Onward Christian soldiers..
Christ's Church gained another member today.. Lucas was baptised!

He did OK with the dousing with water, but he wasn't so sure about the oil of the catechumenate... :)

- posted by Doug @ 4:59 PM    Comment

 
Oh, wonderful.

- posted by Doug @ 5:19 PM    Comment

 
Are any of the usual campaign finance reform zealots..
.. upset about this? Or are huge donations OK when used against a conservative?

Just asking...
- posted by Doug @ 5:13 PM    Comment

 
Right on..
Francis Cardinal George, archbishop of Chicago, has a great op-ed in today's Chicago Sun-Times based on the homily he delivered last Sunday. He blasts the paper for the story published last Friday, "Pope Launches Global Campaign Vs. Gays".

Some highlights:

I stand here to defend Our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, against a false accusation made on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times last Friday.
[...]
The Holy Father, through the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, approved a statement about the nature of marriage, a statement which repeats what every pope has taught for 2,000 years: Marriage is the lifelong union of a man and a woman who enter into a total sharing of themselves for the sake of family.
[...]
Marriage predates our present government or any other and predates, as well, the founding of the church. Marriage is not the creature of state or church, and neither a government nor the church has authority to change its nature.
[...]
What the Holy See concluded from the fact that there is neither biological nor moral equivalence between heterosexual marriage and homosexual unions is that there should be no legal equivalence either, in a well-ordered and wholesome society.
[...]
[T]he Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that people of homosexual orientation should be treated with every respect and with compassion; but the catechism also teaches the truth about the nature of God's gift of human sexuality, a truth our bodies themselves proclaim and the lives of married couples attest to.
[...]
The Holy Spirit invisibly anchors the church in the truth of Christ. Truths of faith can be more adequately understood from age to age, but the Holy Spirit does not contradict himself.
[...]
The Holy Father makes up nothing that he teaches. His is not the ''opinion of the Vatican.'' His is the teaching of Jesus Christ because he is the primary witness to the faith that unites us to Christ. In matters that are received over the ages and proclaimed by the pope in ours, no person who disagrees to the point of denial can claim to hold the Catholic faith. [echoing what I said earlier --Doug]

Read the whole thing.
- posted by Doug @ 12:08 PM    Comment

 
Legal wrangling commences...
Texas Senate Dems file suit in district court to protect themselves from being arrested upon their return to Texas, as well as to declare that Gov. Perry exceeded his constitutional authority in calling the special sessions. Meanwhile, Perry & Dewhurst file their own suit with the TX Supreme Court to force the wayward Dems to return.

Who will win? No one knows. Feed the hungry hip.. uh, never mind.
- posted by Doug @ 5:31 PM    1 comment

 
A new record!
Lucas slept for 7 straight hours last night! Unfortunately, it was between 7PM and 2AM, and he woke up every hour after that, but it's progress.. :)

- posted by Doug @ 10:02 AM    Comment

 
CBS claims Church cover-up
"Sex Crimes Cover-Up By Vatican?" screams the headline at CBS News. They've uncovered a document in the Church's archives that provides instructions to bishops on how to deal with the crime of solicitation -- that is, making sexual advances upon a penitent in the confessional.

CBS is bothered by the extreme secrecy called for in the document -- that a bishop (or person that he has appointed to investigate the case) who speaks of the case to anyone is automatically ("latae sententiae") excommunicated. What CBS apparently doesn't realize is that the Sacrament of Penance -- confession -- is *supposed* to be completely and inviolably secret. In the confessional, the priest is supposed to act in persona Christi to absolve you of your sins. Confession is supposed to be between you and Christ. Under normal circumstances, *no one* -- not even the Pope himself -- can order a priest to reveal what is said or done in confession. Only the very magnitude of the crime of solicitation -- "the worst crime", the document calls it -- compels the Church to crack the seal of the confessional. Even then, the number of people who can know about it must remain as small as possible.

The point of this policy, as far as I can tell, was not to protect priests. [It is certainly possible that the policy was abused; I make no claim to that effect.] It was to protect penitents whowere solicited, by imposing an affirmative obligation on them to report solicitation crimes to their bishop, and by providing a method for the bishop to investigate the accusations.
- posted by Doug @ 10:37 PM    1 comment

 
Here's to you, Bishop Robinson
So the Episcopalians have elected an openly gay bishop. John Derbyshire over at NRO is really quite perturbed over this decision. So are some other Episcopalians. I'd love to hear the comments of the Episcopals in my readership. Is this something you are OK with? Do you think the Episcopalian/Anglican church will end up splitting over this?
- posted by Doug @ 3:21 PM    Comment

 
Administrivia
It looks like I'll be moving to a new server soon (Thanks Britton!) .. Hopefully, this means I'll be able to transition to a different comments system. Blogout is OK for servers that don't support server-side scripting (like Road Runner) but there are much better ones available.

Hopefully by the end of the week I'll have the new site up and a redirect in this space. Stay tuned, kiddos!

Update 8/6/03 3:05PM: The move is finshed, and we now have PHP comments! My project for the next couple of days will be to transfer over the comments that had accumulated on BlogOut to the new dotcomments system.
- posted by Doug @ 9:42 AM    Comment

 
What media bias?
The headline on this AP story reads 'GOP Senators Fled Texas in 1993 Vote'. This is apparently an attempt to justify the current walkout by the Democrats in the Texas Senate that is preventing a vote on Congressional redistricting. The article body, however, only says that "several Republicans went into a closed-door meeting to discuss their options" when the Senate was about to vote on changing the method of selecting state judges. The article doesn't mention, and I haven't been able to find any evidence in a quick Google search, that the Senators actually "Fled Texas" as the headline claims -- and as the Democrats have, twice now, this year.
- posted by Doug @ 5:02 AM    Comment

 
How quickly the tech bubble burst
This article in the AAS shows that Austin's growth came to a screeching halt when the tech bubble burst. Whereas the city added a net 10,000 taxpayers and over $600 million in income due to migration in 2000, the numbers in 2001 were much smaller: net increases of just 318 taxpayers and $35 million.

Having moved to Austin in 2002, looking for work in the high-tech sector (I'm a hardware design engineer), I'm glad Dell is still doing great. I am somewhat worried about high-tech outsourcing, which started with tech support, has progressed through software engineering, and has now started to hit hardware development. American companies have started to figure out that engineers come about 1/10 as expensive on he Subcontinent or SE Asia as they are here. In the long run, this will be a Good Thing, as salary levels and standards of living start to rise around the world. In the short term, it kinda sucks for us worker bees.

I think my particular job is safe for a while, because server class computers are generally powerful enough to be classed as supercomputers by the government, and hence subject to export restrictions. This makes it much harder to farm out the design of these boxes to India or China. In fact, the box I just finished working on is about to be turned into the world's third fastest supercomputer for the NCSA (by hooking nearly 1500 of them up in parallel). Woohoo!
- posted by Doug @ 4:31 AM    Comment

 
Interesting article on Korea
This article in the WSJ tries to make the case that a military option should at least be considered in Korea.

I'm certainly no military expert, but this doesn't sound reasonable to me. I agree that with Patriots and Aegis in-theater, we can probably defend against a nuclear retaliation for a strike against Yongbyon and other targets. However, I don't see how we can take out 11,000 artillery pieces before they can lay waste to Seoul.
- posted by Doug @ 12:00 PM    Comment

 
On the topic of gay marriage..
.. I think ideally, the state should do as much as possible to encourage the traditional family and marriage -- one mom, one pop, 2.7 kids or whatever -- as the best foundation for society. This encouragement can take the form of tax breaks or special privileges to spouses/family members (joint property ownership, etc.). I also wouldn't mind making divorce a little harder than it is today (speaking as someone whose parents are divorced).

That said, it should also be recognized and accepted that there are other forms of families. I think the people of each State should decide what other familial forms they will recognize. Ideally, these necessarily less perfect arrangements should receive fewer or none of the benefits of stable marriage, but will not be illegal. Whether this extends to homosexual civil unions would be up to each State.

Steven Den Beste is opposed to a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in the U.S. I support this view for the most part -- if Massachusetts decides that gay marriage is the way to go for them, so be it. However, if the courts tried to force another state that does not sanction homosexual marriage, say Texas, to recognize a gay marriage performed in Mass., either using the Full Faith & Credit clause of Article IV or the Equal Protection clause of Amendment XIV, then I would support an amendment prohibiting the requirement of nationwide recognition. I also don't believe the Federal government should necessarily recognize these marriages, either (for income tax purposes and the like). Congress has already expressed its will on this issue with the Defense of Marriage Act.
- posted by Doug @ 11:33 AM    1 comment

 
Note to Sen. Kerry..
Telling the Pope to butt out ain't a great way to pick up Catholic votes..
- posted by Doug @ 10:59 AM    Comment

 
Getting called in to work on Sunday..
.. stinks. Between choir, church, brunch with the folks, and work, I didn't get to relax all day. We did attempt to take Lucas to see the Zilker musical -- Crazy For You -- last night. We got there at 6 to snag a place on the hill. He was good for most of the time before the show started, once we got his clothes off him (it was probably 85-90 degrees). However, he started crying at about Act I, Scene 2. Grandma carried him off to try to settle him down. Unfortunately, it didn't work, and more unfortunately, she couldn't get back to us to let us know. We did find each other again at intermission and decided that maybe nighttime activities aren't the greatest idea with a not-quite 2-month old.

So we left at 'halftime', but I gotta know.. does the Dead Rock Theater get saved??!
- posted by Doug @ 9:19 AM    Comment