Soldiers are warriors, not infants.  Let’s talk about their needs, but let’s not imply they have no idea how they got there.

It gets complicated, obviously.  Because while  Sullivan’s clearly right to point out that we do have an all-volunteer army, we also do have a military that pulls disproportionately from poor and minority communities.  Yes: they volunteered.  Yes: I’m sure they’re proud to be there.  I wouldn’t know though, I’d have to do a survey.

But, and this is a huge but that we can never really know the answer to, if they had been middle-class kids, would they have agreed to go to Iraq?  I don’t know, but the statistics clearly indicate that the folks over in Iraq come from somewhere, and it’s usually not the tony suburbs.

So, is a semi-coercion of political and economic opportunity the same as a draft?  Of course not.  But I’m not sure it’s volunteer either.

This is what Michael Vick should have gotten into!

One Jew laments God, but then gains a bit of peace.  Shalom Auslander’s stories have been in the New Yorker and he’s really fantastic:

“Go through, make a Word document of the Old Testament and do a find/change, and everything that comes as God make it Alan. And then write a report on what kind of a person Alan is,” Auslander says. “Alan is a bit of a dick, clearly.”

Sometimes it’s okay to be a little funky instead of all impressive-like.

Why did he do it?  asks the Economist, while Slate speculates that maybe this will pave the way to univeral health care.  Which would be, as they say amongst my people, fan-frickin’-tastic:

In vetoing reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, George W. Bush has fired the first shot in the battle over health-care reform. The likely result will be to help mobilize support for further government intervention in the health-care market, which would be a very good thing. Thank you, Mr. President!

from John Allen:

Complex cases, jurists say, make bad law. Maybe that’s why so much Catholic debate about end-of-life care, especially the morality of delivering food and water through a tube to keep someone alive who would otherwise die, revolves around patients in a persistent vegetative state, despite the fact that these patients represent a small fraction of cases in which such tubes might be considered.

They’ve been there when white folks’ ancestors were still worshipping rocks.  And now they’re in tremendous danger:

Nabil Comanny and his family endured the dead bodies left to decompose along the road in their southern Dora neighborhood.

They accepted the criminal gangs that roamed the area, searching for targets to kidnap.

And neither the utility failures nor the mountains of trash in the street could drive them away.

As Christians, the Comannys had learned to keep a low profile. They even stayed in their house after many Muslim neighbors fled the daily chaos when sectarian bloodshed between Shiite and Sunni militants broke out in 2006, making this one of Baghdad’s most embattled districts.

But the hand-scrawled note at their door was the final straw. The message commanded the family to select one of these options:
1. Convert to Islam.
2. Pay a fee of nearly $300 monthly for “protection.”
3. Leave the area.

Failure to comply with one of the three would result in death.

“We don’t have weapons, and the government doesn’t protect us. What else can we do?” said Comanny, a 37-year-old journalist whose family abandoned its modest home of 11 years.

Extreme Islamic militants increasingly are targeting Christians in Iraq, especially here in the capital. As a result, Iraq’s Christian community — long the minority in a largely Muslim country — continues to dwindle.

Rocco Palmo is a rockstar.  For those of you that don’t know, Rocco writes a very popular blog called Whispers in the Loggia and he’s read by many a serious Catholic–as a result, he’s a go-to guy for various national and internationan news outlets on what it means to be Catholic.  He’s, to quote Ron Burgundy, kind of a big deal.

But–and I think this is syptomatic of the Catholic blogosphere in general–so many people don’t care.  Rocco mentions in this post that a Bishop plugged Whispers in the Loggia in his installation speech, and I guarantee you everyone in that church knew what he was talking about.  Rocco writes a column for us at Bustedhalo.com, and I can’t tell you how many priests have asked me, when I told them I work for Bustedhalo, “do you know Rocco Palmo?”

But here’s the thing–I’ve never been asked that by someone who is not a priest, a nun, or at least incredibly invested in the politics of the Church hierarchy.    Some people really, really care.  Some people don’t care at all.   So: this divide.  To his credit, Rocco’s often written about this in his columns for Bustedhalo, and I’m sure he would agree there’s a tremendous disconnect in the Church.

And I know, I know: theology is important.  liturgy is important.  All of these things are important.  And that’s just about all the Catholic blogosphere talks about, which is why it’s so unreadable for the vast majority of Catholics.  Fine, you believe what this Bishop says matters.  But why does it matter?  Because unless we prove this “why” to people, we’re going to continue having a large generation of Catholics that you can call unorthodox and non-Catholic as much as you want, but they’ll still go to Mass every once in a while, they’ll still consider themselves Catholic, and they still won’t care, because you’re speaking and living and writing and blogging in a ghetto.

More on Saint Frank right here.

And check out our main site for an article on the blessin’ o’ the animals.

aren’t Catholic.  Says this list.  Except those few, those happy few, those band of orthodox.

What’s most interesting about this is that the people being accused of not being Catholic enough–I’m not sure they care, really.  I think, if Notre Dame is worried about a reputation, it’s worried about academic rigor and commitment to truth–not following the party line.

And if truth exists, it’s more important than the party line anyways.  Or do we need to protect institutions from finding that truth?

Academic freedom is more important than academic fear.