University of Florida: Yes! to Death

The University of Florida my be the first institution, following his release from prison, to provide Jack ("Dr. Death") Kevorkian with a forum to disseminate his belief that more of the sick and elderly just need to die.

Kevorkian accepted an offer to speak at the university on October 1. He will be paid $50,000.

When Larry King interviewed him, he said that he felt "it was important to speak to young people in high school and college about these issues."

And given a forum by the State of Florida, too...

If you are old, sick, disabled, or imagine you ever could be any of those things, I think you should seriously start considering leaving Florida, soon.

The Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation is sponsoring an online petition asking the University to rescind the invitation.

From the Petition:

This invitation is an affront to everyone who stands for the value and the dignity of every human life. Dr. Kevorkian is determined to instill the future leaders of our nation with his twisted ethics of euthanasia. We need everyone to join us in telling the President of the University of Florida that it is unacceptable to invite Jack Kevorkian to spread his message of death and violence on the campus.

In another, saner age, a man like Kevorkian would have been treated as the monster and pariah he is.

In our age, he's given television interviews and University speaking appointments.

The Future for Orthodox Catholics in the Republican Party

The other day I was listening to the Neal Boortz show (I don't listen regularly - Boortz exemplifies I've-got-mine-the-rest-of-you-can-go-to-Hell libertarianism, and he's pretty hostile to any form of serious Christian belief). But Boortz was talking about the Republicans chances in '08, which he thought weren't good.

He referenced a column by Robert Novak, in which he wrote:

It is difficult to exaggerate the pessimism about the immediate political future voiced by Republicans in Congress when not on the record. With an unpopular president waging an unpopular war, they see electoral catastrophe in 2008, with Democratic gains in both House and Senate and Hillary Clinton in the White House.

This led me to wonder about whether orthodox Catholics and other traditon-minded conservative Christians would have a place in the Republican Party for much longer.

I don't think so.

The widespread attractiveness of the Giuliani candidacy, the willingness of even so-called "social conservatives" to look the other way regarding Rudy's embrace of the Culture of Death, and the Republicans' enthusiasm for The Leviathan State all bode ill for the future.

Say what you will about the Republicans "lip-service" to social conservatives, their keeping pro-lifers at arm's length and their paltry delivery in about 25 years in power in the White House and Capital Hill. The fact is, conservative Catholics had a voice in the party's agenda.

But the Mammon-first conservatives have always wrinkled their noses in disgust at us, and that disdain is starting to break out into open hostility.

If, as seems to be the common opinion, the Republicans lose again in '08, I think that will be the beginning of the end for any substantive socially conservative Christian voice in the Republican Party. Social conservatives will receive the brunt of the blame. It's happening already.

The trend in our culture is more and more towards "leave me alone, don't try to tell me I can't [insert vice or sin crying out to heaven here]." The Republicans will eventually cave in to the pressure to submit to that trend. The Republican Party is not the Church; it does not have the graces and charisms that allow the the Church to resist the prevailing winds of the Zeitgeist.

So what will we do then?

This is not a brief for the Republican Party, urging you to stick with them because "its our only hope". The Republicans don't deserve our vote. They have all but flipped us the bird over the last couple of years. I'm not sure there's much hope left - there.

So what will we do? And where will that leave our country, pulled on one side by the Jacobins (Hillary) and Panderers (Obama) of the Left, and on the other by Friede durch Kraft cynics (Giuliani) and hollow men (McCain) of the Right?

Common Ground Catholic - Evangelical Dialogue To Air

Trinity Broadcast Network (TBN), home to Televangelists Benny Hinn and Joyce Meyer, will be broadcasting a 90 minute "dialogue" between Fr. John Riccardo, a priest of the Archdiocese of Detroit, and Pastor Steve Andrews of Kensington Community Church, a suburban Detroit "MegaChurch".

The show will air tomorrow, Saturday July 14, at 5:00 PM Eastern.

I'm not familiar with Pastor Andrews or his church, but I do know Fr. Riccardo: He is an outstanding priest, well known in the Detroit area for his orthodoxy and zeal for the faith. I'm confident that Fr. Riccardo will hold up the Catholic "end" very well.

This promises to be something rather different from the usual fare on TBN.

It also seems to me to be a tremendous opening, that an Evangelical broadcaster would air such a bold and zealous proponent of the Catholic faith.

For more information on the show (which is also available on DVD) go to the producer's website, Nineveh's Crossing.

The "Live Earth" Idiocy

This past weekend, while Catholics were considering, celebrating, and (in some quarters) lamenting the Motu Proprio "Summorum Pontificum", ignorant rock stars and celebrities were engaging in the act of mutual mental masturbation known as "Live Earth".

I was going to write a sendup of the foolishness, but someone beat me to it. From Dan Proft's column at Human Events:

It was not the noise pollution from climatologists like Kanye West and the Pussycat Dolls. No, that didn’t bother me...

The delicious irony of watching the Dave Matthews Band, the same eco-friendly Dave Matthews Band that dumped 800 pounds of human waste from their tour bus into the Chicago River during their stop through three years ago (well, maybe the irony wasn’t exactly delicious), that also didn’t bother me...

Watching Gore keep it real with his Hollywood friends is kind of like watching your dad shake his groove thing at a wedding...

Read the rest.