 32 college students, then himself. Some evil and some good will result. No amount of well-meaning laws, however reasonable they may in fact be, will prevent such incidents from occurring. However, any amount of prayer will help. Despair will hurt.

God save the souls of Cho Seung-hui and his victims.

Even 21st-Century Americans know partially-born babies are human.

Maybe our country isn't in total thrall to Satan yet.

Speaking of "thrall to Satan," in the Dallas Morning News there was an article on foreign responses to the VA Tech shootings; the London Times asked why Americans "tolerate gun laws and a culture that seems to condemn thousands of innocents to death every year..."

We don't seem to condemn "thousands of innocents" to death, London Times; we do condemn thousands of innocents to death every year. And folks make good money doing it, too. And a large lobby protects the Constitutional right to own abortifacents and abortion equipment.

And don't get all hoity-toity about it, either. We need a hand out of the Pit.

Message to Hell:

You can party if you like. I can't stop you, and since God doesn't try to, I don't want to. But turn the music down a notch, will you? It's coming out the bathroom floor.

And just remember: they're not selling the video game. They are selling "Hitman: Blood Money" at Target, if you have infernal cash to burn.

(Signed in God's name,)

Histor

Evidence that Postmodernism is, culturally speaking, an immature kid without the guts to commit itself to anything whatsoever.

Back in the 18th Century, Voltaire and other deist/atheist heretics blasted Christ, in rather well-written books and poems, all arguing that Christianity (and therefore Christ) was evil and not deserving of life.

In the 19th, atheism did its utmost to destroy Christ - it turned biology, economics, pyschology, and everything in the intellectual arsenal upon Him. It hoped to prove Christ a myth, His teachings a "pie-in-the-sky" myth, and His Godhood impossible.

In the 20th, men like Jean-Paul Sarte even denied all meaning in order to get Christ, so desperate were they. They literally cut off their noses to spite the face.

But now, they've stopped fighting. They've stopped arguing. Instead, they've started fantasizing, "Ooh! Ooh! What if we could, you know, shoot Jesus, hee hee hee! How edgy! How fun! How delightfully pleasant!" They don't want to tear, coax, seduce, or badger mankind away from Christ. They want to spit on Christ. They're two millenia late for that, so they pretend - like kids.

They have awfully bad timing, however. For Christ is risen and regards this as a stupid devils' joke. Which it is. And Christ cannot simply permit devils' jokes.