(Not) Mad About You

By Drew

No doubt many of you have heard about the, well, mixed reviews for the Met's blockbuster production of Lucia di Lammermoor, starring operababe Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón. (If you haven't, you can read a choice sampling here, here, here and here. If that's not enough, or if you're just a glutton for punishment, you can Google and get a few more.) At any rate, Netrebko's mad scene, not only the showstopper of Lucia but one of the great scenes in all of opera, produced what has politely been referred to as a "tepid" response.

For a look at what the response should have been, check out this video of the great Natalie Dessay's mad scene from last season's production of Lucia at the Met. As John Greenleaf Whittier reminds us, the saddest words are it might have been...

The Choice is Clear, Even if the Progs Don't Want You to Think So.

By Cathy of Alex

Hi, I’m Cathy of Alex of The Recovering Dissident Catholic blog! I thank the Hadleybloggers for inviting me to their forum. You can read more about me on my blog but, just to let you know, I tend to compose blog posts that are informed by my beliefs as a Roman Catholic. For a long time I was Catholic in Name Only (CINO), hence my blog title. I have an insiders understanding of what makes dissenting and progressive Roman Catholics tick because I was one for a long time. I will probably blog about things that are not directly Catholic but in all things, I’m informed by my faith. Unlike most politicians, I make no effort or claims at divorcing my faith from my life. I can’t. Impossible. My Faith IS my life. Period.

Gentle Reader: If there is one thing you can always count on the so-called progressives among us for, it’s a distortion or a complete misrepresentation of the issues. In this post I am applying my lens to the progressive Roman Catholic folks but you can probably say much of the same about much of the liberal left these days.

I’ve ranted about the language of “common ground” and “common good” on my blog before. I believe we saw in the U.S. election just past the politics of common ground ascendant. My take on this push towards commonality is that it’s dangerous to folks like me who have principles that we live by that we’d be willing to die for to defend. I believe, wholeheartedly, that this current push toward commonality is an effort to water everything down that is too challenging, that’s too difficult, that stands in the way of the policies the liberal left would like to legislate.

In my humble opinion, you can see the push for commonality most easily and frequently these days in matters of sexual morality and life issues.

If you listened closely to President Obama’s Inaugural speech you may have heard him say, “On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.” Then, he found religion appropriate for proving his next point and talked about “the time has come to set aside childish things”

I could not help but read between the lines: “Those of you who hold to beliefs that are going to hinder me from enacting legislation that conflicts with dogmas you profess better forget about them and join me.” What did the President do in his first week? Overturn the ban on OUR tax dollars funding contraception and abortion overseas (the “Mexico City Legislation”), as well as removing the block on using embryonic stem cells for research. I’m shocked that he even bothered to wait until the day AFTER the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. I’m not sure what he thought he was accomplishing by even waiting a day: showing the pro-lifers that he wasn’t tactless enough to enact them on the 22nd of January, but kind enough to the anti-life crowd to enact what he promised them soon after election? In any case, I feel we just saw duplicity in action. Mr. President you can’t be everything to everyone. If the timing was an attempt at that, it will never work. What you just did is unacceptable-at any time. Maybe he’ll sign legislation for gay ‘marriage’ on the day after the Feast of the Holy Family.

The President would have us believe that he just acted for all of us, for the common good. I still fail to realize how, literally, killing our future in a nation that is already teetering on the edge of a demographic death spiral is supposed to help us. But he would not have us fear, because we have immigrants to help us make up the numbers of unborn dead and elderly and handicapped euthanized among us. Note how he did not open his speech with “My fellow Americans” but “My fellow citizens” which sounded like an attempt not to exclude those residing in our borders who are not, legally, Americans. After all, he won a large bloc of votes on his immigration policy pronouncements.

The President is not Roman Catholic but he is not a friend to many Catholic dogmas or beliefs.

The worse enemies however, and I always say this, are the ones within.

Which brings me to the progressive Catholic sets and their horrifying efforts to lessen the seriousness of FOCA, the Freedom of Choice Act. FOCA, which President Obama has vowed to make a top priority (and we know he has already made good on his campaign promises to be no friend to life), will allow our tax dollars to fund abortion, remove the conscious rights of healthcare providers, and allow partial birth abortion among other horrors.

The USCCB (United State Conference of Catholic Bishops) has called all Catholics to write their legislators beginning this weekend expressing their opposition to enactment of FOCA. In an article that had me believing the National Catholic Reporter has completely hit rock bottom and should rename themselves Protestants Pretending to Be Catholics Reporter, the publication has the audacity to not only claim FOCA will have no impact on closing Catholic hospitals but they also belittle what the FOCA law really does.

It’s ridiculous to seriously claim that FOCA will have no impact on Catholic healthcare, and that the bishops and online community are mass hysterics for even being concerned about its potential enactment. Of course its enactment will have an impact on Catholic healthcare. Even if FOCA itself is never enacted, what about the adverse impact of a similar piece of legislation? If Catholic healthcare is to maintain the core Roman Catholic principals it was founded under, bishops and Catholic healthcare systems will have no choice but to close their facilities, if by keeping them open they are forced to perform procedures (like abortion) that are contrary to their principles. Yes, we all know, unfortunately, some Catholic healthcare systems that have caved into pressure and done things that are contrary to Catholic beliefs but we are talking, with FOCA, national law here, not state law. If Obama has a vision of universal healthcare and enacts FOCA he will have his healthcare, but also a large gap in facilities to provide it because many of them will close.

NCRep misses another point. Frankly, who cares if all our hospitals close if abortion on demand is the-trying to hold the line on our principles in the face of brutal persecution will be. Honestly, there probably won’t be enough people left alive to even use any hospitals or clinics still open: ½ being aborted and the other ½ euthanized. (I have not addressed euthanasia much in this post, but I can already see that coming as legislation on a national level.)

The progs are making an attempt to try and get Catholics not to participate in the anti-FOCA postcard campaign by making it sound like yet another "ridiculous" demand by the "out of touch" USCCB and not worth our time getting excited about or participating in because it’s just not that critical. Now that we are all one big common family we need to quit believing in what sets us apart and just forget our individual principles in the name of “getting along”. They are wrong. Dead wrong. I find it curious that the only “common principles” are the ones liberals favor and the ones conservatives favor are “individual”; as if we are a nation of common believers with just a few rogue individuals who can’t get with the liberal program mucking things up. The commonality proponents don’t want the anti-FOCA postcard campaign either because they’d have us believe that by sacrificing others our lives can be better. How can a society that kills the weak, the defenseless and the aged to feed itself be anything but corrupt?

Some of our best science fiction has dealt with this very issue: Logan’s Run, Soylent Green, The Matrix. The best science fiction usually has a basis in reality. Somedays it seems like horror, not sci fi.

Letter from the Editor

By Mitchell

Don’t you just love that? “Letter from the Editor” – as if I had a notepad here in front of me, with “From the Editor” stamped at the top. Oh well, we can dream, can’t we? Even if it’s just a little bit of self-importance in the morning.

Anyway. I’m going on sabbatical again, as I did last summer, and for the same reason: to finish a book. My effort last year is still in what you could call post-production – in other words, looking for a publisher. Of this I’m hopeful, but at the same time I’m not quitting my day job. But I’m reminded of one of my favorite authors, Keith Mano, who fell into the habit of always being one book ahead of the game, his second book having been completed while he was still trying to have his first published. Perhaps lightning will strike twice, eh?

I’ll continue to pop in from time to time – it won’t be that easy to get rid of me – but for the next four months or so my colleagues here will be doing most of the heavy lifting. And this year we’ve got a surprise – a series of guest contributors who have agreed to help pick up the slack. I think you’ll find that they are more than up to the task of filling in for me, and I know you’ll agree that they will add a new and exciting dimention to our collection of cultural bloggers.

I’ll introduce our guests as they come aboard, but you will probably be familiar with many of them if you frequent the links on the right-hand side of the page. Our first guest is our dear friend and frequent contributor Cathy of Alex, who can regularly be found at The Recovering Dissident Catholic. Look forward to Cathy’s columns appearing on a weekly basis.

Stay turned for further information – and my personal thanks and gratitude to Cathy and the other bloggers you’ll meet, for making their words part of Our Word. I’ll see you soon!

For Whom the Bell Tolls

By Mitchell

A last word on the abortion drama - this quote comes from Frederica Matthews-Green, NPR and National Review contributor:

My boomer generation will never see abortion as anything other than the wise and benevolent gift we bestowed on all future generations. We still control the media, the universities, and so forth, and it will take time for all of us to topple off the end of the conveyor belt.

But the time is coming when a younger generation will be in charge, and they may well see abortion differently. They could see it not as “a woman’s choice” but as a form of state-sanctioned violence inflicted on their generation. It was their brothers and sisters who died; anyone under the age of 36 could have been aborted, and somewhere around a fourth or a fifth of all babies are. A younger generation might feel a strange kinship with the brothers and sisters, classmates and coworkers, who are missing.

And I’m afraid that if they do see things that way, they aren’t going to go easy on my generation. Our acceptance of abortion is not going to look like an understandable goof. The next generation can fairly say, “It’s not like they didn’t know.” They’ll say, “After all, they had sonograms.” Even in my generation, people who think of themselves as defenders of the weak and the oppressed may occasionally have a quiet moment when they wonder, “How, on this one issue, did I wind up on the side that’s defending death?”

There's a lot of ambivalence out there, and a lot of unspoken grief too, I think. Our pro-choice generation may have won the day—but sooner or later, that day will end. No generation can rule from the grave. When that time comes, another generation will sit in judgment on ours. And they may judge us to be monsters.

What Has Happened to Proper Singing?

By Bobby

I can admit this now; after noticing how patriotic songs were sung in the Obama Inauguration, standards no longer matter, just like the new government's attitude on values. They must be broken to appease the lowest common denominator.

I have had the opportunity to take classical voice with a young lass who has become one of my best friends over these years we have known each other. Furthermore, I have observed singers at events, both on television and radio -- Denyse Graves, Renée Fleming, Ann Benson (also in-person, but her most famous appearance was on television -- have you ever?) -- and in person -- Tina Stallard, Jacob Will, Mark Husey -- sing these songs properly.

But here comes the Inauguration Ceremony, and Aretha Franklin is supposed to sing and instead of singing properly, as I have learned over the years, she comes in and sings these "patriotic" songs with such long and inappropriate places to hold notes and pause that I thought I had been put in no-man's land. But remember, I am a conservative, and conservatism is dead. Modern liberalism means anything goes, and that means if someone is singing important songs improperly, it's right. The correct way is the wrong way, whatever is inappropriate is legal.

If we learned Aretha's singing of the patriotic tunes was appropriate, and correct, what does it tell those who take music lessons and are classically trained on singing properly?

And remember, MTV, not Fox News, has priority in the new White House. After all, MTV's LOGO was a venue to debate, but not Fox News. MTV had an inaugural ball, but Fox News was relegated to second-tier status.

The Sanctity of Human Life

By Bobby

While in college, I had the opportunity to work with the South Carolina Citizens for Life's Holly Gatling, something which I still do some volunteer time.

I mourn today on the thirty-sixth anniversary of one of America's biggest travesties, created by a liberal court system which has slaughtered more than 50 million in its thirty-six years of terror -- more slaughtered than ever killed in every war fought by this nation. To put that in perspective, the total number of babies killed by this act of terror called Roe v. Wade is more than 14,700 times the number of people killed (about 2,800) in the acts of terror against Americans combined by Usama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terror network. Those acts of terror include the slaughter of American troops in Somalia, the slaughter of a CIA agent through a hijacking in Ethiopia, the Khobar Towers, the twin homicide bombings of United States Embassies in Africa, and of course, the September 11, 2001 quadruple homicide bombings in Shanksville, the World Trade Center Buildings 1-7, and the Pentagon.

The horror of some abortionists' tactics, as mentioned by Illinois nurse Jill Stanek at the 2003 South Carolina March for Life, explained how children who are given live births are allowed to die within a few hours. This gargantuan "abortion" is a gross mistake. After hearing this grotesque practice at Christ Hospital, declared a second-trimester abortion (between 13 and 26 weeks), Mrs. Stanek notes the abortionist (who is not a doctor, because he has violated the Oath of Hippocrates, which states he will not induce the murder of his patients) induces medicine which permits the cervix (the opening at the bottom of the uterus) to dilate prematurely. Such actions permit the baby, which is premature (19-23 weeks), to be ejected, and therefore, a baby is born.

Unfortunately, with the procedures of this type of "abortion" where an actual baby is born, the hospital never takes care of the child. The child is clearly premature, born halfway through the cycle of 40 weeks which it takes to mature a child from conception until birth. The nurse is relegated to tending to the baby for as long as it lives sometimes as much as eight hours. The hospital is told in these "abortions" the child is to be treated as if it was an elderly person who has informed the living will they do not want to live. The baby is intended to die -- the baby will not be allowed to live, and unlike actual premature births, the child is not allowed to be treated in special chambers or in special units designed for premature babies.

For someone who has a second cousin who was born premature it breaks my heart to see some premature babies are given a chance to live and others are left to intentionally die.

Mrs. Stanek has testified in Washington many times in regards to this gruesome procedure, and learned her employer, Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, didn't like her testimony in Washington in mentioning the fact these live children are left alone in soiled "utlity rooms" to die, so the hospital, run by the United Church of Christ (any surprise, considering the President is of this faith) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, started a "comfort room," which offended Mrs. Stanek. She proceeded to take photographs of the questionable room, and had them placed into the Congressional Record to show the depths of despair they now give to aborted children.

What is even more gruesome is the "comfort room" contained a camera which allowed the aborted child, as born alive, to have pictures, baptismal, foot printer, and baby bracelets of the children who live less than a few hours they aborted.

That is totally nonsensical and shows the depths of despair the abortion lobby has come.

On August 5, 2002, President Bush signed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act to protect such children, and Mrs. Stanek stood by his side. Sadly, there is a push in Congress to declare this law, along with the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, void by passing the new Freedom of Choice Act bill endorsed by Congressional leaders and the President.

Abortion isn't just a woman's issue either. The grief of the 36 years of Roe v. Wade also hits men, sometimes even harder, as I learned working a Women of Faith conference in Charleston (SC) in June 2002, as founder Stephen Arterburn admitted to the 12,000 women in attendance plus the North Charleston Coliseum and Performing Arts Center staff, Women of Faith staff, and the conference volunteers of his story when he was young he admitted he had his girlfriend impregnated and had their child aborted. To this day, even with a wife and a daughter, he still feels guilty about the one child he let die on the operating room table because he didn't want it. The grief of the father isn't always mentioned, but it is there. The sadness of the father is part of the problem and rarely do we hear his side of the story. But after hearing Mr. Arterburn's side of the story, it's clear it goes both ways. The father finds out about the child which he lost because the woman killed the child he had. It's his child he lost, and he understands it. While a woman may say "convenience", the man will say "it's my child you're killing". The truth is the father's grief is worse than what most people will admit.

It's clear to me. There has been too many years of murder of children at will created by a court fiat which makes no sense.

The concern now is that everything we have seen to protect human life is now being overturned by the most pro-abortion leadership in this nation, complete with a Congress that has established rules on who may debate and discuss issues. Is our entire accomplishment of the past two decades to be wiped out by one federal law that codifies bad court decisions as law, based on the attitude of legislators who do not represent me at all, decide? As a South Carolinian, what does it say when your legislators are now meaningless and we are letting California, Nevada, Washington, and states over 3,000 miles away determine what feels good is the law, when our legislators say otherwise?

I am afraid my twelve March for Life appearances and the hard work we have done will be wiped away by one law passed by legislators leading by feelings over 3,000 miles away.

The sanctity of human life, whose declaration posted this week by the White House has even been taken away by the new leadership, seems to be lost.

In these twelve marches, I'll never forget Suzanne Vitadamo talking about her evil brother-in-law who killed her sister in order to marry the other woman (2006, ironically on the day she spoke, Michael Schiavo married "the other woman"). I cherish Kathy Troccoli's "A Baby's Prayer" from my first march in 1998 (something that finally gave her an elusive Dove Award three months later). I hear from those who have suffered from having abortions in Olivia Gans (2000), Norma McCorvey (2001), Vera Lord (2004), Jennifer O'Neill (2005), and Beatrice Fedor (2009). I enjoy listening to heroes of the fight such as Wanda Franz (2002), Phill Kline (2008), Steve Mosher (1998), and David Beasley (1998 and 2009). I also have heard from one who suffers from the attempt at aborting her in Gianna Jessen (2007).

I've also through the National Right to Life Convention also heard Sean Hannity and learned more about life than I ever thought.

I cannot imagine the gruesomeness Point of Grace's Leigh Cappillino admitted when she talked about the abortion she had as a young lady (which is referenced in the group's song "Heal the Wound") when I've attended one of their concerts, and I cannot imagine what one man whose fatherhood was stripped by the gruesome practice admits what it is like to have an empty crib because of the stupidity of the idea that killing the baby is appropriate, as Stephen Arterburn has mentioned.

I mourn today for 36 years of children slaughtered by a court which does not understand. But does America understand we have a President and Congress willing to declare the right to kill babies is protected? If life is no longer protected, what can we have? Have we lost the sanctity of human life?

In Memoriam - January 22

By Mitchell

A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled,
because they were no more.

(Matthew 2:18)

Roe v. Wade was decided 36 years ago today. It is the human rights scandal of our nation's history; the loss we have sustained over these years - the loss of life, the loss of our spirituality, the loss of our own humanity - is impossible to measure, too staggering to comprehend. And so we pause for a moment of reflection, with two pieces from Fauré's magnificent Requiem. First, the Sanctus, performed by the choir of King's College.



And here the In Paradisum.



May angels lead you into Paradise;
may the martyrs receive you at your coming
and lead you to the holy city of Jerusalem.
May a choir of angels receive you,
and with Lazarus, who once was poor,
may you have eternal rest.