A poem. A bad one.

Below my post about the new Mass translation, reader Scott W. wrote, "How come the usual suspects can toss around mutlisyllabic words like "sustainability" but bristle at "ineffable"?"

I told Scott I thought there was a poem in there somewhere. Regrettably, I've now written one, with many apologies to G. K. Chesterton, whose format I stole...er, copied:

A Liberal Bishop on the New Translation

Oh, how I love "Sustainable,"
A word that graces English,
And how I hate "Ineffable,"
So clankish, never ringlish!

For forty years the liturgy
Has done its best to try
To call God, not "Almighty"
But "Our Buddy, in the Sky."

Words too fancy just don't fit
With modern Catholic manners--
They also clash with shrieking hymns
Round churches, and felt banners.

We need a simple, childish Mass
Keep prayer and worship light!
'Cause John and Mary Catholic--
They really aren't too bright.

How long before we make lampshades out of them?

Human embryos are being used to grow skin cells for burn victims:

Nov. 19, 2009 -- Human embryonic stem cells can be used to produce skin grafts for people who have been seriously burned, shows a study published in The Lancet.

Though patients have benefited from cell therapy for two decades, the techniques used have had limitations, write Hind Guenou, PhD, of INSERM and the Institute for Stem Cell Therapy and Exploration of Monogenic Diseases in Evry Cedex, France, and colleagues. [...]

So the scientists in this study, employing a pharmacological treatment over 40 days, seeded feeder cells with human embryonic stem cells. The treatment drives the human embryonic stem cells toward forming an epidermis, the outer layer of skin the researchers report.

The team says it was able to generate a population of cells that showed the characteristics of the epidermis. Once manipulated on an artificial surface, the cells were able to form a layer of skin, the scientists say.

In 12 weeks, after grafting it onto five mice, the skin layer that came from human embryonic stem cells had a structure the "consistent" with human skin.

Horrible. Just horrible.

I realize that burn victims suffer terribly, but there are morally acceptable ways of providing skin grafts that don't require us to cannibalize tiny human beings.

Worse, of course, is that unless I'm greatly mistaken this technology may quite conceivably open the door to a future nightmare of cosmetic treatments involving the growing of new skin cells to replace old, wrinkly ones.

Perhaps in some future PETA paradise we'll stop covering furniture, making shoes etc. with leather, and make these things from human embryo-skin hides instead. We might even take a tip from our philosophical inspiration and make lampshades...

The definition of help

It looks as though the Catholic Campaign for Human Development is being heavily scrutinized this year by many Catholics. It's about time.

I wrote a few posts during last year's election season about the CCHD; if you go to them you will find links to many helpful articles and stories about the CCHD which I found in my reading. There's a lot of good information online which details the various CCHD-related funding scandals and issues over the years.

Now, one of the big problems when I was writing was CCHD's funding of ACORN. As late as 2007, 1.1 million dollars raised from Catholic parishes went to ACORN, a group which can't really be said to share Catholic values, unless giving home loans to pimps of underage girls is a Catholic value I missed somewhere in my education.

The Catholic bishops voted to stop funding ACORN, of course. So what groups are they funding?

Well, if you go to this page and click the link marked "Current funded projects," you'll get:

Not Found

The requested object does not exist on this server. The link you followed is either outdated, inaccurate, or the server has been instructed not to let you have it. Please inform the site administrator of the referring page.

Of course, you can just go to the page which has PDF files of various years' grant recipients. The 2009 list is here. On it, you'll find such things as these:

AREA A
New Jersey
Paterson
Wind of the Spirit Immigrant Resource
Center, Inc.

Established in 2000, Wind of the Spirit (WotS) is a grassroots, interfaith organization of immigrants from various parts of Latin America who are affected by immigration policies working in collaboration with non-immigrants. Wind of the Spirit's mission is to organize and empower the community for social change; to help immigrants and non-immigrants come to know each other and be enriched by one another; to educate members of the immigrant community on their rights and responsibilities; to promote activities to celebrate the rich cultural diversity of the Morristown community; to advocate for the human rights and dignity of all people regardless of immigration status; to create a deeper understanding of the global conditions that underlie immigration; and to work together for a world of solidarity, peace, and justice. $25,000


AREA B
Ohio
Cincinnati
Intercommunity Justice and
Peace Center

IJPC is a coalition of faith-based organizations and individuals who work together to educate around justice issues, take collaborative action and do public witness. We address local, national and international concerns focusing on economic justice, women's issues, human rights, racial equality, peace and the environment. Founded by Catholic Women Religious, IJPC works out of a deep faith perspective, basing decision-making on Catholic Social Teaching, yet involved in interfaith collaboration. Founded in 1985, IJPC's goals continue to be: ·to deepen awareness of justice as integral, not optional, to our faith response; to network participating organizations and to collaborate with other concerned groups for stronger public witness and impact on justice and peace issues; to plan and carry out programs of education and action which affect structural injustice. Under the pursuit of human rights, IJPC has strategically planned an Ohio Death Penalty Moratorium Project. This multi-faceted plan allows for the continued growth of the Families That Matter [FTM] Program. $25,000

AREA D
Iowa
Des Moines
A Mid-Iowa Organizing Strategy
AMOS was formed over 10 years ago when Rabbis, lay leaders, pastors and the Bishops from the Roman Catholic, United Methodist, ELCA and Episcopal traditions gathered with an interest in forming a congregation based community organization that could help the faith community live out its prophetic imperative for justice. The mission of AMOS is to re-create community by giving ordinary citizens an organizational vehicle through which they can act in the public arena, cross the lines that divide and win concrete specific improvements to their communities. The group addresses poverty and powerlessness through the on-going building of a diverse, broad-based community organization with a particular emphasis on issues of health care for all, workforce development and expansion of the organization in the areas of recruitment and leadership development. In the area of healthcare, AMOS will continue to work with the Iowa Legislature to expand health care coverage to poor uninsured adults and not just children. Additionally Ms. Camargo and others will be working to develop a constituent presence of ordinary people who currently do not have insurance and must rely on the fractured and often ineffectual safety net system. $40,000.00

These are a tiny example of the kinds of organizations your CCHD dollars go to, or at least went to this past year. To learn more about these three, here are their websites: Wind of the Spirit, Intercommunity Peace and Justice Center, and AMOS. Be sure to take note of the IPJC's anti-military recruiting campaign, and of AMOS' proud, front-page statement of their ties to Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation.

Perhaps you're the sort of Catholic who is saying, "So what? The Church's mission is consistent with agitating for illegal immigration, opposing the military, wars, and military recruitment, and organizing for power." I think that's arguable, but nonetheless, the bishops in their annual call for CCHD fundraising have a tendency to say things like this:

WASHINGTON, D.C., NOV. 18, 2009 (Zenit.org).- A U.S. bishops' aide is saying that an annual collection to support the poor is more important than ever this year.The collection for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development will take place in most parishes this weekend.

This year's collection has the theme "Families Are Struggling. Faith Is Calling." The fund drive comes as U.S. census figures show that the number of poor people in the United States is up almost 3 million since last year.

"The mission of CCHD is crucial in 2009: To uplift and embolden all who are one layoff or one medical scare away from the poverty line -- and all who are already there," said Bishop Roger Morin of Biloxi, Mississippi, chairman of the Subcommittee on CCHD.

And so Catholics might be forgiven if they think CCHD funds go directly to help the poor. But Matthew Vadum at The American Spectator points out the reality:

The charitable arm of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, CCHD has never provided direct relief to the poor. That's not its purpose.

CCHD is an extreme left-wing political organization that was created to feed and foster radical groups, but most Catholics are blissfully unaware of its true mission. CCHD says right on its website that it aims to support "organized groups of white and minority poor to develop economic strength and political power."

Giving to help the poor is a noble act of Christian charity. But does funding mainly left-wing political organizations which take their inspiration from Saul Alinsky, a man who believed in the acquisition of power as the solution to all problems, a man who once said, "Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life..." really do anything to ameliorate the pangs of poverty? Does the money spent financing activism do more than spending that same amount to take care of the immediate needs of the desperately poor?

I think Catholics are free to say that no, activism (much of it extremely leftist) is not the answer, and to send their CCHD dollars to organizations that really do care, daily, for the poor (the Little Sisters of the Poor have been mentioned as a possible recipient). The better question is why Catholics have been allowed to believe, for years, that their CCHD contributions are going to "help the poor" when there's a basic disagreement between pro-CCHD and anti-CCHD Catholics about the definition of the word "help."

Banning books, or just good parenting?

I'm happy to tell you that the good people at MercatorNet have once again allowed me to write an article for them! My topic dealt with the American Library Association's "Banned and Challenged Books Week," and the little-mentioned fact that most of the "challenges" to books come about because parents find some book laced with profanity, sexual filth, and gratuitous violence on the classroom or school library shelves, and raise objections to its being there.

Here's an excerpt from my piece:

Now, if the vast majority of challenges to books involve parents, centre around books available in schools, and deal with such issues as sexual explicitness, offensive language, or the unsuitability of the books for a specific age group, then I think we're no longer talking about book-banning or censorship. I think we're talking about parenting.

The attitude of the ALA is that a parent only has the right to censor or control what his own children read. He doesn't have the right to request the removal from the school library or classroom shelf those books which he finds obscene or dangerous to morality, because someone else might prefer for his children to read those books. The school alone has the final say in what books are appropriate for the children under its care to read, and if a child reads at school a book or books which his parents absolutely forbid at home--well, then, perhaps the parents' values are too narrow and restrictive to begin with.

Here's the dilemma for parents, though--there was a time when we could trust schools and libraries to support, for the most part, the same values we ourselves held, and to abide by community standards of morality and decency. There was a time when it would have been just as unthinkable to the librarian or the school teacher as to a parent that a book for children would have contained the following things:

• --Graphic language about sex, drinking, drugs; laced with profanity and written in "chat speak" (TTYL by Lauren Myracle)
• --Violence, implied sex, anti-religious and anti-Christian messages throughout; God is literally killed (His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman)
• --Prostitution, witchcraft, voodoo, devil worship (Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya)
• --Homosexuality, drugs, suicide, sex, nudity (The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky)
• --Sex, drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, profanity, smoking (Gossip Girl series by Cecily von Ziegesar)

These are some of the objectionable content found in just five of the ten most frequently challenged books for 2008. Given that most challengers are parents and most challenges involve books in school libraries or school classrooms, I'd be much more worried about society if books like these were never questioned at all.

Please do go and read it! I'd be especially grateful if any of you felt inclined to leave comments at the MercatorNet site (though as always comments are welcome here, too).

Thanks so much!

Presidential siblings

I thought this was an interesting read:

On the streets of Guangzhou and nearby Shenzhen, Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo is turning heads. Since holding a press conference for his semiautobiographical Nairobi to Shenzhen: A Novel of Love in the East on Nov. 4, Ndesandjo, a half brother of U.S. President Barack Obama, has appeared on television in Hong Kong, and his picture has been splashed on the front pages of China Daily, the South China Morning Post and other regional newspapers.

Ndesandjo had shunned the limelight until now. He is one of two children born to Barack Obama Sr. and his third wife, an American teacher named Ruth Nidesand, whom Obama Sr. met while the two were students at Harvard. Tall and slim like the President, Ndesandjo had avoided any association with the Obama name. For most of his life, he used only his stepfather's Tanzanian surname, Ndesandjo, but he has now added Okoth, a word from the language of his father's Kenyan tribe, the Luo, as well as his original surname, Obama. [...]

The two brothers have met a handful of times, the last of which was during Obama's Inauguration in Washington. In his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father, Obama describes his first encounter with his brother, an ambitious student who had severed ties with his father's side of the family as well as his African roots. "I don't feel much of an attachment [to Kenya]. Just another poor African country," Ndesandjo says in Dreams. He goes on to say, "You think that somehow I'm cut off from my roots ... Well, you're right."

One of Obama Sr.'s eight children with four women, Ndesandjo was raised by both birth parents until their divorce in the early 1970s. He has refused to tell reporters his age, but he is likely to be in his early 40s. Ndesandjo says his father was brilliant but that alcoholism drove him to beat his wife and children. "The relationship I had with my father was a difficult one," he says, fighting back tears. "I didn't have positive memories of my dad because of domestic violence."

I wonder if the president will have time to meet with his half-brother during his China trip?

Read the whole thing, for an interesting reminder of just how unusual President Obama's extended family situation is. An earlier CNN article on the same subject tried to compare Obama's various siblings to Roger Clinton Jr. or Billy Carter, but somehow I think the eight children of one internationally-traveling man and four different mothers are a little more unusual, even today, than either of those presidential brothers mentioned.

The New Translation

Zenit is reporting that the new translation of the Mass in English has been approved! Details:

BALTIMORE, Maryland, NOV. 17, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The U.S. bishops' conference completed its approval of the final portions of the new translation of the Roman Missal for use in its country. It now awaits the Vatican's confirmation.

The vote took place today at the conference's fall general assembly, which is under way in Baltimore through Thursday.

Bishop Arthur Serratelli of Paterson, New Jersey, chairman of the Committee on Divine Worship, explained today before the vote that this was the conference's last chance to send its recommendations to the Holy See. The Vatican has asked for the submission of all input by the end of this month.

The translation has been in progress for the past six years, and the conference has been gradually voting on the various parts of it in their assemblies.

The translation of the Proper of Saints, the Mass prayers for the feast days of saints, was approved by 195 prelates, with 23 opposing and 4 abstaining, thereby winning the necessary two-thirds of the conference's bishops.

This is news of ineffable joy for English-speaking Catholics! While the precursor to the new translation was probably well meant, there's no doubt that some ignominy of language more profane than sacred crept in here and there; and the whole became suffused with a mundanity completely unsuited to the Holy Sacrifice, as when words like "cup" replaced the nobler "chalice."

Though some bishops argued that the old translation ought nevertheless remain inviolate, wiser heads have prevailed; the new translation rises unvanquished by the voting process. Deo Gratias!

Of course, not everyone will be happy about this. Bishop Donald Trautman recently said the following, during a lecture (PDF file here):

The English translation of the New Missal has intentionally employed a “sacred
language” which tends to be elitist and remote from everyday speech and frequently not understandable. For example, the Preface of the Assumption reads: “She brought forth ineffably your Incarnate Son.” There is repeated use of the word “ineffable” throughout the New Translation of the Missal. In the Nicene Creed we will pray “consubstantial with the Father” which replaces the present wording “one in being with the Father”. Also in the Creed the new wording “by the Holy Spirit he was incarnate of the Virgin Mary” replaces “he was born of the Virgin Mary”. The vast majority of God’s people in the assembly are not familiar with words of the New Missal like “ineffable”, “consubstantial”, “incarnate”, “Inviolate”, “oblation”, “ignominy”, “precursor”, “suffused”, and “unvanquished”. This vocabulary is not readily understandable by the average Catholic.

I suppose the good bishop has a point. It's not like a typical lay Catholic could take, oh, say, five or six of those words and toss them off casually in a couple of paragraphs celebrating the new translation, for example, or anything.

What did Jesus do?

You can still see them in Christian stores, though they're past the peak of popularity now--those little bracelets with the letters W.W.J.D. printed on them.

Some Christians have adopted the phrase "What would Jesus do?" as a sort of catchphrase, a rhetorical device designed to make the believer stop and think before he or she acts, to make sure the intended action is in line with what our Lord would want or approve of. In a limited sense, this is a good impulse, inasmuch as it encourages moral behavior and careful adherence to Christian principles in our daily lives.

Other times, though, the phrase may not be helpful. It can even be manipulative, used to put guilt on a person for choosing to do something completely harmless (say, attending a high school football game instead of a Bible-study class). The implication that Jesus would never do something as "worldly" as attend a football game ignores the fact that He did, in fact, spend plenty of time outside the synagogue or Temple; He dined with sinners, He spoke to crowds, He entered Jerusalem in a triumphant procession. If "What would Jesus do?" becomes, instead of an honest impulse to introspection, a club used to beat others over the head and manipulate them, then it's not a good thing. And if it's merely a cutesy slogan without any introspection behind it, it's really not a good thing.

While I appreciate the sincere faith of many who ask themselves "What would Jesus do?" I think there is a better question that more Christians ought to ask themselves. This question is simply, "What did Jesus do?" The Gospels tell us what He did; the remaining books of the New Testament also reveal to us His desires for His Church. If we ask what He would do but ignore what He did do then there's a good chance we're overlooking our best clue as to how He wants things to be done.

One thing Jesus did do was to ordain men to His priesthood. He conferred upon them the ability to re-create His sacrifice on Calvary in an unbloody manner, giving them the power to confect the Eucharist, to say the words of consecration so that the bread and wine upon the altar becomes His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, the food of grace that feeds our souls and strengthens us for our earthly struggles. He gave them, also, the power to forgive sins.

To no others did He give these gifts. No one else among His followers was ordained in this way during His earthly life. Specifically, Jesus ordained only men, who then ordained others, laying their hands upon them and conferring upon them this Sacrament of Holy Orders, so that they, too, could stand in Christ's place at the altar of sacrifice, and repeat those efficacious words: This is My Body...This is My Blood.

If we are going to ask, "What did Jesus do?" when we consider the question of women's ordination, we are left with a clear answer: He did not ordain them.

He did not ordain them, in spite of the fact that He was never really constrained by the times in which He came. Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well; He dined with tax collectors and prostitutes; He forgave the woman caught in adultery; He numbered women among His followers. But when He gave the command to His apostles, "Do this, in remembrance of Me," only the Twelve were with Him. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, number 1577, puts it this way:

"Only a baptized man (vir) validly receives sacred ordination."⁶⁶ The Lord Jesus chose men (viri) to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry.⁶⁷ The college of bishops, with whom the priests are united in the priesthood, makes the college of the twelve an ever-present and ever-active reality until Christ's return. The Church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible.⁶⁸

Some who agitate for the ordination of women dismiss out of hand the fact that Jesus did not ordain His mother, Mary, Queen of Priests, to the priesthood herself. But it is an intriguing fact, nonetheless. Jesus clearly loves His mother; His words to her on the Cross, when He entrusts her to St. John (and to the whole Church) are one of many examples of this love. But He did not ask her to be a priest--she, the only sinless woman. Are we to say that He was more concerned about the conventions of the times than about His own mother?

Today, in the Fort Worth Episcopal diocese, a woman was "ordained" as a priest:

FORT WORTH — When word got out that Susan Slaughter would make history on Sunday by becoming the first female priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, church members began asking, "What will we call you?"

Episcopalians often address male priests as "Father." They sometimes call female priests "Mother," followed by their first or last names. Not for Slaughter.

"I think being called Mother Susan or Mother Slaughter sounds kind of officious, creating a kind distance," she said. "I’m open to suggestions, but, for now, just call me Susan." [...]

Slaughter’s belief that God was calling her to the priesthood began in the 1980s. She talked about it to the Rev. Courtland Moore, then rector at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Arlington, where she was a parishioner. And then she summoned the courage to meet with Bishop Clarence Pope, an adamant opponent of the ordination of women.

"He just told me that was not an option," she recalled. "He felt that women were not supposed to be priests. He said there were other roles for women. He encouraged me to continue being a wife and mother."

Pope, who has joined the Roman Catholic Church, opposes women’s ordination on theological grounds.

The Fort Worth Diocese, under Pope’s successor, Bishop Jack Iker, continued to prohibit female priests even though the Episcopal Church approved them in 1976. There are now more than 2,000 female priests serving in the church, and the presiding bishop is a woman, Katharine Jefferts Schori.

More and more, the Pope's wise actions in regard to the Anglican Communion seem like the chance of a new beginning for those Christians who disagree with their church's decision to ignore what Jesus did and attempt to ordain women as priestesses (I'm sorry if the term offends, but just as a female can't be "Father," so can she not really be "priest," as the term was always used exclusively of males). If we think we can remain Christian while ignoring, again and again, what Jesus actually did, then we will soon find ourselves, like some of Flannery O'Connor's fictional characters, stuck in the "Holy Church of Christ Without Christ."

41 days??

Okay. Where has this fall gone? Do you realize there are only 41 days until Christmas (and counting)?

I did know it was sort of slightly around the corner-ish. I did have my girls make lists for me--they mention two items they'd like to have, along with a third inexpensive one such as a book. I will usually add a few girlish surprises and fun things, but we do try to keep it simple.

Still. Still! 41 days???

For fun, I post the below. I will say, though, that my results are a little off. While I do work from lists and try to be an organized and thoughtful gift-giver, I do not get things done early. Also, I am a terrible gift-wrapper. My best efforts usually look as though a chimpanzee escaped from the local zoo and went on a wild gift-wrap related chase through the shopping mall. Gift bags are my friends.

Take the quiz, let me know your results, and if you already did your Christmas shopping back in March, don't tell me! (And if you have been lovingly handcrafting a polished wooden train set complete with people and a station and a village populated by authentic looking villagers and even more authentic animals for your boys, while making your each of your girls a beautiful Christmas dress with a hand-tatted lace collar in a color and fabric to match the delicate pottery tea set you threw for them on your wheel out back and fired in a local kiln, really, really don't tell me.) Have fun!

You Are Responsible and Orderly

You approach the holidays in an orderly, organized fashion. You work from a checklist, and you get everything done early. Enjoying the holidays is important to you, and that means getting your chores done first. Only then can you truly relax and kick back. (Though relaxing for you is still pretty high strung!) Of all the types, you are the most likely to have a perfectly wrapped present. You are also the most likely to get someone the perfect present... one they didn't even know they wanted.

The Wrapping Paper Test

A lesson for all of us

Good news on the environmental front: the brown pelican is out of danger:

Here’s some good news for once. The brown pelican, once driven close to extinction by hunting, habitat loss and pesticide pollution, was today formally removed from the US federal list of threatened and endangered species after what Tom Strickland, the Obama administration’s wildlife chief calls “a remarkable recovery”. And two conservationist icons, President Theodore Roosevelt and author Rachel Carson, can claim much of the credit.

Now, I'm sure we're all glad that the brown pelican is no longer an endangered species. And no, I don't know if the pelican in the next story is a brown one or not. But I wouldn't be surprised--after all, what's a little million-dollar-car-trashing in gleeful celebration when you've just been informed you're no longer at risk of extinction?:

LA MARQUE, Texas (AP) - A man blamed a low-flying pelican and a dropped cell phone for his veering his million-dollar sports car off a road and into a salt marsh near Galveston. The accident happened about 3 p.m. Wednesday on the frontage road of Interstate 45 northbound in La Marque, about 35 miles southeast of Houston.

The Lufkin, Texas, man told of driving his luxury, French-built Bugatti Veyron when the bird distracted him, said La Marque police Lt. Greg Gilchrist. The motorist dropped his cell phone, reached to pick it up and veered off the road and into the salt marsh. The car was half-submerged in the brine about 20 feet from the road when police arrived.

Clearly, he missed the sign:

(Image source here.)

I suppose the moral of this story, if there has to be one, is: don't drive a million dollar sports car near salt marshes in Galveston while on one's cell phone after the pelicans find out that the brown ones are no longer in danger of extinction. A lesson for all of us, I'm sure.

Happy Friday the 13th! :)

Abortion and insurance

The law of unintended consequences has been in full force, it seems, regarding the health care debate and, in particular, the attempt to keep abortion funding out of whatever health care bill finally emerges from the murky swamp we like to call Congress.

One such consequence has been that a lot of pro-life Americans have been outraged to discover that the health insurance they carry includes abortion coverage. Few of us are in a position to do anything about that, either--decisions about health care plans are often made by our employers at levels far beyond our own spheres of influence.

But good things can happen when an employer realizes that the "standard coverage" they've been offering employees included an abortion component that they could opt-out of if they wished. One such employer recently learned this, and though surely someone ought to have realized that abortion coverage was included in the employee plan, and surely someone did, it's still nice to see that public attention being paid to this glaring little matter resulted in a prompt decision to remove the coverage from the health plan.

The employer? The Republican National Committee:

The Republican National Committee will no longer offer employees an insurance plan that covers abortion after POLITICO reported Thursday that the anti-abortion RNC's policy has covered the procedure since 1991.

"Money from our loyal donors should not be used for this purpose," Chairman Michael Steele said in a statement. "I don't know why this policy existed in the past, but it will not exist under my administration. Consider this issue settled."

Steele has told the committee's director of administration to opt out of coverage for elective abortion in the policy it uses from Cigna.

Now you'd think a party with a pro-life plank might have noticed that they had abortion coverage in their employee health plan for the past eighteen years. But I'm willing to give the RNC the benefit of the doubt, at least a little bit. The good thing is that the coverage will be removed, now; abortion coverage has no business in the RNC's heath insurance plan.

I hope that lots of other small employers with pro-life leanings will examine their coverage, too, and remove abortion coverage where it is possible to do so. Abortion is, after all, an elective procedure, so why should insurance companies be paying for it in the first place?

The sad reality is that it's quite likely that insurance companies cover abortions for one major reason: it's cheaper to kill a baby in utero than to pay for benefits for pregnancy and childbirth (and then, usually, to have to add the child to the parents' plan). If one good thing were to come from the health care debate, I'd love for it to be a demand by more and more Americans for the removal of health insurance coverage for abortions. So long as abortion is a billion dollar industry, the vultures at Planned Parenthood will keep trying to drum up business, as this lady said. But cutting off insurance company funding to the abortion industry would be an important move toward ending abortion in America.

A nation of grinches

File this one under "political correctness run amok:"

WASHINGTON — Officials in an Ohio town canceled their Christmas parade this year to avoid huge legal fees in defending the tradition from possible lawsuits by religious groups.

The legal hurdle surfaced when the private group that for 28 years had funded the parade in Amelia village recently announced it could no longer do so, prompting the village mayor to step in with public funds.

On a lawyer's advice, the mayor decided to change the name of the event from Christmas Parade to the more neutral "Holiday Parade" to avoid lawsuits and abide by constitutional rules about the separation of church and state. [...]

However, the name change did not sit well with local church officials, who promptly threatened to boycott the event if it was no longer called "A Christmas Parade."

We've become a nation full of Grinches.

And since LarryD reminds us to have a "Merry Tossmas," I'd like to share the "Holiday" letter I've sent to a few catalog companies in the past:

Dear Retailer,

I just received your (insert company name) "Holiday 20--" catalog. Though it was nice of you to send it, I'm afraid my family and I don't celebrate 'Holiday.' In fact, though I'm embarrassed to admit it, I'm not even sure what or when 'Holiday' is, though I suspect that it's sometime in late December.

My family and I celebrate a small, quaint religious day we like to call "Christmas." I don't suppose you've heard of it, but it has ancient roots, and many lovely customs and traditions. One of those traditions is to give our loved ones gifts on this day, and companies used to send me catalogs to help me pick out Christmas gifts for my family and friends.

I'm afraid, in recent years, I've very inappropriately been purchasing 'Holiday' gifts by mistake! You can imagine my chagrin--I wouldn't give a Jewish friend a Christmas gift for Hanukkah, so I certainly shouldn't give 'Holiday' gifts to my loved ones for Christmas. Now that I've realized this terrible faux pas, I no longer intend to shop from stores or catalog who advertise only 'Holiday' gifts but who do not use the word "Christmas" to describe any of their merchandise. I would be ashamed to fill my house with 'Holiday' decorations and 'Holiday' cheer when I don't even celebrate 'Holiday'!

So, though I appreciate your thoughtfulness in sending me your Holiday catalog, I won't be using it. Not unless the kids decide to cut it up to make confetti for our Christmas crackers.

Believe it or not, I got a few interesting replies to this one. :)