April 23, 2005
FORGET ERIC AND JULIA...
Uncle Dick and Papa (Maureen Dowd, New York Times, April 23rd, 2005)
Just like Mr. Cheney, once the quintessentially deferential staff man with the Secret Service code name "Back Seat," the self-effacing Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has clambered over the back seat to seize the wheel (or Commonweal). Mr. Cheney played the tough cop to W.'s boyish, genial pol, just as Cardinal Ratzinger played the tough cop to John Paul's gentle soul.And just like the vice president, the new pope is a Jurassic archconservative who disdains the "if it feels good do it" culture and the revolutionary trends toward diversity and cultural openness since the 60's.
The two leaders are a match - absolutists who view the world in stark terms of good and evil, eager to prolong a patriarchal society that prohibits gay marriage and slices up pro-choice U.S. Democratic candidates.
The two, from rural, conservative parts of their countries, want to turn back the clock and exorcise New Age silliness. Mr. Cheney wants to dismantle the New Deal and go back to 1937. Pope Benedict XVI wants to dismantle Vatican II and go back to 1397. As a scholar, his specialty was "patristics," the study of the key thinkers in the first eight centuries of the church.
They are both old hands at operating in secrecy and using the levers of power for ideological advantage. They want to enlist Catholics in the conservative cause, turning confession boxes into ballot boxes with the threat that a vote for a liberal Democrat could lead to eternal damnation.
...our latest theory is that Maureen Dowd and Harry Eagar are one and the same.
Posted by Peter Burnet at April 23, 2005 11:05 AMFree with the insults this morning, aren't we?
(And Mo', you ignornant slut— it's 1927 , not 1937. It's the Dems who consider the depths of the Depression to be their Golden Age.)
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at April 23, 2005 11:35 AMshe really hates her childhood.
Maureen's problem is that she hasn't gotton what the lefties promised her.
Her life didn't turn out as planned and it can't be her or her ideology's fault, it's got to be her parents.
Posted by: Sandy P at April 23, 2005 11:38 AMI just feel for her conservative Catholic brothers. Can't imagine if one of my sisters was MoDo.
Posted by: Jim in Chicago at April 23, 2005 11:54 AMJim in Chicago --
Come on, everybody >has
Jim in Chicago --
Come on, everybody _has_ a relative like MoDo -- a brainless twit whose sole virtue is a nonstop cocktail party chatter that fills up any awkward silences in a party. She's invited everywhere, she drinks the latest fashionable cocktail, she's proud of her fashionable appearance, and says that it makes a statement about her.
Sure, after you know her, you don't listen to her very much. She so rarely has anything to say. But she's your sister/in-law/daughter, so you occasionally put in an oar when she gets too excited about her latest exaggerated folly.
Posted by: Arnold Williams at April 23, 2005 12:32 PMWow, does she have deep seeded personal issues gnawing at her inners! If I were Roman Catholic, I'd light several votive candles and pray many prayers for her well-being tomorrow at mass. Would one of you folks of the RC stripe please do that for her tomorrow?
Posted by: Dave W. at April 23, 2005 12:49 PMSomewhere, someone has a Maureen Dowd voodoo doll and is sticking pins in it.
Posted by: AllenS at April 23, 2005 12:55 PMBreaking news from MoDo and NYTImes: Pope disdains "if it feels good do it" culture! Who knew?
Posted by: carter at April 23, 2005 2:45 PM[A]bsolutists who view the world in stark terms of good and evil
Anyone who can find no evil in the world is a fool.
Posted by: J. Tiberius K. at April 23, 2005 3:28 PMiN HER PREVIOUS COLUMN, SHE LEFT OUT HER AUNT'S CONNECTION TO UNITED fRUIT, THROUGH tOMMY CORCORAN
Posted by: narciso at April 23, 2005 4:05 PM"The two leaders are a match - absolutists who view the world in stark terms of good and evil, eager to prolong a patriarchal society that prohibits gay marriage and slices up pro-choice U.S. Democratic candidates.
The two, from rural, conservative parts of their countries, want to turn back the clock and exorcise New Age silliness...
They want to enlist Catholics in the conservative cause, turning confession boxes into ballot boxes with the threat that a vote for a liberal Democrat could lead to eternal damnation."
Is this supposed to be bad?
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at April 23, 2005 4:08 PMI feel a vast Jurassic archconservative conspiracy coming on.
Posted by: at April 23, 2005 7:11 PMNah, Harry's world was in the gravy in 1937 - things didn't fall apart until August 1939.
Posted by: jim hamlen at April 23, 2005 10:25 PMI have to agree with Mr. Schwartz. I thought MoDo hated the new Pope and Vice President Cheney but here she is singing their praises.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at April 23, 2005 10:59 PMCheney/Rice in 2008!
Posted by: Genecis at April 24, 2005 11:22 AM1921. We were farmers.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at April 24, 2005 1:41 PMDear Auntie Dowdie, when the lights are out (upstairs)
The Archconservative Bogey Man will get you if you don't watch out!
Re: "Uncle Dick and Papa," By MAUREEN DOWD
In her haste to construct her scarecrows, she can't even get her facts straight. She says,
" The two leaders [Benedict and Cheney] are a match - absolutists who view the world in stark terms of good and evil, eager to prolong a patriarchal society that prohibits gay marriage and slices up pro-choice U.S. Democratic candidates. "
Is Auntie Dowdie so ill-informed as not really to know that Cheney's daughter is a self-avowed lesbian and that he personally stated his support for gay marriage during the last election? Or is she just hoping that everyone else will have forgotten that and so buy into her fabrication? As for slicing up the pro-choice candidates, I find that vastly preferable to slicing up the babies. Another slice of humble pie, Auntie? No? I guess you've lost your appetite.
Benedict "selected himself"! Wow, thanks for exposing that fraudulent report that he was quickly elected by the great majority of cardinals! How easily we were fooled until Auntie Dowdie enlightened us!
"Pope Benedict XVI wants to dismantle Vatican II and go back to 1397." Dear Auntie, Cardinal Ratzinger was a progressive peritus at the Council who went on to establish the respected Communio group which has published the work of Hans von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac and others - a group which writes from the contemporary standpoint of phenomenological personalism and not from the decadent nominalistic scholasticism of the late 14th century, as distinct from the moderate realism of Aquinas in the 13th century. I assume that I don't have to explain the meaning of those terms to you, Auntie, since you must be an extremely competent historian, having given such a precise date. Benedict
may wish to moderate some of the distorted interpretations of the Council by such as yourself, but no one will be more faithful to its authentic message than he. By the way, he is a brilliant theologian who has published over 40 books. Perhaps you could enlighten us as to the number of books on theology that you yourself have published so that we might be able to substantiate your evidently superior knowledge of Vatican II?
But why waste our time any further? I can only say that I am appalled that the NYT would publish such biased, inaccurate and third-rate journalism. This woman is not a journalist, she's a cartoonist. And not a very talented one at that.