Red Rose Writing

Other bloggers talk about taking the Christmas holidays off, but since the Annals is so infrequently updated, what would be the point in that? There’s always something to say about something….

So I’m rummaging through the meager Web site of John Vennari’s Catholic Family News, to which I’ve never had a subscription.* One of the few articles it does replicate online is “Karl Rahner’s Girlfriend,” referring to the infamous Jesuit considered the foremost of the Modernist periti of Vatican II and the late German feminoid writer (and aren’t all contemporary German women writers feminoids???) Luise Rinser and the, um, unusual relationship they shared during the Council and for the rest of Rahner’s life (he died in 1984). Well, Vennari reports that she protested that this relationship did not include direct sexual acts….

Tom Pauken, writing in Chronicles magazine of Rockford, Ill., describes the hostility on the part of the Bush-Rove axis to real conservatives in action in Texas politics in the late 20th century — illustrative of how it is that in Washington at the top of the 21st, their act of suffocation continues, as this commentary in the same space by Samuel Francis demonstrates.

I should have been reading this stuff more closely two months ago. Bush didn’t need my vote, after all, to carry Virginia….

I have the understanding that columnist Robert Novak is what’s called a “neo-conservative,” but his work this morning deserves much attention (and has already gotten some from Open Book, whence I found this): pointing out the White House snub of visiting Italian dignitary Rocco Buttiglione, whose nomination to serve as Justice Minister in the European Union was rejected on account of his public affirmations, consistent with his Catholic Faith, against sodomites (and feminoids also, I think).

[Headline in the style of Mark Shea, who has his good points, even though he has no time for the Annals whatsoever.]

I’m not sure much direct comment is necessary to a story detailing a ruling by the Washington State Supreme Court that “Parents can’t monitor kids’ phone calls”, as a result of agitation on some incorrigible 14-year-old girl’s boyfriend’s behalf by the Anti-Christian Licentiousness Union (ACLU). The ruling may apply only to that one state, but as part and parcel of a trend it is all too clear….

I would have never guessed that my life-long beloved Pittsburgh NFL team (which I’ve followed since the 1975 playoffs and Super Bowl X) was actually the first in the league to have a cheerleading squad! But since we’re dealing with the team owned by the late Art Rooney, a practicing Catholic (he actually had a priest-chaplain for the team during its first Super Bowl season, 1974-75), this was a squad that, during its existence [1961-69] was more akin to college-style rather than all the immodesty and wiggles and jiggles made infamous by the Dallas[s] outfit in the late 1970s. In fact, Rooney insisted that the so-called Steelerettes “remain ladylike on and off the field. Fraternizing with the players was forbidden.”

Yes, it’s one of those intendedly “heartwarming” stories of how we in the 21st Century are making advances in how we celebrate the “holiday season”: the phenomenon of divorced parents coming back together just for the holiday celebration, along with all the kids: not only their own, but those of whom each “ex” has hooked up with since the divorce! It’s a Newsweek story reproduced on the PMSNBC Web site.