Brutally Honest

A question (or two) for those who call themselves Catholic...

... yet who disagree with most of Catholic teaching, who rarely go to Mass, who rarely if ever let people know about the beauty of Catholicism, who dissent largely from Catholic doctrine, who are more likely to talk up how they oppose the Church rather than support it.

You know who you are.

Why stay in the Church?  Why not go to a Church more in line with your thinking, with your ideology, with your mindset?  

Those are the questions I can't help but ask when I read about this sort of thing over at The National Review:

Escalating the attacks on Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco for continuing to uphold Catholic teachings, 100 self-described “Catholic leaders” have signed an open letter to Pope Francis, calling for the archbishop’s removal. In a full-page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle on Thursday, the petitioners claim that Cordileone has “fostered an atmosphere of division and intolerance” by asking K–12 Catholic-school teachers in the Bay area to “violate their individual consciences by accepting a morality code” based on the Church’s teachings.

Did you catch that last sentence?  Read it again.

These people think that the Church's teachings foster an atmosphere of division and intolerance.  So why stay in that Church?

Someone explain why you'd want to remain associated with a Church you minimally dislike and more likely hate?

Makes little sense to me.

Anyone?

Bueller?

"A stable, vibrant democracy depends crucially upon its people’s ability to recognize and resist the allure of political propaganda."

I realize that I've been focused of late exclusively on the idiocy springing forward from the RFRA law passed in Indiana but I won't be apologizing for it.  Not in the least.

Randall Smith lays out why this issue is so important:

Oddly, people across the country are reacting as though Indiana did something utterly unprecedented and unspeakable. Instead of calling it a “religious freedom law,” it is being described as an “anti-gay bill,” even though the words “gay,” “homosexual,” and “marriage” never show up anywhere in the law.

This is troubling—and not just for the reasons you might guess. It’s not because I think everyone should agree with this law. On its substance and wisdom, I think honest people can disagree. What’s troubling is the emotional virulence with which people are reacting to this particular law, when it is identical to protections offered in thirty other states and in the federal government. Indiana is just playing “catch up” here, legally speaking. We usually want states to offer legal protections roughly equivalent to those offered by the federal government. So why the uproar in this case?

Again, it’s fine for people to express disagreement with the law—if they know what’s in it. What I’m worried about is the single-minded, narrow, largely uninformed, self-righteous prejudice of those who are furious with the “bigots” that are assumed to live in Indiana and the glee with which they are welcoming the hysterical reactions against the state. “I’ve never been so ashamed to be from Indiana,” wrote a friend of mine on Facebook. Really? Nothing else was more shameful? Not the Indian massacres, not the popularity of the KKK right up through the 1920s, not the lynching of black men? The mayor of Seattle has banned all official travel to the state of Indiana. How about to any of the other thirty states that have nearly identical religious freedom protections?

This reaction is clearly being driven by one-sided media presentations of what’s happened in Indiana. What’s especially disturbing—and dangerous—is the degree to which Americans are showing themselves to be susceptible to the panderings of the crassest forms of political propaganda. A stable, vibrant democracy depends crucially upon its people’s ability to recognize and resist the allure of political propaganda.

Our Unexamined Metanarratives

French post-modern theorist Francois Lyotard is perhaps most famous for defining the postmodern age as one involving “incredulity toward metanarratives.” If only that were true.

Quite the contrary, it seems that we all have our own small group of metanarratives by means of which we interpret all news events. “White cops mistreating black men.” “Anti-gay homophobia.” “Male oppression of women.” “Threats against American security.” “Murderous Muslim fanaticism endangering the West.” These are just a few of the “grand narratives” into which we “fit” all big news stories: they are the “lenses” through which we interpret events. Lyotard would have been more accurate if he had said: “The postmodern condition can be characterized as a near-absolute domination by a series of largely unexamined metanarratives.”

One of the most dangerous aspects of being dominated by unexamined metanarratives is that political propagandists can use them to pull our strings. They pipe the tune, and we dance. They rejoice in pitting us against one another, because that is the way they consolidate their power. As the founders well understood, mob hysteria is one of the quickest ways of undermining a democracy. Mobs are characterized by undisciplined outbursts of emotion. People will do things as part of a mob that they would never consider doing as individuals.

And in the midst of the anarchy and disorder that usually accompany such hysteria, what often enough follows is some sort of tyranny. The mob gives itself over to some person or group that portrays itself as embodying what Rousseau used to call “the will of the People.” It doesn’t really matter what the people think; no one takes a vote. The mob just knows: it has a mind of its own. And what it “knows” is that it somehow represents “the Spirit of the Age.” You don’t want to be on the “wrong side of history, do you?” people ask. Or more menacingly: “Those people can’t be tolerated any longer; they’re getting in the way of the progressive march of history.”

To be honest, when I look back at many of the “grand movements” of history—the ever-increasing glory of the Roman Empire, the divine right of kings, “Manifest Destiny,” nationalism, eugenics, etc.—personally, I think I would have preferred to have been “left behind.”

Mr. Smith is just getting warmed up.

Think a moment about what happened to the family owned Memories Pizza business in Indiana and then think about what it is that Mr. Smith is getting at.

John Zmirak sums things up for those of you still missing the point:

The frog must jump out of the pan, before it boils.

We should not let the possibility or even the likelihood of “failure” make us timid. Witness is utterly different from propaganda, more fragile but far more enduring.

For centuries, the early Christians endured far worse than we might face, dying in the Colosseum to the taunts of jeering crowds — whose grandchildren would flee the moral chaos of collapsing Rome and flock to the underground churches. All the persecution that a government like China can deal its native Christians has not stopped the church from exploding there, and striking fear at the highest levels of a totalitarian government. The battered church in Poland led the movement that brought down the Iron Curtain, through sober, persistent resistance.

Perhaps the future we face is the one that Cardinal George envisioned. Speaking of a future bishop who would someday die a martyr, George predicted, “His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.” If we stand for eternity, then history is on our side.

We have reached the point in history when we either choose a side or a side will be chosen for us.

What are you going to do dear reader?

The inevitable result of whitewashing evil

Anne Skomorowsky over at Slate is thinking through the conclusions being drawn in the aftermath of the Germanwings mass murder:

Because Germanwings pilot Andreas Lubitz killed himself when he purposefully drove a plane carrying 149 other people into a mountain in the Alps, there has been an assumption that he suffered from “depression”— an assumption strengthened by the discovery of antidepressants in his home and reports that he had been treated in psychiatry and neurology clinics. Many patients and other interested parties are rightly concerned that Lubitz’s murderous behavior will further stigmatize the mentally ill. 

It is certainly true that stigma may lead those in need to avoid treatment. When I was a psychiatrist at an HIV clinic, I was baffled by the shame associated with a visit to see me. Patients at the clinic had advanced AIDS, often contracted through IV drug use or sex work, and many had unprotected sex despite their high viral loads. Some were on parole. Many had lost custody of their children. Many lived in notorious single-room occupancy housing and used cocaine daily. But these issues, somehow, were less embarrassing than the suggestion that they be evaluated by a psychiatrist.

For my clinic patients, it was shameful to be mentally ill. But to engage in antisocial behavior as a way of life? Not so bad.

I think my patients were on to something. Bad behavior—even suicidal behavior—is not the same as depression. It is a truism in psychiatry that depression is underdiagnosed. But as a psychiatrist confronted daily with “problem” patients in the general hospital where I work, I find that depression is also overdiagnosed. Even doctors invoke “depression” to explain anything a reasonable adult wouldn’t do.

For instance: Act completely blasé, then lock the pilot out of the cockpit, and deliberately crash a plane full of people. 

I don’t know what that is, but it’s not depression.

In the hospital where I practice, a small but regular population of patients are young men who sustained gunshot wounds during or in proximity to gang-related activities. Now paralyzed, they are admitted for pressure ulcers or urinary tract infections. These men were accustomed to getting their needs met through intimidation and even murder. Now they are dependent on nurses and aides for intimate care, and it hasn’t made them any nicer. They terrorize staff by throwing urinals and food and sexually harassing them. When I am asked to evaluate for “depression,” I see hopelessness, entitlement, and rage.

And it’s not just antisocial behavior that is explained away by calling it “depression.” I’m often asked to see patients with poorly managed chronic diseases; for example, diabetics who neglect to do fingersticks to draw blood and test their blood sugar. Recently I did a consultation for a patient who is on dialysis and ignores the low-salt “renal diet” prescribed by her doctor. Her insistence on eating chips led her nephrologist to wonder if she were depressed; after all, wouldn’t a mentally healthy person give up junk food to save her own life? 

We all know the answer to that.

The whole thing is an interesting read.

We are experiencing the effects of a culture that can rationalize away any behavior and, as a result, minimize evil.  

We may never know why Lubitz decided to not only end his life but the lives of 149 other people in any secular sense but... we should all agree that what he did is inexcusably wicked.

Or is that in and of itself wicked?

I can't help but think of Elizabeth Scalia's Strange Gods, Unmasking the Idols of Everyday Life (I wrote about that book here).  Every attempt is being made to mask our need for God and particularly His Son Jesus Christ.  In His place we are putting every sort of substitute and paying the price.

God give us eyes to see this clearly.

Ignoring the elephant in the room

I came across this story today and was immediately saddened by it:

On Jan. 17, 2014, University of Pennsylvania runner Madison Holleran committed suicide. She was 19. Since this tragedy, the sports community has struggled to address the root cause of Holleran's death: mental health.

To gauge the current climate inside locker rooms, FOX Sports interviewed more than 25 female student-athletes along with NCAA officials and mental health experts. Though these student-athletes told stories of resilience, they also revealed cautionary tales for the well-being of young women in college sports.

According to the American Psychiatric Association, women are "nearly twice as likely" as men to develop depression, anxiety and eating disorders. Add in the stress of sports commitments and you have a dangerous combination. The majority of women interviewed pointed to eating disorders related to their sport as the top issue.

"We talk about [body image] every day," said a group of University of Southern California lacrosse players. Anorexia or bulimia is twice as rampant among athletes versus the general population of women, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD).

The pressures of women to gain muscle in training but stay thin to uphold a standard of beauty outside of sports is irreconcilable. "I've never met a gymnast who was in love with their body," a former D-I gymnast revealed.

In sports, the private issue of women's body image becomes public. Dartmouth volleyball player Alexandra Schoenberger's trainers would hook her up to a machine to track changes in her body fat percentage, which sounded like the sports equivalent of the "jiggle test."

A D-I swimmer recalled men wore T-shirts that read "Whale watching" in reference to her team. Even in the coverage of Holleran's death, many were shocked to see the media use photos of the young woman wearing a bikini, taken from her Instagram account.

Bottom line, mental health is a matter of safety, not only because of suicide risk but also the detriment to long-term physical health. Eating disorders are common causes of heart problems and osteoporosis. Anorexia and bulimia have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness according to ANAD. More women have eating disorders than breast cancer, yet every major women's and men's sport has a pink ribbon campaign while mental health issues go unnoticed.

So where do these student-athletes go for help?

The piece goes on to chronicle how most student-athletes do not avail themselves to on campus psychological services because of the stigma associated with mental illness which I'll admit is problematic but there's an additional service I think most of these women are ignoring that is even more detrimental.

I wish someone would do a study (and perhaps they already have and I'm simply unaware) of the effects on the human psyche not having a religious foundation is having on these women, particularly those who struggle with body image and how others see them.

This bald paunchy guy with a big nose, no butt and buck teeth has overcome these 'failings' by coming to believe (late admittedly) that I am created by God, with all my flaws, for divine reasons and that my focusing less on what I look like and more on understanding those reasons and pursuing them with vigor brings the kind of contentedness and fulfillment I'll not find anywhere else.

How would most women cope with notional concepts of body image should they adopt the same mentality?

I think this to be a fair question but one society will ignore because of the stigma religion now has in this culture.  Or... because... I'm a guy and a religious one to boot.

It's devastatingly sad.

"Mind-numbingly stupid" (UPDATED)

Calah Alexander's brutal honesty on the idiocy of the #RaceTogether campaign is refreshing:

I was a Starbucks barista for years in college, and when I heard about the RaceTogether campaign I literally winced. There is not enough tip money in the universe to compensate baristas for making complicated drinks in 3 minutes while striking up corporate-forced conversations on an incredibly sensitive topic with complete strangers. And no amount of extra shots or drizzles of caramel can make up for some poor person’s day being ruined by getting the Racial Inquisition when all they really wanted was a cup of freaking coffee.

Honestly. Honestly.

It’s not just that the setting is massively inappropriate, nor that being forced to transcend the boundaries of a relationship based entirely on a monetary transaction is irritating as shit. What is so mind-numbingly stupid about their quickly-pulled campaign is captured beautifully in this candid moment on MSNBC:

This is now where we are in the national conversation on race. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream is still so far from coming true that it seems impossible it ever will. No one is judging each other by the content of their character. Nancy Giles didn’t even allow judgement on the content of Jay Smooth’s words without pointing back to the color of his skin. Our myopic obsession with talking about race on the national level has turned our country into a gross parody of the country the Civil Rights Movement fought for. Instead of letting go of race we’ve got a stranglehold on it. Instead of being color-blind, color is all we see. Even Nancy Giles complained that people have lambasted her for being a black woman who talks like a white woman, and have accused her of wanting to be white.

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with us?

What the hell indeed.

UPDATE: I failed to originally point out that Calah ends with a must see video highlighting the technical advances we've made to fight racism.  A must see.

"Anthropologists have found that ‘Slutty’ behavior is good for the species"

Get your attention?

David Virtue has more:

One of man’s persistent dreams is to find a good reason he can’t help sinning. It started with Adam’s trying to blame Eve. Modern man naturally turns to science for this, and as he has learned more about himself and the world around him, he has also grown more ingenious in finding ways to explain why he cannot help breaking the moral law. On the one hand we have cell phones and brain surgery, on the other sophisticated defenses of sexual treachery.

One popular excuse for sinning I call the “Margaret Mead Method.” I was reminded of it when flipping through my files and finding an article titled “The Virtues of Promiscuity,” the kind of title that gets your attention.

According to a journalist named Sally Lehrman, writing in The San Francisco Chronicle, anthropologists have found that “‘Slutty’ behavior is good for the species. Women everywhere have been selflessly engaging in trysts outside of matrimony for a good long time and for excellent reasons. Anthropologists say female promiscuity binds communities closer together and improves the gene pool.”

Some primitive tribes, these anthropologists claim, assume that women having sex with more than one man will help them survive, and even thrive. At least twenty “accept the principle that a child could, and ideally ought to, have more than one father.”

For all I know, this may be true. Every culture gets sex wrong, and female promiscuity may be these tribes’ peculiar way of getting it wrong. Sluttishness may be the sort of thing from which Christianity could deliver them, as it could deliver the American male whose culture demands sexual conquests as a sign of success.

As you might expect, the writer doesn’t leave it there. 

We've sunk so low that now we look to science to support our tendency to build walls between ourselves and God.

We so need a Savior.

Thankfully, there's one out there to fill this need.

Help us Lord Jesus.

“I’m not a Catholic,” [Al] Gore said, “but I could be persuaded to become one.”

It all depends on Pope Francis apparently:

For the third time in the last few years, Al Gore, founder and chairman of the Climate Reality Project, spoke at the festival on Friday. Naturally, his interactive discussion focused on addressing the climate crisis. The former vice president focused on the need to “punish climate-change deniers, saying politicians should pay a price for rejecting ‘accepted science,'” said the Chicago Tribune.

Gore said forward-thinking investors are moving away from companies that invest in fossil fuels and towards companies investing in renewable energy. “We need to put a price on carbon to accelerate these market trends,” Gore told the Chicago Tribune, referring to a proposed federal cap-and-trade system that would penalize companies that exceeded their carbon-emission limits. “And in order to do that, we need to put a price on denial in politics.”

...

The former Veep even gave a nod to Pope Francis during his talk, showing a slide of the pontiff and saying “How about this Pope?” Pope Francis celebrated his two-year anniversary as Pope on Friday, riding a wave of popularity “that has reinvigorated the Catholic Church in ways not seen since the days of St. John Paul II,” said the Chicago Tribune. Gore said he was looking forward to the Pope’s highly anticipated encyclical on the environment which is due to be released in June or July. “I’m not a Catholic,” Gore said, “but I could be persuaded to become one.”

A tiny voice tells me that hell would freeze over before Al Gore becomes Catholic but... hey... I'm open to the possibility.

"If sacrilege is your cup tea, boy oh boy, is this parish just for you"

The Crescat is upset and justifiably in the eyes of any serious Catholic:

I just had the absolute worst experience ever during mass, at my Abuela’s funeral no less. I wasn’t going to post about here but I feel I have a duty to warn you all. If you ever happen to find yourself visiting the Tidewater area of Virginia and need to go to mass… just drive right by St. Therese in Chesapeake. Simply make the sign of the cross and keep on driving. Don’t look back. Trust me.

But of course, feel free to completely ignore my advice if you like your tabernacle located near the church office, absolutely love ginormous burlap banners, and simply loathe kneelers. Perhaps you find it charming and personable that the Sign of Peace last twenty minutes long because the priest likes to walk around and shake everyone’s hand. How friendly, right?

Maybe those stodgy, formal processions aren’t your thing either and you like a little a warm up how-we-doing-this-morning routine before you get down to mass-y business.

But if sacrilege is your cup tea, boy oh boy, is this parish just for you – especially if you have complete and utter disrespect for the Eucharist and disdain for those disgusting “traddies” that like to receive on the tongue. I mean gross, right? Yeah, to hell with those people. Lets just be jerks to them at their grandmother’s funeral.

I mean I’ve heard stories about priests refusing to give communion to people kneeling or on the tongue before but have never witnessed it myself. I just had such a hard time believing a priest could be so poorly formed or dismissively casual with the Eucharist.

Woa, wait a minute, Katrina. 

This is the internet and everyone reading this will know exactly who are talking about.

Good.

What this priest did was totally inexcusable.

It is indeed... read the whole thing for context.

Non-Catholics will likely miss out on the reason for Katrina's outrage.  And not much more than 5 years ago, I would've as well.  It took some faithful and gentle Catholics to set me straight when I took the Eucharist lightly but hey... I wasn't a priest.  This Catholic priest should know better.

The Anchoress (who was one of those faithful and gentle Catholics who set me straight) has an opinion or two on the subject, here she is in part:

I despise these “pita communions” even when the pita is rendered within the specifications of the RS, and for a very simple reason: crumbs.

Pitas crumble. The altar becomes laden with tiny, sometimes microscopic bits of the Flesh and Blood of Christ. In disbursal, more crumbs. They get knocked or windswept to the ground with our movements. Thus the Body of Christ is trod underfoot (or sucked into a vacuum and disposed of thoughtlessly) and this is a grave insult to His Presence.

I recall reading a story about Dorothy Day, how a priest performed Mass in her home and — because he was all groovy and “simple” he used an earthenware coffee mug for the Precious Blood. After the Mass, Day kissed the coffee mug, then shattered it and buried, so it would never be used for anything as mundane as coffee again. I wonder how she would feel about all of this. I think she’d be scandalized, by the pitas, by the lack of piety, by the push-along.

Some things you Just. Don’t. Do. One of them is subject His Majesty to your own conceited ideas of what is “humble” and befitting his Body and Blood, or presuming to know what demonstrates “unity with the poor.” A cousin of mine, a Capuchin who has long-served the poor, learned how much they hated seeing Christ’s Body offered to them from straw baskets and jelly glasses: it caused them pain. They wondered if, because they were poor, they to be denied a measure of Christ’s beauty and grandeur so common to the middle classes and above?

My cousin learned to buff up the good stuff and use it, in honor of both Christ Jesus and the poor who sought him.

She's got more and as always, you should read it all.

What makes this whole story particularly interesting for me is that the involved parish is less than 30 miles from my home.  

I'm hoping my Bishop looks into it and responds accordingly.

It should not stand.

For Christ's sake.

Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome - The Alt Archives

I was most pleased to stumble today across this archive of posts put together by Scott Eric Alt chronicling the prevailing idiocy passed along by a wide variety of buffoons (sadly including Rush Limbaugh who has dropped a number of notches down my respect ladder due to his repeated manifestations of PFDS).  

I guess I shouldn't be so hard on them.  I was once a buffoon in that I would parrot much of what I'd heard about Catholicism, more times than not in complete ignorance.  And that it seems is what's happening here.

There are now 11 volumes posted at Scott's place and I'm sure there'll be more.  Here's an excerpt of his latest related piece:

Pope Fran­cis Derange­ment Syn­drome, in the sec­u­lar media, has reached a crit­i­cal mass where more and more poor souls are report­ing them­selves shocked, shocked to find that the pope is Catholic. Such gasps would trickle in before, but now they seem to be more fre­quent. Just this week­end there were two melt­downs in the lib­eral press: the first at Mar­ket­Watch, over the shock­ing dis­cov­ery that the pope is not in favor of con­tra­cep­tion; the sec­ond at the Daily Screech, over the shock­ing dis­cov­ery that the pope is not in favor of gen­der the­ory. I mean, how could such things be? And you really have to mar­vel when one of these scrib­blers turns out to be a the­ol­ogy pro­fes­sor at a uni­ver­sity that is, so we are told, Catholic. I under­stand that there are dis­si­dents at Notre Dame—we all know that!—but that any of them should be gape-jawed to learn that the pope is Catholic is a mat­ter of pro­found won­der to me. Per­haps it shouldn’t be, but it is.

I begin at Mar­ket­Watch, where Paul Far­rell writes to tell us that “Pope Fran­cis really is a cap­i­tal­ist.” Well, this will be news to Rush Lim­baugh and Adam Pshaw (he spells it “Shaw”). But Mr. Far­rell is not cowed by such names. “For­get his ant­i­cap­i­tal­ist, anti­con­sumerism rhetoric,” he says with a scorn­ful wave of the hand. The pope is a cap­i­tal­ist! and the rea­son he knows this is because the pope speaks out against arti­fi­cial birth con­trol. Watch how Mr. Far­rell makes this sin­gu­lar and aston­ish­ing leap...

It is indeed quite the leap.  Go read the rest and minimally be entertained but more likely be educated.

And keep an eye out for new posts in the series.

PFDS hasn't reached epidemic status just yet but that could certainly become a possibility as the press continues to find evidence supporting the Pope's Catholicity.

Carry on.

Obama's High Horse comments at the Prayer Breakfast (UPDATED)

This is going to get lots of air time today, particularly in cyberspace:

The president said that while religion is a source for good around the world, people of all faiths have been willing to "hijack religion for their own murderous ends."

"Unless we get on our high horse and think that this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ," Obama said. "In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.

"So it is not unique to one group or one religion," Obama said. "There is a tendency in us, a simple tendency that can pervert and distort our faith."

There's much I want to say about this... much I'd like to say... but really, I think Mark Shea's words, in a piece he intended for moderate Muslims some time ago, are words I personally think the President, at least in part, would have better used to make his point.

As a Catholic, I’m not much interested when an Episcopalian demands women priests or a Baptist insists we baptize only adults.  But when our internal affairs spill over into matters of the common good, they are no longer our internal affairs and those outside the Church (or the Umma) have every right to voice an opinion.  When a priest starts raping kids or an imam starts preaching the glories of suicide bombing, it becomes everybody’s business.

So here’s what this Catholic brings to the table out of the experience of his own tradition.  Since moderate Muslims have no Magisterium of their own, take a tip from ours and make a careful note of how John Paul II dealt with our own history of sin and violence.  As the Church approached the Third Millennium, the Pope took a clear look at the sins of Catholics over the past thousand years and did not say, "The Crusades had nothing to do with Catholicism. The persecution of Jews had nothing to do with Catholicism. The oppression of women did not involve Catholics. The Church has never had anything to do with racism." Instead, he made an unvarnished assessment of the sins of the Church's members (including those members called "popes and bishops") and said, on behalf of the Catholic community, "Mea Culpa".

Muslims serious about healing their people of the cancer of radical violence should do likewise: They might even try reading Tertio Millennio Adveniente and mining it for tips on how to forthrightly discuss the sins of their own tradition.  Don't give us a song and dance that the Islamic conquest of large portions of what was once Christian Africa and Asia has “nothing to do with Islam”. Don’t try to tell us that the citizens of Constantinople held a referendum and peacefully opted to turn Hagia Sophia into a mosque one fine summer day in 1453.  Don’t suggest that the massive hordes repelled at Vienna and Lepanto had nothing to do with Islam.  Don’t tell us that the kidnap of Christian children and their indoctrination as Islamic Janissaries was the work of Buddhists or Swedenborgians.  It's as persuasive as a song and dance that the murder of Rhenish Jews by Crusaders or the rape of children by priests had nothing to do with Catholics. Instead, face the fact that these people are your people and the first order of business is not "Tell outsiders to stop seeing what they see" but "Tell insiders that we have to find some way of dealing with the violence in our tradition or it will destroy us."

The President, in the minutiae of his words to the attendees of this morning's Prayer Breakfast, may have been correct but in the larger picture, in the realm of the here and now, he has yet again squandered an opportunity to lead.

No real suprise from this huckster.

UPDATE: There have been a number of responses to Obama's words worth linking to from respected sources.  Here are but a few:

Dr. Taylor Marshall:

Was every single action of every single crusade morally righteous? No. I’m not trying to defend every single deed. But the Crusades in general were a defensive struggle against Islam.

Kathy Schiffer:

Were there Crusaders who abused their power, misguided attempts by some, errors and sins on the part of some Crusaders?  Yes, being human, some of them committed serious sins under the guise of “religious motivation.”  Perhaps the worst failure was the Fifth Crusade, the so-called “Children’s Crusade,” in which as many as 40,000 children, mostly from France and Germany, boarded ships in the hopes of arriving in the Holy Land to help the cause, and ended up in Muslim slave markets.  But over all, the intent was noble.  It’s only our politically correct pandering to Islam that makes it difficult to remember that.

Scott Eric Alt:

Now, in the most kind and nar­row con­struc­tion you can assign those words, Mr. Obama is not alto­gether wrong. Peo­ple have “com­mit­ted ter­ri­ble deeds” in the name of Christ. That is true. But.

To say that that is no dif­fer­ent than cut­ting the heads off of babies? To say that that is no dif­fer­ent than torch­ing pris­on­ers alive in a caged inferno? No. That is wrong, igno­rant, false, and vile. What Mr. Obama is say­ing is that we have no moral right to call what ISISdoes evil. What he is say­ing is that we can­not fight against them and be entirely just. That is the kind of man who is our Com­man­der in Chief. The man in charge of our mil­i­tary says these kind of things.

So what we need to do, once more, is put the Cru­sades into his­tor­i­cal con­text.

And in a dated but most relevant piece, Thomas F. Madden:

It is generally thought that Christians attacked Muslims without provocation to seize their lands and forcibly convert them. The Crusaders were Europe’s lacklands and ne’er-do-wells, who marched against the infidels out of blind zealotry and a desire for booty and land. As such, the Crusades betrayed Christianity itself. They transformed “turn the other cheek” into “kill them all; God will know his own.”

Every word of this is wrong.