Senior Mom

Many high school sports have become year-round activities, whether it’s open gym for basketball and volleyball or off-season lifting for football. My oldest son is a football player, and football is his only sport. Next year he will be a senior.

Derek came home from lifting recently and announced that all of the other seniors (this year’s juniors are now considered football seniors) were either playing baseball or running track. He, therefore, was the only senior at the off-season workouts. I commented that it was up to him to provide senior leadership to all of the under-classmen. He’s not big on leadership, and he gave me one of his “yeah, right Dad” looks.

More interesting was the reaction of his mother. In an expression of combined fear, disgust, and constipation, she erupted, “Does that mean I’m supposed to be a senior mom?” The mothers of the senior players, you see, play an important behind (and sometimes in front of) the scenes support role for the team. It’s a role that my dear wife clearly is not looking forward to.

I’m not sure what senior dads do.

The Church Flatulent

Quote of the day (yesterday, actually) has to go to Professor Paul Rahe of Hillsdale College. Writing on Ricochet, Prof. Rahe closes a post on Abortion and Contraception thusly:

Persecution can be and often is good for the Church. In its absence, the Church Militant has a way of turning into the Church Flatulent.

Suddenly Lent

SNAP! Just like that, the liturgical season changes, and it’s Lent. With Advent, you’ve got the wind down of the previous year with the celebration of Christ the King and the secular shift toward Christmas. After Christmas, we’re eased gently into Ordinary Time with Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord. Lent is different. We’re cruising along through Ordinary Time when Ash Wednesday jumps out of the bushes at us in the middle of the week. We are told that we have to fast and abstain, and suddenly the atmosphere becomes penitential.

Can you tell that I don’t take fasting particularly well?

There are some cultural (i.e., non-liturgical) precursors to Ash Wednesday. There’s Carnival, Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday (I admit to indulging in a Fat Tuesday ritual of taking lunch at a Chinese buffet). But these celebrations aren’t any kind of transitionary preparations. They are the equivalent of hitting the accelerator just before smashing into a wall, which makes the collision that much more jarring. It is much more appropriate that the feast follow the fast, as Easter follows Good Friday.

For me, Lent comes just in time this year. The emphasis on almsgiving, prayer, and fasting calls me to reform areas of my life in which I have grown lax. It’s not as though Christians only do these things during Lent. We should do them year-round. Lent, however, is a season for renewed observance. We are reminded just how far we have relapsed and invited to make good things habitual once again.

Yes, the onset of Lent is like a slap in the face – a slap that’s needed to restore our spiritual senses to the real world. It is time to re-focus our vision and discipline on what really matters.

Avoid Giving Offense

I had to allow myself a private chuckle this morning as I read today’s selection for the first reading at mass. Recall that last Sunday, we heard from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: “Avoid giving offense, whether to the Jews or Greeks or the church of God.” (1 Cor 10:32) Contrast that with these words from the epistle of St. James: “Do you want proof, you ignoramus, that faith without works is useless?” (James 2:20)

These are the New American Bible (NAB) translations used by the Catholic Church in America for her liturgies. Other translations provide a little less contrast.

Bad Publicity

In the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel, we hear of a leper who approaches Jesus and is healed. Jesus tells the leper to present himself to the priests in accordance with the Mosaic Law. Jesus also warns the man (sternly!) to tell no one anything. The ex-leper disregarded the warning and “began to publicize the whole matter.” The passage, Mark 1:40-45, was the gospel pronounced at masses this past weekend.

Many commentators have offered their thoughts regarding why Jesus wanted the incident kept secret. I find the most plausible explanation to be that He knew what would happen when the word got out. People would come from far and wide seeking healing of their every infirmity. Their focus would be primarily selfish, and would interfere with his mission of proclaiming the Good News. Indeed, Mark shares some of these consequences in his Gospel. “He spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly.” (Mark 1:45) The crowds get to be so bad that the disciples and family of Jesus begin to worry (Mark 3:21).

The Church has been entrusted with continuing the mission of Christ in the modern world. Just as Jesus faced threats to his ability to communicate his message, the Church today finds itself faced with unexpected obstacles. Foremost in my mind currently, given the events of the last few weeks, are the legions of contracepting Catholics who disregard Church teaching and then blab about it to every pollster who calls. Their very public disobedience causes people to discount the Church’s teaching authority: either it’s not important, it’s not binding, or it’s simply incorrect.

The Church has been, to some extent, acquiescent in allowing a very large proportion of its members to dissent from her teaching. The pontiffs, of course, from Pius XII to Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI, have consistently taught the moral truth about abortion, contraception, and sterilization. Most Catholics, however, don’t read papal encyclicals, apostolic letters, or catechetical lectures. They depend upon their local pastor to steer them to spiritual safety. Aside from a few brave souls, the branch managers of the universal Church have been hesitant to broach the subject, lest the contrast with secular orthodoxy lead the luke-warm to bolt for the doors.

The same collection of readings that saw the proclamation of Mark 1:40-45 for the Gospel used Psalm 32 for the Responsorial Psalm. Verses 8 and 9 of the Psalm evoke a powerful image that I believe fits the majority of contracepting Catholics. “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you. Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you.” Those who reduce Church teaching to “Thou Shalt Not . . .” without attempting to understand the basis for that teaching are naturally going to resent what they see as interference in their personal lives.

In my mind, I can picture a personification of the Church, desperately trying to be heard amid a sea of equine beasts wanting to spit out their bits and straining at their bridles. We are one body in Christ, and there is no such thing as a purely private sin. Every sin harms the entire body, and some serve to rob the body of its voice. For those who have sinned, forgiveness is freely offered. But for the love of God, don’t make things worse by going around happily publicizing your sinfulness.

A Two-Front War

I had thought that the 2012 elections were going to be about economic issues – unsustainable government deficit spending and the inflationary monetary policy of the Federal Reserve. This was supposed to have been an election cycle where the social issues became secondary, to be dealt with after the existential threat had passed. Mitch Daniels, the Republican Governor of Indiana, famously called for a truce in the culture war due to the rising tide of red ink that was threatening to drown the country.

Suddenly, though, the social issues are back. It’s as if the scales have not fallen from my eyes, they’ve been ripped off, taking my eyelids with them. The creeping tyranny of an Executive Branch that is weary of having to follow the Constitution has become every bit the existential threat that Daniels’s red tide is.

The latest target is the First Amendment, guaranteeing Freedom of Religion to every citizen of the Republic. First, the Obama Administration tried to claim that churches and religious institutions could not discriminate in their employment, even of ministers. They tried to make it the law of the land that the Catholic Church would have to open the priesthood to women. Fortunately, the Supreme Court ruled against them 9 to 0. Not even the most liberal justices would condone such a naked usurpation of religious freedom.

Now we have the mandate from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that all employers, including religious institutions, but excluding narrowly defined churches) must provide all employees with free contraception and sterilization. This is clearly a violation of the consistent moral teaching of the Catholic Church, and the bishops of the United States have unanimously and loudly objected, stating that they would not and could not abide by the ruling. President Obama, who during the debt negotiations was willing to see the Federal government shut down before giving up federal funding of Planned Parenthood, doubled down. Most of the mainstream media mis-framed the argument, clearly with a bias in favor of the administration. Now, he has announced an "accommodation" which is no compromise at all, since all employers will still be required to provide health insurance that provides free contraception and sterilization. It is a blatant assault on liberty and an affront to Catholics who take the moral teaching of the Church seriously.

At the same time, a private cancer-research fund, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, announced that it would suspend financial support for Planned Parenthood. The Planned Parenthood goons went into overdrive, even going so far as hacking and defacing the Komen website, leading Komen to sheepishly apologize and restore funding.

Yes, the culture wars are alive and kicking. We focused on one front of the war and neglected the other, allowing the forces of evil (and I do not use the phrase lightly) to attack us in the rear. Now we have to fight a two-front war, and I fear that the momentum is against us. If we can't reverse the course of recent history, our government will cease to be of the people, by the people, and for the people. The Constitution will become nothing more than words on parchment, and the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution will be worth no more than the paper on which they are written.

The Archbishop's Letter

The bishops of the United States have come out swinging in response to the Obama administration’s ruling that nearly all employers must include full coverage of contraception and sterilization in their healthcare plans. In the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, Archbishop Dennis Schnurr penned a letter to his flock stating, “We cannot – we will not – comply with this unjust law.”

The Archbishop’s letter was distributed as a bulletin insert at my sister’s parish in Dayton. Fr. Martin Fox notes that he read the letter at all of his Piqua masses this past weekend, and used the occasion to preach on what some consider to be the more counter-cultural teachings of the Church. I want to believe that the Archbishop's letter was distributed throughout the parishes of the Archdiocese. However, not a word was uttered in our little corner of “God’s country.” Maybe next weekend…

[UPDATE] Not a word was spoken from the pulpit, but the Archbishop's letter was included as an insert to the February 5 bulletin.

A Friend in Pain

I have a friend who injured a tendon in his ankle a couple of months ago. Several weeks in a boot resulted in no improvement, so he had surgery at the beginning of the year. Based on his comments, it sounds like the days after the surgery were very painful.

As a Catholic (my friend is also Catholic), I approach pain and suffering as an opportunity to be united with Christ. Through His Passion, He gave meaning to suffering, and we can unite our suffering to His, so that our suffering takes on meaning and becomes redemptive. It strikes me as bad form, however, to try to point this out to someone as they are experiencing the pain. The connection should be established before the suffering is entered into. The admonition to “offer it up” is not well received unless the soul has been properly prepared.

What then could I say to my friend in pain? To my delight, the liturgy came to my rescue in the form of the Collect prayer for Wednesday of the First Week of Ordinary Time. While I couldn’t come up with the words to tactfully say, “Hey dummy! Offer it up!” I could say, “I thought of you when I read this prayer from today’s mass.” He gave it a thumbs up, so I assume that it was well received.

O God, who willed that our infirmities
be borne by your Only Begotten Son
to show the value of human suffering,
listen in kindness to our prayers
for our brothers and sisters who are sick;
grant that all who are oppressed by pain, distress or other afflictions
may know that they are chosen
among those proclaimed blessed
and are united to Christ
in his suffering for the salvation of the world.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, you Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

Lessons from Babe Ruth

In his EWTN homily for the Conversion of St. Paul on Wednesday, Fr. Joseph Mary MFVA, read a 1948 letter written by Babe Ruth shortly before his death. It is a touching letter, and deserves to be read more widely. The full letter is available online at the Catholic Resource Education Center, but here’s a brief excerpt.

I strayed from the church, but don't think I forgot my religious training. I just overlooked it. I prayed often and hard, but like many irrepressible young fellows, the swift tempo of living shoved religion into the background.

So what good was all the hard work and ceaseless interest of the Brothers, people would argue? You can't make kids religious, they say, because it just won't take. Send kids to Sunday School and they too often end up hating it and the church.

Don't you believe it. As far as I'm concerned, and I think as far as most kids go, once religion sinks in, it stays there—deep down. The lads who get religious training, get it where it counts—in the roots. They may fail it, but it never fails them. When the score is against them, or they get a bum pitch, that unfailing Something inside will be there to draw on. I've seen it with kids. I know from the letters they write me. The more I think of it, the more important I feel it is to give kids "the works" as far as religion is concerned. They'll never want to be holy—they'll act like tough monkeys in contrast, but somewhere inside will be a solid little chapel. It may get dusty from neglect, but the time will come when the door will be opened with much relief. But the kids can't take it, if we don't give it to them.

An Old Dog in January

The almost always colorful James Lileks writes in Wednesday's Bleat about his morose day. I can relate to what he's saying - the moroseness, the paternal anxiety, the progressively enfeebled dog. I get it.

January in Ohio is no fun either. The days are gray, and even when the air isn't frigid, there's a bite in the wind. We've pretty much avoided (as if we had anything to do with it!) snow so far this winter, but that's supposed to change soon. I can only hope that the new tires on my Focus help it handle a little more deftly than a toboggan, which is what it was like driving in snow last year.

Adding to the gaiety of the month is the great sugar crash of the holidays and knowing that the next holiday doesn't come round until April (unless you're a government worker), and that's Good Friday. There's not a whole lot of celebrating going on that day - the celebration is two days later on Easter Sunday. Until then, it's a long slog of five-day work weeks, sitting hour upon hour in front of my computer in my gray cubicle in a brick building under a gray Ohio sky.

Lileks writes of how he starts to fear the worst when his daughter's bus is twenty minutes late. She is his only child, so maybe his anxiety is heightened by the fact that he doesn't have any spares. On the other hand, with more children, maybe I get that many more opportunities to let my fears gnaw at me. Mostly though, my fears lock onto my dear wife, who drives our van like it's a formula race car (I exaggerate, but only a little). She has an excellent driving record, but whenever she's late in arriving somewhere or driving in bad whether, the spectre of horror enters my imagination. What would I do if I had to raise these kids without her? The power of sin is strong in me - even when I'm worrying about the safety of a loved one, I somehow manage to make it all about me. So I say a prayer and try, in vain, to put it out of my mind.

Finally, there is the dog. Toby is not the close friend and collaborator that Jasper is to Mr. Lileks. Yet I am quite fond of him, and it pains me to see him struggle with the steps and the linoleum. When we go out, he has to negotiate a step down from the kitchen to the mud room. He long ago lost the ability to make the transition with grace. Now, he has to start his run a step or two away, and if anything enters his trajectory, he's running into it head first. He's plowed into my legs full-bore many times after I've inadvertently stepped into his path.

We have gates on the deck to keep the dogs (we have two) from accidentally (accidentally to us, intentionally to them) getting out and running loose around the neighborhood. When they need to relieve themselves, we hook a cable to the collar and let them off the deck individually, then come back later to unhook the cable and let them back onto the deck. The deck has two steps down to the ground. Yesterday, when I went to bring Toby in, he was waiting for me on the second step. I opened the gate, and he tried unsuccessfully to climb the one step to the deck. He had to go back down to the ground, two paces back, and make a run at it.

It makes me wonder how many years the old dog has left in him.

I know there will be sunny days between today and Good Friday, but this week it's all gray. And I know that my wife and kids have guardian angels aplenty, such that the probability of serious incident is small. And I know that the life span of a lab mutt is about twelve years, and Toby is pushing eleven. Still, these things eat at a person. That much, at least, I know that I have in common with James Lileks.

Ordinary Time

I mentioned to my kids yesterday that the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord was the last day of Christmas and that Ordinary Time began today. My two oldest, both of whom earned high honors on the high school honor roll last quarter, both asked if that meant we gained or lost an hour.

Sigh.

Apostle or Presbyter?

Michael Barber, writing over at The Sacred Page, has posted a compelling argument that the author of the fourth gospel was the Apostle John. Most of us have always assumed that the Evangelist and the Apostle were one and the same, but many modern "scripture scholars" have turned critical (and doubtful) eyes upon the authors of many of the books contained in the Bible.

Barber is confident that he is correct in attributing authorship to the Apostle (under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, of course), and he ends with a strongly worded conclusion.

In conclusion, I want to say that, at first blush, it would seem that the "academically responsible" approach would be to remain noncommittal about Johannine authorship. However, I'm coming to the conclusion that the opposite is true. Hedging on Johannine authorship seems to betray an unwillingness to acknowledge the coherence of the early testimony with the internal evidence.

One wonders if such reluctance is motivated by other concerns. Clearly, asserting that someone like the rich young ruler is the author of the Fourth Gospel seems to stretch the limits of credulity. Rather, it would seem the unanimous patristic witness was reliable when it held that the Gospel the manuscripts all call "The Gospel According to John" was written by, well... er, John.

Who are these "scholars" who "betray an unwillingness to acknowledge the coherence of the early testimony with internal evidence?" In Jesus of Nazareth, From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (Doubleday 2007), Pope Benedict XVI seems to stake out a postion ("I entirely concur . . .") that draws a distinction between the Apostle John and another John, the Presbyter, who wrote the Gospel.

. . . in Ephesus there was something like a Johannine school, which traced its origins to Jesus' favorite disciple himself, but in which certain "Presbyter John" presided as the utimate authority. This "presbyter" John appears as the sender and author of the Second and Third Letters of John (in each case in the first verse of the first chapter) simply under the title "the presbyter" (without reference to the name John). He is evidently not the same as the Apostle, which means that here in the canonical text we encounter expressly the mysterious figure of the presbyter. He must have been closely connected with the Apostle; perhaps he had even been acquainted with Jesus himself. After the death of the Apostle, he was identified wholly as the bearer of the latter's heritage, and in the collective memory, the two figures were increasingly fused. At any rate, there seem to be grounds for ascribing to "Presbyter John" an essential role in the definitive shaping of the Gospel, though he must always have regarded himself as the trustee of the tradition he had received from the son of Zebedee.

I entirely concur with the conclusion that Peter Stuhlmacher has drawn from the above data. He holds "that the contents of the Gospel go back to the disciple whom Jesus (especially) loved. The presbyter understood himself as his transmitter and mouthpiece" (Biblische Theologie, II, p. 206). In a similar vein Stuhlmacher cites E. Ruckstuhl and P. Dschullnigg to the effect that "the author of the Gospel of John is, as it were, the literary executor of the favorite disciple" (ibid., p. 207).

For Your Sake God Has Become Man

The Office of Readings for Christmas Eve features a selection from a sermon by Saint Augustine. Here are the first two paragraphs:

Awake, mankind! For your sake God has become man. Awake, you who sleep, rise up from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you. I tell you again: for your sake, God became man.

You would have suffered eternal death, had he not been born in time. Never would you have been freed from sinful flesh, had he not taken on himself the likeness of sinful flesh. You would have suffered everlasting unhappiness, had it not been for this mercy. You would never have returned to life, had he not shared your death. You would have been lost if he had not hastened ‘to your aid. You would have perished, had he not come.

How fortunate we are that God did not leave us to our fallen fate! But clearly, it seems to me, the belief in this truth has vast implications for our whole outlook on life. What would be the implications of being consigned by Original Sin to our sinful flesh without redemption? As Christians, our relationship with God is radically different from those who do not accept the divinity of Christ and his redeeming sacrifice. I'm thinking primarily of Jews and Moslems, who, like Christians, believe in the one God.

At Christmas time, we celebrate the fact that the Son of God took on a human nature and entered the world as one of us so that we might receive the sanctifying grace lost by our first parents. He entered the world as a helpless infant, just as any other man would. On this blessed Christmas Day, let us celebrate our common humanity with Christ and all of God's children.

Merry Christmas!

Outside My Window

The short reading selected by the editors of Magnificat for today’s (December 12, Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe) morning prayer was from the Song of Songs. It speaks of the end of winter and the appearance of flowers.

He says to me,
“Arise my beloved, my beautiful,
and come!
For see, the winter is past,
the rains are over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth.”
(Song of Songs 2:10-12)

Maybe the imagery invoked by the passage is appropriate for the Third Week of Advent. But this is the second week of December. The first day of winter is just over a week away. Here in Ohio, the temperatures have failed to climb above freezing for the last several days, and, although warmer temperatures are coming, the forecast is for rain.

I found it difficult to read without noting the contrast with conditions outside my window.

The Clay and the Potter

On the First Sunday of Advent this year (Cycle B), the Lectionary had us read a passage from chapters 63 and 64 of the Book of Isaiah. That’s in the post-exile, messianic part of the book. The last line of the selected passage reads,

Yet, O LORD, you are our father; we are the clay and you the potter: we are all the work of your hands.

In the New American Bible, this is Isaiah 64:7. In my New International Version and my Revised Standard Version, this is 64:8. The difference appears to be in where to end chapter 63 and start chapter 64. Silly me! I had thought that the chapters and verses were standardized by St. Jerome in the fourth century.

But I digress from what I thought was interesting.

On Friday of the First Week of Advent, the Lectionary directed us to an earlier chapter of Isaiah, where the prophet is leveling his indictment against Israel, describing how she has been unfaithful to the covenant. The passage used at mass begins with verse 17 of chapter 29, but the verse immediately before it draws an interesting contrast to the selection from the previous Sunday:

Your perversity is as though the potter were taken to be the clay: As though what is made should say of its maker, “He did not make me!” Or the vessel should say of the potter, “He does not understand.” (Is 29:16)

Which chapter, 29 or 64, more closely reflects the prevailing attitude of our culture today? Are we clay that acknowledges the potter and are willing to be worked into a useful vessel, or do we think that we can shape the potter to our desires? Israel had to be conquered and sent into exile to move from the hubris of Is 29:16 to the humility of Is 64:7/8. I pray that we might respond to a more gentle correction, even as I doubt that anything short of extreme will get our attention.

Joy and Sorrow

For those who pray the Rosary, Mondays typically bring meditation on the joyful mysteries. During my Monday morning reflections lately, I can’t help but notice the proximity in the mysteries of joy and sorrow. At least two of the joyful mysteries of the Rosary are closely related to two of the Seven Sorrows of Mary.

The fourth joyful mystery is the Presentation, Recounted in the second chapter of Luke’s Gospel, Mary and Joseph took the infant Jesus to the Temple, in accordance with the Mosaic Law. Yet the joy of the Presentation is tempered by the encounter with Simeon: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.” (Luke 2:34-35) This is the first of Mary’s seven sorrows.

The fifth joyful mystery is the finding of Jesus in the Temple. This scene also comes from the second chapter of Luke, when Jesus is twelve years old. Before he was found, however, he was lost. Mary and Joseph did not find him until the third day. The search for the lost Jesus is the third of Mary’s seven sorrows.

Is there something to be learned about life here? Can we conclude from this that joy and sorrow often walk hand-in-hand?

I thought of this again while attending mass on Thanksgiving Day. The month of November starts with All Saints Day and All Souls Day. Throughout the month, our parish has a book prominently located within the sanctuary with a lit vigil candle. The book lists members of the parish who have died during the preceding year. Even on the day set aside to give thanks for God’s blessings, we were reminded that some were no longer with us. We can hope that they are in heaven, or at least being cleansed in purgatory with heaven as their ultimate destination, but we can’t know with certainty. At any rate, we are deprived of their company in this life.

Must every moment of joy be touched with a hint of sorrow?

Courtly, Theological, and Poetic

In his sermon for the Solemnity of Christ the King, Fr. Robert Barron previews some of the prayers in the new English translation of the Roman Missal, which goes into effect this coming Sunday. He ties it all together by noting that the language is more courtly – one would never use street language in a royal court. It is also, he says, more theologically dense and poetic.

After hearing the translation that we’ve been using for all of my adult life, and then hearing the new translation, both supposedly from the same Latin source, it is hard for me not to feel as though somebody cheated me out of my liturgical heritage!

The Cost of a Family

Just the other night, my dear wife turned to me in exasperation, asking, “Where is all of our money going?” (She might not have used those exact words, but you get the drift.” Like the answer to a prayer, the United States Department of Agriculture provided the reason way back on June 9. I just happened to hear about it on the radio this morning.

The USDA estimates that a middle-income family can expect to spend about $227K over the next 17 years on a child born today. The government agency even provides a nifty little calculator, allowing you to estimate how much you spend each year for your little ones. We have seven kids – the calculator only allows for six. However, the average cost comes out very close to $10K per child per year. You can do the math for seven kids.

Can there be any doubt that, in the view of the United States government, children are a tremendous financial drain? The effect of a report like this is to discourage young couples from embarking on the adventure of parenthood.

Stuck on Seven

Every other year, the Lectionary walks Catholics through St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans during the weekday masses (weeks 28 through 31 of Ordinary Time). Those who only attend mass on Sunday take a trip through Romans every third year, in Cycle A (2011 is a Cycle A year). The Sunday readings from Romans occur from the 9th to the 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time.

When the Lectionary takes us through Romans, I try to follow along. I think I do a pretty good job of tracing Paul’s logic through the first six chapters, but I always seem to miss the turn at Chapter seven. I have to back up and re-read, and back up and re-read, and back up and re-read yet again before I start to think that maybe I’m reading it correctly. By correctly, I mean according to the Catholic rules that say it has to fit in with everything else.

Anyhow, because I get hung up on Chapter seven, I tend to fall behind when the rest of the Church moves on. Friday of Week 30 is in Chapter nine (or would be, if it weren’t superseded this year by the Feast of Sts. Simon and Jude), and Saturday is in Chapter eleven. I am truly thankful for the Church’s guidance, but I need to get caught up. I hope I don’t have to read any of Chapters eight through eleven more than twice!

Tax Plans

Herman Cain is enjoying some popularity as a Republican contender for the presidency of the United States. His big idea is a 9-9-9 tax plan. Huntsman, Romney, Perry, and all the others have a tax plan. There’s only one problem: the President doesn’t determine tax policy. He can suggest what he wants to Congress, but the rates and types of taxes that can be collected (legally) are out of his hands. The centerpiece of Cain’s campaign to win the job is something that’s not in the job description.

That’s not to say that the President can’t do anything to affect the economy of the nation. All of the bureaucratic agencies that interpret legislation to impose regulations on businesses and individuals across the country are part of the Executive Branch. The President can negotiate trade agreements (subject to Congressional approval) that impacts imports and exports. Plus, of course, all of those federal government offices spend money, and reducing discretionary spending would reduce the amount of tax revenue necessary to balance the budget (or, more likely, reduce the size of the budget deficit).

So when do the Republican candidates get a chance to shoot themselves in the feet with their foreign policy proposals?